[48] Compare, in Robert Browning’s poem on Guercino’s picture of The Guardian-Angel at Fano——
Ed.
Composed 1835.—Published 1835
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[49] Compare The Excursion (book iii. l. 649), and the sonnet (vol. vi. p. 72) beginning——
Ed.
Composed 1835.—Published 1835
[Suggested on the road between Preston and Lancaster where it first gives a view of the Lake country, and composed on the same day, on the roof of the coach.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[50] 1837.
Composed 1835.—Published 1835
[The fate of this poor Dove, as described, was told to me at Brinsop Court, by the young lady to whom I have given the name of Lesbia.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[51] Miss Loveday Walker, daughter of the Rector of Brinsop. See the Fenwick note to the next sonnet.—Ed.
Composed 1835.—Published 1835
[My attention to these antiquities was directed by Mr. Walker, son to the itinerant Eidouranian Philosopher. The beautiful pavement was discovered within a few yards of the front door of his parsonage, and appeared from the site (in full view of several hills upon which there had formerly been Roman encampments) as if it might have been the villa of the commander of the forces, at least such was Mr. Walker’s conjecture.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
Composed 1835.—Published 1835
[Written on a journey from Brinsop Court, Herefordshire.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[52] The Ledbury bells are easily audible on the Malvern hills.—Ed.
Published 1835
[This lady was named Carleton; she, along with a sister, was brought up in the neighbourhood of Ambleside. The epitaph, a part of it at least, is in the church at Bromsgrove, where she resided after her marriage.—I.F.]
One of the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.
[53] 1837.
In the edition of 1835 the title was “Epitaph.”
[54] 1837.
Composed 1835.—Published 1838
[The sad condition of poor Mrs. Southey[55] put me upon writing this. It has afforded comfort to many persons whose friends have been similarly affected.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[55] Mrs. Southey died 16th November 1837. She had long been an invalid. See Southey’s Life and Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 347.—Ed.
[56] 1842.
[57] Compare a remark of Wordsworth’s that he never saw those with mind unhinged, but he thought of the words, “Life hid in God.” It is a curious oriental belief that idiots are in closer communion with the Infinite than the sane are.—Ed.
So far as can be ascertained, only one sonnet was written by Wordsworth in 1836. The verses To a Redbreast, by his sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, may however be placed alongside of the sonnet addressed to her.—Ed.
Composed 1836.—Published 1837.
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
[58] Sarah Hutchinson—Mrs. Wordsworth’s sister—died at Rydal on the 23rd June 1836. It was after her that the poet named one of the two “heath-clad rocks” referred to in the “Poems on the naming of Places,” and which he called respectively “Mary-Point” and “Sarah-Point.” In 1827 he inscribed to her the sonnet beginning—
and the lines she wrote To a Redbreast, beginning—
were published among Wordsworth’s own poems.
The sonnet written in 1806, beginning—
was, Wordsworth tells us, a great favourite with S. H. He adds, “When I saw her lying in death I could not resist the impulse to compose the sonnet that follows it.” (See vol. iv. p. 46.)
In a letter to Southey (unpublished), Wordsworth refers to her death, and adds: “I saw her within an hour after her decease, in the silence and peace of death, with as heavenly an expression on her countenance as ever human creature had. Surely there is food for faith in these appearances: for myself, I can say that I have passed a wakeful night, more in joy than in sorrow, with that blessed face before my eyes perpetually as I lay in bed.”
Published 1842
[Almost the only verses by our lamented sister Sara Hutchinson.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Poems.”—Ed.
The poems belonging to the year 1837 include the “Memorials of a Tour in Italy” with Henry Crabb Robinson in that year, and one or two additional sonnets.—Ed.
Published 1837
One of the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.
[59] This refers to the poet’s son Thomas, who died December 1, 1812. He was buried in Grasmere churchyard, beside his sister Catherine; and Wordsworth placed these lines upon his tombstone. They may have been written much earlier than 1836, probably in 1813, but it is impossible to ascertain the date, and they were not published till 1837.—Ed.
Composed 1837.—Published 1842
[During my whole life I had felt a strong desire to visit Rome and the other celebrated cities and regions of Italy, but did not think myself justified in incurring the necessary expense till I received from Mr. Moxon, the publisher of a large edition of my poems, a sum sufficient to enable me to gratify my wish without encroaching upon what I considered due to my family. My excellent friend H.C. Robinson readily consented to accompany me, and in March 1837, we set off from London, to which we returned in August, earlier than my companion wished or I should myself have desired had I been, like him, a bachelor. These Memorials of that tour touch upon but a very few of the places and objects that interested me, and, in what they do advert to, are for the most part much slighter than I could wish. More particularly do I regret that there is no notice in them of the South of France, nor of the Roman antiquities abounding in that district, especially of the Pont de Degard, which, together with its situation, impressed me full as much as any remains of Roman architecture to be found in Italy. Then there was Vaucluse, with its Fountain, its Petrarch, its rocks of all seasons, its small plots of lawn in their first vernal freshness, and the blossoms of the peach and other trees embellishing the scene on every side. The beauty of the stream also called forcibly for the expression of sympathy from one who, from his childhood, had studied the brooks and torrents of his native mountains. Between two and three hours did I run about climbing the steep and rugged crags from whose base the water of Vaucluse breaks forth. “Has Laura’s Lover,” often said I to myself, “ever sat down upon this stone? or has his foot ever pressed that turf?” Some, especially of the female sex, would have felt sure of it: my answer was (impute it to my years) “I fear, not.” Is it not in fact obvious that many of his love verses must have flowed, I do not say from a wish to display his own talent, but from a habit of exercising his intellect in that way rather than from an impulse of his heart? It is otherwise with his Lyrical poems, and particularly with the one upon the degradation of his country: there he pours out his reproaches, lamentations, and aspirations like an ardent and sincere patriot. But enough: it is time to turn to my own effusions such as they are.—I.F.]
