The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Iii Part 57

[Footnote O: See Spenser, 'The Shepheard's Calendar (May)'.--Ed.]

[Footnote P: An Italian river in Calabria, famous for its groves and the fine-fleeced sheep that pastured on its banks. See Virgil, 'Georgics'

iv. 126; Horace, 'Odes' II. vi. 10.--Ed.]

[Footnote Q: The Adriatic Sea. See Acts xxvii. 27.--Ed.]

[Footnote R: An Umbrian river whose waters, when drunk, were supposed to make oxen white. See Virgil, 'Georgics' ii. 146; Pliny, 'Historia Naturalis', ii. 103.--Ed.]

[Footnote S: A hill in the Sabine country, overhanging a pleasant valley. Near it were the house and farm of Horace. See his 'Odes' I.

xvii. 1.--Ed.]

[Footnote T: The plain at the foot of the Harz Mountains, near Goslar.--Ed.]

[Footnote U: In the Fenwick note to the poem 'Written in Germany', vol.

ii. p. 73, he says that he "walked daily on the ramparts."--Ed.]

[Footnote V: 'Hercynian forest'.--(See Caesar, 'B. G.' vi. 24, 25.) According to Caesar it commenced on the east bank of the Rhine, stretching east and north, its breadth being nine days' journey, and its length sixty. Strabo (iv. p. 292) included within the Hercynia Silva all the mountains of southern and central Germany, from the Danube to Transylvania. Later, it was limited to the mountains round Bohemia and extending to Hungary. (See Tacitus, 'Germania', 28, 30; and Pliny, 'Historia Naturalis', iv. 25, 28.) A trace of the ancient name is retained in the 'Harz' mountains, which are clothed everywhere with conifers, Harz=resin.--Ed.]

[Footnote W: Yewdale, Duddondale, Eskdale, Wastdale, Ennerdale.--Ed.]

[Footnote X: Compare the sonnet in "Yarrow Revisited," etc., No. XI., 'Suggested at Tyndrum in a Storm'.--Ed.]

[Footnote Y: See book vi. l. 485 and note [Footnote Z, below].--Ed.]

[Footnote Z: Corin=Corydon? the shepherd referred to in the pastorals of Virgil and Theocritus. Phyllis, see Virgil, 'Eclogue' x. 37, 41.--Ed.]

[Footnote a: While living in Anne Tyson's Cottage at Hawkshead.--Ed.]

[Footnote b: Compare 'Tintern Abbey', vol. ii. p. 54:

'Nature then, To me was all in all, etc.'

Ed.]

[Footnote c: He spent his twenty-second summer at Blois, in France.--Ed.]

[Footnote d: Compare 'Hart-Leap Well', vol. ii. p. 128, and 'The Green Linnet', vol. ii. p. 367.--Ed.]

[Footnote e: The 'Evening Walk', and 'Descriptive Sketches', published 1793. See especially the original text of the latter, in the appendix to vol. 1. p. 309.--Ed.]TWO FOOTNOTES

[Footnote f: It is difficult to say where this "smooth rock wet with constant springs" and the "copse-clad bank" were. There is no copse-clad bank fronting Anne Tyson's cottage at Hawkshead. It may have been a rock on the wooded slope of the rounded hill that rises west of Cowper Ground, north-west of Hawkshead. A rock "wet with springs" existed there, till it was quarried for road-metal a few years since. But it is quite possible that the cottage referred to is Dove Cottage, Grasmere.

In that case the "rock" and "copse-clad bank" may have been on Loughrigg, or more probably on Silver How. The "summer sun" goes down behind Silver How, so that it might smite a wet rock either on Hammar Scar or on the wooded crags above Red Bank. These could be seen from the window of one of the rooms of Dove Cottage. Seated beside the hearth of the "half-kitchen and half-parlour fire" in that cottage, and looking along the pa.s.sage through the low door, the eye would rest on Hammar Scar, the wooded hill behind Allan Bank. The context of the poem points to Hawkshead; but the details of the description suggest the Grasmere cottage rather than Anne Tyson's.--Ed.]

[Footnote g: See the distinction drawn by Wordsworth between Fancy and Imagination in the Preface to "Lyrical Ballads" (1800 and subsequent editions), and embodied in his cla.s.sification of the Poems.--Ed.]

[Footnote h: Westmoreland.--Ed.]

[Footnote i: See note [Footnote a], book ii. l. 451.--Ed.]

[Footnote k: Coniston lake; see note [Footnote m below] on the following page.--Ed.]

[Footnote m: The eight lines which follow are a recast, in the blank verse of 'The Prelude', of the youthful lines ent.i.tled 'Extract from the Conclusion of a Poem, composed in Antic.i.p.ation of leaving School'. These were composed in Wordsworth's sixteenth year. As the contrast is striking, the earlier lines may be transcribed:

'Dear native regions, I foretell, From what I feel at this farewell, That, wheresoe'er my steps may tend, And whensoe'er my course shall end, If in that hour a single tie Survive of local sympathy, My soul will cast the backward view, The longing look alone on you.

Thus, while the Sun sinks down to rest Far in the regions of the west, Though to the vale no parting beam Be given, not one memorial gleam, A lingering light he fondly throws On the dear hills where first he rose.'

The Fenwick note to this poem is as follows:

"The beautiful image with which this poem concludes suggested itself to me while I was resting in a boat along with my companions under the shade of a magnificent row of sycamores, which then extended their branches from the sh.o.r.e of the promontory upon with stands the ancient, and at that time the more picturesque, Hall of Coniston."

There is nothing in either poem definitely to connect "Thurstonmere"

with Coniston, although their ident.i.ty is suggested by the Fenwick note.

I find, however, that Thurston was the ancient name of Coniston; and this carries us back to the time of the worship of Thor. (See Lewis's 'Topographical Dictionary of England', vol. i. p. 662; also the 'Edinburgh Gazetteer' (1822), articles "Thurston" and "Coniston.") The site of the grove "on the sh.o.r.e of the promontory" at Coniston Lake is easily identified, but the grove itself is gone.--Ed.]

[Footnote n: Compare book iii. ll. 30 and 321-26; also book vi, ll. 25 and 95, both text and notes.--Ed.]

[Footnote o: Probably in 1788. Compare book vii. ll. 61-68, and note [Footnote K].--Ed.]

[Footnote p: A stalact.i.te cave, in a mountain in the south coast of the island of Antiparos, which is one of the Cyclades. It is six miles from Paros, was famous in ancient times, and was rediscovered in 1673.--Ed.]