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picture he had formed of them till they became equally clear and distinct.

148. The liveliness of dreams. Cf. Intimations of Immortality, 1. 5:

"The glory and the freshness of a dream."

152. appetite, hunger. Cf. Tintern Abbey, 11. 79, 80:

"Their colours and their forms were then to me

An appetite."

152-162. nor this alone...varying! Neither did this alone satisfy him; later on in boyhood, he used to sit in desolate caves, and in the hollows of the bare rocks, and even in their unchanging features, whether it was because his eye had a peculiar power of vision, or because he possessed so much creative power, or because he was obsessed by thought, he imagined that he saw the expression of an underlying mind. Cf. The Prelude, 11. 401-404:

"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!

Thou soul that art the eternity of Thought,

That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion...."

154. forlorn, remote, isolated, cf. The Prelude, Book vi. 1. 628: "Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn."

165-169. And many a legend...things. The stories which were told by the country people, and which embodied the experiences of the race, nourished his imagination and enabled the mind to distinguish between good and evil.

172. The life and death of martyrs. Wordsworth may be thinking of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, first published in 1559. This contains an account of the martyrdom of George Wishart, one of the earliest of the Scottish reformers.

175. the Covenant. The first National Covenant dated from 1638, when the Scots rebelled against the new service book which Charles I. and Laud tried to impose on them, and signed a document by which they bound themselves to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel. The Covenanters were persecuted by the English Government, especially in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., which would be only about a hundred years before the boyhood of the Wanderer. Thus stories of their sufferings might very well have come to him by means of oral tradition.

178-180. A straggling volume...fiends. In The Prelude, Book v.

Wordsworth tells us about the influence of books on his own child

hood and speaks of:

"The tales that charm away the wakeful night

In Araby, romances; legends penned

For solace by dim light of monkish lamps;
Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised

By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun
By the dismantled warrior in old age...."

185-196. In his heart...receive. Wordsworth is again describing the development of his own feeling towards Nature. At first terror predominated; he realised the awfulness, but not the love of the Divine Being behind her; but he had felt her power so deeply that his heart was ready to learn also the lesson of love. Cf. Browning,

Rabbi Ben Ezra:

"I who saw Power, see now Love perfect too."

197-218. Such was the Boy...love! These lines describe the transition from the feeling of awe to that of love, which came with advancing years. A similar experience is recorded in The Prelude, Book II. II. 394–451.

199, 200.

11. 320-328:

he beheld the sun...light! Cf. The Prelude, Book IV.

"The cock had crowed, and now the Eastern sky
Was kindling, not unseen from humble copse

And open field, through which the pathway wound
And homeward led my steps. Magnificent

The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e'er I had beheld-in front,

The sea lay laughing at a distance; near

The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds
Grain tinctured, drenched in empyrean light."

208, 209. they swallowed up his animal being. His mind was so much exalted that he was hardly conscious of his bodily existence. Cf. Tintern Abbey, 11. 41-46:

"That serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul."

211,

such access of mind. "Access

"' is here used in the sense

of the Latin accessio, a going or coming to, a visitation. 214. No thanks he...request. Cf. The Prelude, Book Iv. 11. 334, 335:

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'My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me.

221. Was his existence oftentimes possessed. Just as it was supposed that men might be possessed with evil spirits, so was he possessed with the consciousness of the Divine Presence.

223. The written promise. The Bible.

227, 228. All things...immortality. The feelings which possessed him on the mountains, and made him feel sure of immortality, confirmed the promises of eternal life found in the Bible.

234, 235. Low desires...no place. Cf. The Prelude, Book II. 11. 427-432:

"If in my youth I have been pure in heart,

If mingling with the world, I am content

With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
With God and Nature communing, removed

From little enmities and low desires

The gift is yours."

236. for he was meek in gratitude. Humility was in Wordsworth's eyes one of the greatest of virtues. Cf. Not in the Lucid Intervals of Life, 11. 14, 15:

"Meekness is the cherished bent

Of all the truly great and all the innocent."

242. Self-questioned. When he did not understand Nature, he questioned or examined himself to discover if the fault did not lie with his own heart.

243. superstitious, here used in the sense of extreme devotion. Cf. Fletcher, Lover's Progress, III. 3 :

"May I not kiss you now in superstition?

For you appear a thing that I would kneel to."

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