Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,

And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself,1 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,

Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,

6

In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed
And recognised it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

ΙΟ

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not cheer 2 it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.”
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.

To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!

15

20

With the last stanza compare one from The Fountain, vol. ii. p. 93

Thus fares it still in our decay :

And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away

Than what it leaves behind.

Compare also the other two poems on the Celandine, vol. ii. pp. 300, 303, written in a previous year.-ED.

AT APPLETHWAITE, NEAR KESWICK

1804

Composed 1804.-Published 1842

[This was presented to me by Sir George Beaumont, with a view to the erection of a house upon it, for the sake of being near to Coleridge, then living, and likely to remain, at Greta Hall, near Keswick. The severe necessities that prevented this arose from his domestic situation. This little property, with a considerable addition that still leaves it very small, lies beautifully upon the banks of a rill that gurgles down the side of Skiddaw; and the orchard and other parts of the grounds command a magnificent prospect of Derwent Water, the mountains of Borrowdale and Newlands. Not many years ago I gave the place to my daughter.-I. F.]

In pencil on the opposite page in Dora Wordsworth's (Mrs. Quillinan's) handwriting—“ Many years ago, Sir; for it was given when she was a frail feeble monthling."

One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."-ED.

BEAUMONT! it was thy wish that I should rear
A seemly Cottage in this sunny Dell,

On favoured ground, thy gift, where I might dwell
In neighbourhood with One to me most dear,
That undivided we from year to year

Might work in our high Calling—a bright hope
To which our fancies, mingling, gave free scope
Till checked by some necessities severe.

And should these slacken, honoured BEAUMONT! still
Even then we may perhaps in vain implore

Leave of our fate thy wishes 1 to fulfil.
Whether this boon be granted us or not,

1

pleasure

MS.

5

ΙΟ

Old Skiddaw will look down upon the Spot With pride, the Muses love it evermore.1* This little property at Applethwaite now belongs to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth, the grandson of the poet. It is a "" sunny dell" only in its upper reaches, above the spot where the cottage -which still bears Wordsworth's name-is built. This sonnet, and Sir George Beaumont's wish that Wordsworth and Coleridge should live so near each other, as to be able to carry on joint literary labour, recall the somewhat similar wish and proposal on the part of W. Calvert, unfolded in a letter from Coleridge to Sir Humphry Davy.—ED.

VAUDRACOUR AND JULIA

Composed 1804.-Published 1820

The following Tale was written as an Episode, in a work from which its length may perhaps exclude it. The facts are true; no invention as to these has been exercised, as none was needed.-W. W. 1820.

Faithfully narrated,

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. though with the omission of many pathetic circumstances, from the mouth of a French lady, who had been an eye-and-ear witness of all that was done and said. Many long years after, I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.-I. F.]

This was included among the "Poems founded on the Affections."-ED.

1

O HAPPY time of youthful lovers (thus
My story may begin) O balmy time,
In which a love-knot on a lady's brow
Is fairer than the fairest star in heaven!

will be proud, and that same spot

Be dear unto the Muses evermore.

MS.

*In the edition of 1842 the following footnote is given by Wordsworth, "This biographical Sonnet, if so it may be called, together with the Epistle that follows, have been long suppressed from feelings of personal delicacy." The "Epistle was that addressed to Sir George Beaumont in 1811.-ED.

The work was The Prelude. See book ix., p. 310 of this volume.-ED. Compare The Prelude, book ix. l. 548, p. 310, where Wordsworth says it was told him "by my Patriot friend."-ED.

To such inheritance of blessed fancy

(Fancy that sports more desperately with minds
Than ever fortune hath been known to do)

The high-born Vaudracour was brought, by years
Whose progress had a little overstepped

His stripling prime. A town of small repute,
Among the vine-clad mountains of Auvergne,

Was the Youth's birth-place. There he wooed a Maid
Who heard the heart-felt music of his suit
With answering vows. Plebeian was the stock,
Plebeian, though ingenuous, the stock,
From which her graces and her honours sprung:
And hence the father of the enamoured Youth,
With haughty indignation, spurned the thought
Of such alliance. From their cradles up,

With but a step between their several homes,
Twins had they been in pleasure; after strife
And petty quarrels, had grown fond again;
Each other's advocate, each other's stay;
And, in their happiest moments, not content,
If more divided than a sportive pair 1

1

Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering
Within the eddy of a common blast,
Or hidden only by the concave depth

Of neighbouring billows from each other's sight.

Thus, not without concurrence of an age
Unknown to memory, was an earnest given
By ready nature for a life of love,
For endless constancy, and placid truth;
But whatsoe'er of such rare treasure lay
Reserved, had fate permitted, for support
Of their maturer years, his present mind
Was under fascination ;-he beheld
A vision, and adored the thing he saw.

5

ΙΟ

15

20

25

30

35

Arabian fiction never filled the world

With half the wonders that were wrought for him.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;
Life turned the meanest of her implements,
Before his eyes, to price above all gold;

40

The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine ;
Her chamber-window did surpass in glory

45

The portals of the dawn; all paradise
Could, by the simple opening of a door,
Let itself in upon him :-pathways, walks,

J

Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,
Surcharged, within him, overblest to move
Beneath a sun that wakes a weary world
To its dull round of ordinary cares;
A man too happy for mortality!

So passed the time, till whether through effect
Of some unguarded moment that dissolved
Virtuous restraint-ah, speak it, think it, not!
Deem rather that the fervent Youth, who saw
So many bars between his present state
And the dear haven where he wished to be
In honourable wedlock with his Love,
Was in his judgment tempted to decline
To perilous weakness,1 and entrust his cause
To nature for a happy end of all;

50

55

60

Deem that by such fond hope the Youth was swayed,
And bear with their transgression, when I add

That Julia, wanting yet the name of wife,

Carried about her for a secret grief

65

The promise of a mother.

To conceal

The threatened shame, the parents of the Maid
Found means to hurry her away by night,
And unforewarned, that in some distant spot

1 1827.

Was inwardly prepared to turn aside

From law and custom,

1820.

70