Written at the request of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., and in his name, for an Urn, placed by him at the termination of a newly-planted Avenue in the same Composed while the Author was engaged in writing a "Weep not, beloved Friends ! nor let the air " "Perhaps some needful service of the State " "O Thou who movest onward with a mind " "There never breathed a man who, when his life WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS 1806 WORDSWORTH left Grasmere with his household for Coleorton in November 1806, and there is no evidence that he returned to Westmoreland till April 1808; although his sister spent part of the winter of 1807-8 at Dove Cottage, while he and Mrs. Wordsworth wintered at Stockton with the Hutchinson family. Several of the sonnets which are published in the "Poems" of 1807 refer, however, to Grasmere, and were probably composed there. I have conjecturally assigned a good many of them to the year 1806. Some may have been composed earlier than 1806, but it is not likely that any belong to a later year. In addition to these, the poems of 1806 include the Character of the Happy Warrior, unless it should be assigned to the close of the previous year (see the note to the poem, p. 11), The Horn of Egremont Castle, the three poems composed in London in the spring of the year (April or May)-viz. Stray Pleasures, Power of Music, and Star-gazers-the lines on the Mountain Echo, those composed in expectation of the death of Mr. Fox, and the Ode, Intimations of Immortality.* Southey, in writing to Sir Walter Scott, on the 4th of February 1806, said, "Wordsworth has of late been more employed in correcting his poems than in writing others."—ED. * For reasons stated in the preface to vol. i. this Ode is printed in vol. viii. at the close of the poems.-ED. 7 VOL. IV 狂 B |