"Wizard of the North," popularly given to Sir Walter Scott. Wordsworth imagines the magicians, who were supposed to gather on the Eildon Hills, mourning for the departure of one who shared their power of conjuring up the unseen.

6. Tweed...strain. Wordsworth refers to the cheerful voice of the Tweed in Yarrow in Yarrow Unvisited, 11. 19, 20:

"And Dryborough, where with chiming Tweed

The lintwhites sing in chorus."

12. Potentate. Scott is compared to a potentate, because he had power over vast realms of imagination.

13. midland sea, the Mediterranean.

14. Parthenope. Naples was thus named, from the siren Parthenope, who was supposed to be buried there.

MOST SWEET IT IS WITH UN-UPLIFTED EYES.

This poem was composed in 1833, and first published in 1835. 2. To pace the ground. Wordsworth was especially given to pacing up and down, musing, or murmuring to himself the words of some poem which he was altering or revising. One of his neighbour's, whom Canon Rawnsley interviewed for information about the poet, said, "He wasn't a man of many words, would walk by you times enuff wi'out sayin' owt, specially when he was i' study. He was always a studying, and you might see his lips agoin' as he went along the road. He did most of his study upo' the road" (Wordsworthiana, p. 97).

5. Pleased...Fancy.

Unvisited:

A similar idea is expressed in Yarrow

"Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown!

It must, or we shall rue it:

We have a vision of our own;

Ah! why should we undo it?

The treasured dreams of times long past,

We'll keep them, winsome marrow !

For when we're there, although 'tis fair
"Twill be another Yarrow!"

9. Thought and Love. Thought broods on the beauty of ideal scenes, love enables us to interpret those which are visible. 10. commerce, dealings, communion.

11, 12. Wordsworth means that only so long as he can understand and interpret Nature by the help of thought and sympathy can he hope to maintain his gift of poetry. But while he can rely on Thought and Love, he is independent of the stimulus of the senses, because the consecration and the poet's dream," the power "that sees into the life of things," inspires his humblest verses.

LINES COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798.

This poem was composed in July, 1798, and first published the same year, in Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's note on it is as follows:-"No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol."

The poem has for its theme the favourite subject of Wordsworth, the influence of Nature on the boy, the growing youth, and the man, and may be compared with the Ode: Intimations of Immortality, the extract from The Prelude on p. 61; and the extract from The Excursion on p. 67. All these poems are really autobiographical, and describe Wordsworth's own experiences, not those of the average

man.

1. Five years have passed. Wordsworth had visited the Wye in 1793. See Memoirs, 1. p. 81: "After leaving the Isle of Wight, Wordsworth spent two days in wandering on foot over the dreary waste of Salisbury Plain, and thence proceeded by Bristol and Tintern up the Wye."

4. With a soft inland murmur. The Wye is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.

5. steep and lofty cliffs. Near Tintern the bed of the Wye is very deep, and runs in a kind of ravine.

10.

dark sycamore. The early green of spring foliage would have passed away in July.

11. orchard-tufts. Orchards, which in the distance looked like tufts of feathers or fern, Cf. The Green Linnet :

"Amid yon tuft of hazel-trees."

15, 16. little lines...wild. A similar expression occurs in The Excursion, Book 1. ll. 453, 454:

"It was a plot

Of garden ground run wild."

Sportive is applied to the trees in the hedge as if they had volition of themselves, and delighted in running wild.

16. pastoral farms. Farms devoted to pasture or grazing, not arable land.

19. uncertain notice. Uncertain, because the smoke wavers as it ascends.

20. vagrant dwellers, wandering people; tramps or gypsies. 25, 26. 'mid the din of towns and cities. The intervening years had been partly spent by Wordsworth in London. They were the time of the mental and moral crisis induced in him by the French Revolution.

27. sensations sweet. The memory of these beautiful scenes thrilled through him, and calmed his mind. At other times the impression which they had left on him influenced him unconsciously. 40. unintelligible world. The world which was not understood. Cf. Ode: Intimations of Immortality, 11. 148, 149:

"Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realised."

