[271] The poet’s nephew, afterwards Canon of Westminster, and Bishop of Lincoln, and the biographer of his uncle.—Ed.

[272] Compare the lines To a Child, written in her Album, in 1834.—Ed.

[273] 1844.

[274] 1845.

[275] 1845.

The following variation of the two last stanzas is from a MS. copy by Wordsworth.

August, 1844.—Ed.

[276] The following account of the circumstance which gave rise to the preceding poem is from the Memoir of Professor Archer Butler, by Mr. Woodward, prefixed to the “First Series” of his Sermons. The late Rev. Archdeacon Graves, of Dublin (in 1849 of Windermere), in writing to Mr. Woodward, gives an interesting account of a walk, in July 1844, from Windermere, by Rydal and Grasmere, to Loughrigg Tarn, etc., in which Butler was accompanied by Wordsworth, Julius Charles Hare, Sir William Hamilton, etc. He says, “The day was additionally memorable as giving birth to an interesting minor poem of Mr. Wordsworth’s. When we reached the side of Loughrigg Tarn (which you may remember he notes for its similarity, in the peculiar character of its beauty, to the Lago di Nemi—Dianae Speculum), the loveliness of the scene arrested our steps and fixed our gaze. The splendour of a July noon surrounded us and lit up the landscape, with the Langdale Pikes soaring above, and the bright tarn shining beneath; and when the poet’s eyes were satisfied with their feast on the beauties familiar to them, they sought relief in the search, to them a happy vital habit, for new beauty in the flower-enamelled turf at his feet. There his attention was arrested by a fair smooth stone, of the size of an ostrich’s egg, seeming to imbed at its centre, and at the same time to display a dark star-shaped fossil of most distinct outline. Upon closer inspection this proved to be the shadow of a daisy projected upon it with extraordinary precision by the intense light of an almost vertical sun. The poet drew the attention of the rest of the party to the minute but beautiful phenomenon, and gave expression at the time to thoughts suggested by it, which so interested our friend Professor Butler, that he plucked the tiny flower, and, saying that “it should be not only the theme but the memorial of the thought they had heard,” bestowed it somewhere carefully for preservation. The little poem, in which some of these thoughts were afterwards crystallised, commences with the stanza—

Memoir, pp. 27, 28.—Ed.

[277] In the first edition of his pamphlet “On the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway.”—Ed.

[278] The degree and kind of attachment which many of the yeomanry feel to their small inheritances can scarcely be over-rated. Near the house of one of them stands a magnificent tree, which a neighbour of the owner advised him to fell for profit’s sake. “Fell it!” exclaimed the yeoman, “I had rather fall on my knees and worship it.” It happens, I believe, that the intended railway would pass through this little property, and I hope that an apology for the answer will not be thought necessary by one who enters into the strength of the feeling.—W.W. 1845.

Compare the two letters on the Kendal and Windermere Railway, contributed by Wordsworth to The Morning Post in 1844, at Kendal, revised and reprinted in the same year. See The Prose Works of Wordsworth, vol. ii. pp. 383-405.—Ed.

[279] Orresthead is the height close to Windermere, to the north of the town.—Ed.

[280] This sonnet was first published in The Morning Post, December 17, 1844.—Ed.

[281] In the chancel of the church at Furness Abbey, ivy almost covers the north wall. In the Belfry and in the Chapter House, it is the same. The “tower,” referred to in the sonnet, is evidently the belfry tower to the west. It is still “grass-crowned.” The sonnet was doubtless composed on the spot, and if Wordsworth ascended to the top of the belfry tower, he might have seen the morning sunlight strike the small remaining fragment of the central tower. But it is more likely that he looked up from the nave, or choir, of the church to the belfry, when he spoke of the sun’s first smile gleaming from the top of the tall tower. “Flowers”—crowfoot, campanulas, etc.—still luxuriate on the mouldered walls. With the line,

compare,

in the description of Bolton Abbey in The White Doe of Rylstone, canto i. I. 118. Compare also the Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle, vol. vii. p. 347.—Ed.

[282] See preceding note.

[283] Furness Abbey is the property of the Duke of Devonshire, whose family name is Cavendish.—Ed.

[284] 1845.

[285] These two rocks rise to the left of the lower high-road from Grasmere to Rydal, after it leaves the former lake and turns eastwards towards the latter. They are still “heath-clad,” and covered with the coppice of the old Bane Riggs Wood, so named because the shortest road from Ambleside to Grasmere used to pass through it; “bain” or “bane” signifying, in the Westmoreland dialect, a short cut. Dr. Cradock wrote of them thus:—“They are now difficult of approach, being enclosed in a wood, with dense undergrowth, and surrounded by a high, well-built wall. They can be well seen from the lower road, from a spot close to the three-mile stone from Ambleside. They are some fifty or sixty feet above the road, about twenty yards apart, and separated by a slight depression of, say, ten feet. The view from the easterly one is now much preferable, as it is less encumbered with shrubs; and for that reason also is more heath-clad. The twin rocks are also well seen, though at a farther distance, from the hill in White Moss Common between the roads, which Dr. Arnold used to call ‘Old Corruption,’ and ‘Bit-by-bit Reform.’ Doubtless the rocks were far more easily approached fifty years ago, when walls, if any, were low and ill-built. It is probable, however, that even then they were enclosed and protected; for heath will not grow on the Grasmere hills, on places much frequented by sheep.” The best view of these “heath-clad” rocks from the lower carriage road is at a spot two or three yards to the west of a large rock on the road-side near the milestone. The view of them from the Loughrigg Terrace walks is also interesting. The two sisters were Mary and Sarah Hutchinson (Mrs. Wordsworth and her Sister); and, in the Rydal household, the rocks were respectively named “Mary-Point,” and “Sarah-Point.”—Ed.

[286] 1845.

[287] 1845.

[288] 1845.

[289] 1845.

[290] This Westmoreland Girl was Sarah Mackereth of Wyke Cottage, Grasmere. She married a man named Davis, and died in 1872 at Broughton in Furness. The swollen “flood” from which she rescued the lamb, was Wyke Gill beck, which descends from the centre of Silver Howe. The picturesque cottage, with round chimney,—a yew tree and Scotch fir behind it,—is on the western side of the road from Grasmere over to Langdale by Red Bank. The Mackereths have been a well-known Westmoreland family for some hundred years. They belong to the “gentry of the soil,” and have been parish clerks in Grasmere for generations. One of them was the tenant of the Swan Inn referred to in The Waggoner—the host who painted, with his own hand, the “famous swan,” used as a sign. (See vol. iii. p. 81.)

The story of The Blind Highland Boy, which gave rise to the poem bearing that name, was told to Wordsworth by one of these Mackereths of Grasmere. (See the Fenwick note, vol. ii. p. 420.) In a letter to Professor Henry Reed (31st July 1845) Wordsworth said this poem might interest him “as exhibiting what sort of characters our mountains breed. It is truth to the letter.”—Ed.

[291] 1845.

[292] 1845.

[293] Compare Grace Darling, p. 311 in this volume.—Ed.

[294] 1845.

[295] See the note to the previous sonnet on Furness Abbey, p. 168.—Ed.

[296] 1845.