[60] The following is the Itinerary of the Italian Tour of 1837, supplied by Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson. (See Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. ii. pp. 316, 317.) The spelling of the names of places is Robinson’s.
[61] 1845.
The Tour of which the following Poems are very inadequate remembrances was shortened by report, too well founded, of the prevalence of Cholera at Naples. To make some amends for what was reluctantly left unseen in the South of Italy, we visited the Tuscan Sanctuaries among the Apennines, and the principal Italian Lakes among the Alps. Neither of those lakes, nor of Venice, is there any notice in these Poems, chiefly because I have touched upon them elsewhere. See, in particular, Descriptive Sketches, “Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820,” and a Sonnet upon the extinction of the Venetian Republic.—W.W.
April, 1837
His, Sir Walter Scott’s, eye, did in fact kindle at them, for the lines, “Places forsaken now” and the two that follow, were adopted from a poem of mine which nearly forty years ago was in part read to him, and he never forgot them.
Sir Humphry Davy was with us at the time. We had ascended from Patterdale, and I could not but admire the vigour with which Scott scrambled along that horn of the mountain called “Striding Edge.” Our progress was necessarily slow, and was beguiled by Scott’s telling many stories and amusing anecdotes, as was his custom. Sir H. Davy would have probably been better pleased if other topics had occasionally been interspersed, and some discussion entered upon: at all events he did not remain with us long at the top of the mountain, but left us to find our way down its steep side together into the Vale of Grasmere, where, at my cottage, Mrs. Scott was to meet us at dinner.
See among these notes the one on Yarrow Revisited.
This, though introduced here, I did not know till it was told me at Rome by Miss Mackenzie of Seaforth, a lady whose friendly attentions during my residence at Rome I have gratefully acknowledged with expressions of sincere regret that she is no more. Miss M. told me that she accompanied Sir Walter to the Janicular Mount, and, after showing him the grave of Tasso in the church upon the top, and a mural monument, there erected to his memory, they left the church and stood together on the brow of the hill overlooking the City of Rome: his daughter Anne was with them, and she, naturally desirous, for the sake of Miss Mackenzie especially, to have some expression of pleasure from her father, half reproached him for showing nothing of that kind either by his looks or voice: “How can I,” replied he, “having only one leg to stand upon, and that in extreme pain!” so that the prophecy was more than fulfilled.
We took boat near the lighthouse at the point of the right horn of the bay which makes a sort of natural port for Genoa; but the wind was high, and the waves long and rough, so that I did not feel quite recompensed by the view of the city, splendid as it was, for the danger apparently incurred. The boatman (I had only one) encouraged me saying we were quite safe, but I was not a little glad when we gained the shore, though Shelley and Byron—one of them at least, who seemed to have courted agitation from any quarter—would have probably rejoiced in such a situation: more than once I believe were they both in extreme danger even on the lake of Geneva. Every man, however, has his fears of some kind or other; and no doubt they had theirs: of all men whom I have ever known, Coleridge had the most of passive courage in bodily peril, but no one was so easily cowed when moral firmness was required in miscellaneous conversation or in the daily intercourse of social life.
There is not a single bay along this beautiful coast that might not raise in a traveller a wish to take up his abode there, each as it succeeds seems more inviting than the other; but the desolated convent on the cliff in the bay of Savona struck my fancy most; and had I, for the sake of my own health or that of a dear friend, or any other cause, been desirous of a residence abroad, I should have let my thoughts loose upon a scheme of turning some part of this building into a habitation provided as far as might be with English comforts. There is close by it a row or avenue, I forget which, of tall cypresses. I could not forbear saying to myself—“What a sweet family walk, or one for lonely musings, would be found under the shade!” but there, probably, the trees remained little noticed and seldom enjoyed.
The broom is a great ornament through the months of March and April to the vales and hills of the Apennines, in the wild parts of which it blows in the utmost profusion, and of course successively at different elevations as the season advances. It surpasses ours in beauty and fragrance,[62] but, speaking from my own limited observations only, I cannot affirm the same of several of their wild spring flowers, the primroses in particular, which I saw not unfrequently but thinly scattered and languishing compared to ours.
The note at the end of this poem, upon the Oxford movement, was entrusted to my friend, Mr. Frederick Faber.[63] I told him what I wished to be said, and begged that, as he was intimately acquainted with several of the Leaders of it, he would express my thought in the way least likely to be taken amiss by them. Much of the work they are undertaking was grievously wanted, and God grant their endeavours may continue to prosper as they have done.—I.F.]