43. corporeal frame, bodily frame. The close communion with Nature awakens our spiritual sense, and suspends for a time the consciousness of physical functions.

52, 53. the fretful stir...world. There is perhaps a reminiscence here of Macbeth, Act III. scene ii. 133, 134:

"Duncan is in his grave,

After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."

Cf. Excursion, Book 1. 1. 299:

"To mitigate the fever of his heart."

56. sylvan Wye. Because the Wye flows through wooded hills.

58. Gleams of half-extinguished thought. The thoughts which filled his mind on his previous visit, and which had almost died away, revive again.

60. sad perplexity. He is perplexed because the landscape does not appeal to him in exactly the same way as formerly, and sad because he feels that the buoyancy of extreme youth has gone for

ever.

67. like a roe. Cf. II. Samu ii. 18: "Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe."

73, 74. The...by. Wordsworth keeps up the comparison between himself and the roe; he then delighted in sharing the activities of nature, by means of his body; the coarser pleasures, i.e. the glad animal movements, the physical exercises of boyhood, were quite enough to satisfy him.

76, 77. The sounding...passion. Cf. The Prelude, Book II. 11. 421-425:

"Yet were I grossly destitute of all

Those human sentiments that make this earth

So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice

To speak of you ye mountains, and ye lakes
And sounding cataracts..."

77. like a passion. Like something very deeply loved, the thought of which is always with us.

80. An appetite. Something that seems necessary to our existence and is enjoyed without reflection.

84. aching joys. Professor Dowden quotes from a suppressed stanza of Ruth,

"With delight

The heart of Ruth would ache."

86, 87. Other gifts have followed. The disappointment and disillusion of the years that have passed since Wordsworth's last visit to Tintern have expanded his vision. He no longer revels in the thoughtless enjoyment of boyhood, but the beauty of the landscape gives him a deeper satisfaction. For he is now no longer ignorant of the sorrows of humanity, and he sees in Nature the revelation of the divine law which governs the universe. The setting sun, the ocean, the living air, the blue sky, and the mind of man himself, are manifestations of the Divine Presence.

106, 107. Both what they...perceive. Wordsworth said in a footnote that this line "has a close resemblance to an admirable line of Young's, the exact expression of which I do not recollect." The line is in “The Complaint," Night Thoughts, vi. ll. 423–425:

"At a small inlet, which a grain might close,

And half create the wondrous world they see.

Our senses, as our reason, are divine."

Wordsworth recognises the fact that the eye sees what it brings with it the power of seeing; thus the significance of a beautiful

landscape varies with the intelle.al and emotional capacity of the beholder.

113. genial spirits, happy, kindly feelings.

114. thou art with me. Dorothy Wordsworth was with her brother.

119. Of thy wild eyes. De Quincey, in his Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets, said of Dorothy Wordsworth: "Her eyes were not soft, as Mrs Wordsworth's, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried in their motion."

120. May I behold...once. Dorothy Wordsworth regarded Nature in the same way as her brother had done in former years.

122. Nature never did betray. Nature was always a true friend to those who loved her, and never failed them in their need. 125. so inform, so shape or mould.

131. The dreary intercourse of daily life. Wordsworth was perhaps thinking of the futile gossip to which he refers in Personal Talk.

144. The thought of her brother's words will have power to heal the sorrows of future years. It was perhaps the memory of this line that caused Matthew Arnold, in his Memorial Verses, to speak of Wordsworth's "healing power.' Unfortunately, the hope expressed in this passage was not realised, for Dorothy Wordsworth's mind and body both became prematurely decayed, many years before her death.

148, 149. catch from thy...existence. Where I can recall, by gazing at your eyes, the memory of my own previous experiences.

THE FOUNTAIN.

Composed 1799. Published 1800.

This poem is one of several which have for their central figure the Rev. William Taylor, who was the third of the four head-masters who presided over the Hawkshead Grammar School from 1782-1786. In a note to Matthew, another of these poems, Wordsworth said "This, and other poems connected with Matthew would not gain by a literal description of the facts. Like the Wanderer in The Excursion,' this schoolmaster was made up of several, both of his class, and men of other occupations."