The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Ii Part 43

[Variant 30:

1802.

... grief, ... 1800.]

[Variant 31:

1805.

(And in this tale we all agree) 1800.]

[Variant 32:

1805.

The neighbours grieve for her, and say That she will ... 1802.]

[Variant 33: This stanza first appeared in the edition of 1802.]

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: Taken from the portrait of the chief in Bartram's frontispiece.--Ed.]

[Footnote B:

"The tall aspiring Gordonia lacianthus ... gradually changing colour, from green to golden yellow, from that to a scarlet, from scarlet to crimson, and lastly to a brownish purple, ... so that it may be said to change and renew its garments every morning throughout the year."

See 'Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East Florida, the Cherokee Country', etc., by William Bartram (1791), pp. 159, 160.--Ed.]

[Footnote C:

"Its thick foliage of a dark green colour is flowered over with large milk-white, fragrant blossoms, ... renewed every morning, and that in such incredible profusion that the tree appears silvered over with them, and the ground beneath covered with the fallen flowers. It, at the same time, continually pushes forth new twigs, with young buds on them."

(Bartram's 'Travels', etc., p. 159.)--Ed.]

[Footnote D: Magnolia grandiflora.--W. W. 1800; and Bartram's 'Travels', p. 8.--Ed.]

[Footnote E:

"The Cypressus distichia stands in the first order of North American trees. Its majestic stature, lifting its c.u.mbrous top towards the skies, and casting a wide shade upon the ground, as a dark intervening cloud," etc.

(Bartram's 'Travels', p. 88).--Ed.]

[Footnote F: The splendid appearance of these scarlet flowers, which are scattered with such profusion over the Hills in the Southern parts of North America is frequently mentioned by Bartram in his 'Travels'.--W.

W. 1800.]

[Footnote G: Mr. Ernest Coleridge tells me he

"has traced, to a note-book of Coleridge's in the British Museum, the source from which Wordsworth derived his description of Georgian scenery in 'Ruth'. He does, I know, refer to Bartram, but the whole pa.s.sage is a poetical rendering, and a pretty close one, of Bartram's poetical narrative. I have a portrait--the frontispiece of Bartram's 'Travels'--of Mico Chlucco, king of the Seminoles, whose feathers nod in the breeze just as did the military casque of the 'youth from Georgia's sh.o.r.e.'"

Ed.]

[Footnote H:

"North and south almost endless green plains and meadows, embellished with islets and projecting promontories of high dark forests, where the pyramidal Magnolia grandiflora ... conspicuously towers."

(Bartram's 'Travels', p. 145).--Ed.]

[Footnote I: The Tone is a River of Somersetshire, at no great distance from the Quantock Hills. These Hills, which are alluded to a few stanzas below, are extremely beautiful, and in most places richly covered with Coppice woods. W. W. 1800.]

SUB-FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Sub-Footnote a: The edition of 1805 subst.i.tutes the stanzas beginning,

'It was a fresh and glorious world'

for stanzas 2, 3, and 4 of the above six in this note, but it inserts these omitted stanzas later on as Nos. 27, 28, 29.--Ed.]

[Sub-Footnote b: Wordsworth wrote to Barren Field in 1828 that this stanza

"was altered, Lamb having observed that it was not English. I like it better myself;'

(i.e. the version of 1800)

"but certainly to carouse cups--that is to empty them--is the genuine English."