COMPOSED AT RYDAL ON MAY MORNING, 1838. Comp. 1838. Pub. 1838. [This and the following sonnet were composed on what we call the "Far Terrace" at Rydal Mount, where I have murmured out many thousands of verses.] IF with old love of you, dear Hills! I share From far, forgive the wanderings of my thought: Then was, within the famed Egerian Grot To sit and muse, fanned by its dewy air Amid the sunny, shadowy, Coliseum;† Heard them, unchecked by aught of saddening hue,1 COMPOSED ON A MAY MORNING, 1838. Comp. 1838. Pub. 1838. LIFE with yon Lambs, like day, is just begun, 1 1845. of sombre hue, 1838. * On May morning, 1837, Wordsworth was in Rome with Henry Crabb Robinson.-ED. + The Flavian Amphitheatre, begun by Vespasian, A.D. 72, and continued by his son Titus, one of the noblest structures in Rome, now ruin.-ED. Pale twilight's lingering glooms, and in the sun As they from turf yet hoar with sleepy dew All turn, and court the shining and the green, Where herbs look up, and opening flowers are seen; And so, His gifts and promises between, [The sad condition of poor Mrs Southey* put me upon writing this. It has afforded comfort to many persons whose friends have been similarly affected.] OH what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech! Hers is a holy Being, freed from Sin. She is not what she seems, a forlorn wretch, But delegated Spirits comfort fetch To Her from heights that Reason may not win. In them-in Her our sins and sorrows past. Mrs Southey died Nov. 16, 1837. She had long been an invalid. See Southey's Life and Correspondence, Vol. VI., p. 347.—Ed. + Compare a remark of Wordsworth's that he never saw those with mind unhinged, but he thought of the words, 'Life hid in God.'—Ed. A PLEA FOR AUTHORS, MAY 1838. FAILING impartial measure to dispense And social Justice, stript of reverence For natural rights, a mockery and a shame; No public harm that Genius from her course Be turned; and streams of truth dried up, even at their source! A POET TO HIS GRANDCHILD. (Sequel to the foregoing.) "Son of my buried Son, while thus thy hand. “Is clasping mine, it saddens me to think "How Want may press thee down, and with thee sink. "Thy children left unfit, through vain demand "Of culture, even to feel or understand "My simplest Lay that to their memory "May cling;-hard fate! which haply need not be "Did Justice mould the statutes of the Land. "A Book time-cherished and an honoured name 'Are high rewards; but bound they nature's claim. "Or Reasons? No-hopes spun in timid line "Extend through unambitious years to come, * The author of an animated article, printed in the Law Magazine, in BLEST Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will Leaves him1 at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye Sees that, apart from magnanimity, Wisdom exists not; nor the humbler skill Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill Its duties;-prompt to move, but firm to wait, PROTEST AGAINST TO BALLOT.† Comp. 1838. Pub. 1838. Forth rushed from Envy sprung and Self-conceit, 1 1845. her 1838. favour of the principle of Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, precedes me in the public expression of this feeling; which had been forced too often upon my own mind, by remembering how few descendants of men, eminent in literature, are even known to exist.-W. W., 1838. The sonnet is not addressed to any grandson of the Poet's.—ED. "All change is perilous, and all chance unsound." -Spenser.-W. W., 1838. + In his notes to the volume of Collected Sonnets (1836), Wordsworth writes:-"Protest against the Ballot.' Having in this notice alluded only in general terms to the mischief which, in my opinion, the Ballot would bring along with it, without especially branding its immoral and antisocial tendency (for which no political advantages, were they a thousand times And through the astonished Island swept in storm, That crossed her way. Now stoops she to entreat Licence to hide at intervals her head VALEDICTORY SONNET. Closing the Volume of Sonnets published in 1838. SERVING no haughty Muse, my hands have here Both to allure the casual Loiterer, And that, so placed, my Nurslings may requite But metaphor dismissed, and thanks apart, greater than those presumed upon, could be a compensation), I have been impelled to subjoin a reprobation of it upon that score. In no part of my writings have I mentioned the name of any contemporary, that of Buonaparte only excepted, but for the purpose of eulogy; and therefore, as in the concluding verse of what follows, there is a deviation from this rule (for the blank will be easily filled up) I have excluded the sonnet from the body of the collection, and placed it here as a public record of my detestation, both as a man and a citizen, of the proposed contrivance." Then follows the sonnet beginning "Said Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud." (See p. 32.)-ED |