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"WHAT HEAVENLY SMILES! O LADY MINE."

Composed 1845.

Published 1845

WHAT heavenly smiles ! O Lady mine,
Through my very heart they shine;
And, if my brow gives back their light,
Do thou look gladly on the sight;
As the clear Moon with modest pride
Beholds her own bright beams
Reflected from the mountain's side

And from the headlong streams.

"GLAD SIGHT WHEREVER NEW WITH OLD."

Composed 1845.

Published 1845

GLAD sight wherever new with old
Is joined through some dear homeborn tie;
The life of all that we behold

Depends upon that mystery.
Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field and grove
Unless, while with admiring eye

We gaze, we also learn to love.

"SO FAIR, SO SWEET, WITHAL SO SENSITIVE."

Composed 1845.

Published 1845

So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,
Would that the little Flowers were born to live,
Conscious of half the pleasure which they give;

That to this mountain-daisy's self were known
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown
On the smooth surface of this naked stone !

And what if hence a bold desire should mount
High as the Sun, that he could take account
Of all that issues from his glorious fount !

So might he ken how by his sovereign aid
These delicate companionships are made;
And how he rules the pomp of light and shade;

And were the Sister-power that shines by night
So privileged, what a countenance of delight
Would through the clouds break forth on human sight!

Fond fancies! wheresoe'er shall turn thine eye
On earth, air, ocean, or the starry sky,
Converse with Nature in pure sympathy;

All vain desires, all lawless wishes quelled,
Be Thou to love and praise alike impelled,
Whatever boon is granted or withheld.

1846.

"THE UNREMITTING VOICE OF NIGHTLY

STREAMS."

Composed 1846.

Published 1846.

THE unremitting voice of nightly streams
That waste so oft, we think, its tuneful powers,

If neither soothing to the worm that gleams
Through dewy grass, nor small birds hushed in bowers,

Nor unto silent leaves and drowsy flowers,

That voice of unpretending harmony
(For who what is shall measure by what seems
To be, or not to be,

Or tax high Heaven with prodigality?)
Once not a healing influence that can creep
Into the human breast, and mix with sleep
To regulate the motion of our dreams
For kindly issues-as through every clime
Was felt near murmuring brooks in earliest time;
As at this day, the rudest swains who dwell,
Where torrents roar, or hear the tinkling knell
Of water-breaks, with grateful heart could tell.

NOTES.

(1) This Yew-tree has disappeared. It stood on the eastern shore of Esthwaite-water, about three-quarters of a mile from Hawkshead.

(2) "This arose out of the affecting music of these birds, hanging in the London streets, during the freshness and stillness of the spring morning."-Wordsworth.

(3) "Composed on the road between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden." -Wordsworth.

(4) "At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and left her" (the moon) "in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp; their brightness seemed concentrated."-Dorothy Wordsworth, January 25, 1798.

(5) The first stanza of this poem was written by Coleridge. The little girl was met by Wordsworth in the ruined area of Goodrich Castle, in 1793.

(6) "I began it upon leaving Tintern, and concluded it as I was entering Bristol in the evening. Not a line of it was altered, nor any part of it written down till I reached Bristol."- Wordsworth.

(7) A reminiscence of Wordsworth's first visit to Switzerland, with Robert Jones, in 1790; published in The Prelude, Book vi.

(8) First published in The Friend, afterwards in The Prelude,

Book i.

(9) Of Hawkshead.

(10) Hawkshead.

(11) Between Esthwaite and Graythwaite.

(12) This, and the four following poems on "Lucy," were written at Goslar in Germany.

(13) The "Doctor" of v. 3 is a Divine; unless, indeed, we take "physician" of v. 5 to mean physicist.

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(14) "In the School of Hawkshead is a tablet, on which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the Names of the several persons who have been Schoolmasters there since the foundation of the School, with the time at which they entered upon and quitted their office. Opposite to one of those Names the Author wrote the following lines." - Wordsworth.

(15) The school was that of Hawkshead.

(16) The Rev. William Taylor was the Schoolmaster from 1782 to 1786.

(17) On settling at Dove Cottage, Town-End, Grasmere, where Wordsworth and his sister took up their abode on the shortest day of 1799.

(18) The winter journey to Grasmere through Wensleydale.

(19) Joanna Hutchinson.

(20) "Ghyll, in the dialect of Cumberland and Westmoreland, is a short and, for the most part, a steep narrow valley, with a stream running through it. Force is the word universally employed in these dialects for waterfall." - Wordsworth.

(21) The nest was in a hedge of privet and roses, on the low terrace wall of the garden at Cockermouth. In his poems Wordsworth named his lady sister Dorothy, "Emmeline," " Emily," or "Emma."

(22) The "Lucy" of this poem was not the Lucy of the Goslar poems, but his sister Dorothy. The incident occurred at Racedown in 1795.

(23) The first four stanzas refer to Wordsworth himself; the fifth, sixth, and seventh refer to Coleridge.

(24) The "bower" is gone, but the "rocky well" exists; and the steep rock's breast" is "thronged with primroses" still in springtime.

(25) In The Morning Post.

(26) To Hartley Coleridge.

(27) In the Town-End cottage garden, Grasmere.

(28) The Lorton Yew still exists, but is a fragment of its former self. The fraternal four of Borrowdale were seriously damaged in the winter of 1883.

(29) These lines refer to Mrs. Wordsworth.

(30) The lines

"They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,

were written by Mrs. Wordsworth.

Dorothy Wordsworth thus describes these daffodils :-"There was

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