connection with the poem

66

"Our walk was far," and the two sonnets To a Painter," as exhibiting the different phases of affection to his wife."

1. She was a Phantom of delight. Cf. Prelude, Book xiv. 1. 268: "She came no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart, And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined To penetrate the lofty and the low."

7-8. But all...Dawn. In the Prelude, Book vr. 1. 224 et seq. Wordsworth, after speaking of the College vacation spent with his sister, adds

"Another maid there was, who also shed

A gladness o'er that season, then to me
By her exulting outside look of youth,

And placid under-countenance, first endeared."

Here the two sides of Mrs Wordsworth's character, expanded in verses one and two respectively of the present poem, are indicated.

15, 16. A countenance...sweet. De Quincey (Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets) says of Mrs Wordsworth, "She furnished a remarkable proof how possible it is for a woman neither handsome nor even comely according to the rigour of criticism—nay, generally pronounced very plain-to exercise all the practical fascination of beauty, through the mere compensatory charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect and purity of heart speaking through all her looks, acts and movements."

22. pulse of the machine. This expression has been criticised as a mixed metaphor-a pulse being a part of the animal organism, not of a machine. Wordsworth means that he now understands what it is that controls the nature of his wife, and inspires both her cheerful and her serious moods. It is because she lives in the presence of the Unseen, and is always obedient to the calls of duty.

TO A SKY-LARK.

Composed in 1825. Published 1827. This poem was written at Rydal Mount. Wordsworth says in a note to an earlier poem on the same subject ("Up, with me!") that there are no skylarks at Rydal, “but the poet is everywhere.” In the Guide to the Lakes (Grosart, II. p. 228), he says, "The number of these formidable creatures [i.c. birds

of prey] is probably the cause why in the narrow valleys there are no skylarks, as the destroyer would be enabled to dart at them from near and surrounding crags, before they could descend to their ground nest for protection."

1. Ethereal minstrel. Because the lark soars into the ether or air. 6. Those quivering...still. Wintringham (Birds of Wordsworth) notices the fidelity of this description of the skylark's flight. "He notes the rapture of the song, its thought of its nest; the rapid vibration of its wings; its sudden and abrupt cessation from song; and its rapid descent into its nest."

In the first version of this poem there was a stanza between the first and second, which ran as follows:

"To the last point of vision, and beyond,

Mount, daring warbler! that love-prompted strain
('Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond),
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain :

Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing

All independent of the leafy spring."

This stanza was transferred in 1845 to the poem called A Morning Exercise.

8. A privacy of glorious light. Cf. Shelley's Ode to a Skylark:

"Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not."

11, 12. Type of the wise...Home. Wintringham (Birds of Wordsworth) notices that skylarks are, to some extent, migratory birds. "Severe frost will force them to move from north to south, and besides, in September and November, vast flocks may often be seen flying inland from off the sea." Wordsworth, however, may have meant merely that the skylark never goes far from its nest. Cf. Hogg, To the Skylark

"Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth."

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN
REPUBLIC.

Composed in 1802; first published in 1807.

This was one of the sonnets Dedicated to Liberty, and was evoked by the aggressions of Napoleon, who in 1797 occupied Venice, and concluded with Austria the Treaty of Campo Formio, by which Venice, which, from its foundation in 697, had been an independent State, was ceded to Austria.

1. Once...fee. Under the pretext of a Crusade, the Doge Falieri, and his successor Domenico Michele, reduced Tyre, and established the power of Venice in Syria. In 1202, in the fourth Crusade, the Doge Enrico Dandolo took Constantinople by storm, and established Count Baldwin of Flanders as Emperor of the East.

gorgeous. The East is called gorgeous because of the splendour of her exports. Cf. Paradise Lost, Book 1. 11. 3–4

"Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold."

fee. "To hold in fee" means "to hold in one's service." Cf. Milton's Sonnet On the Detraction which followed upon my Writing Certain Treatises:

"Latona's twin-born progeny

Which after held the sun and moon in fee."

2. the safeguard of the West. "This may refer to the prominent part which Venice took in the Crusades, or to the development of the naval power which made her mistress of the Mediterranean for many years, and an effective bulwark against invasions from the East" (Knight).

4. the eldest Child of Liberty. When, in 452, Attila the Hun, invaded Italy, his way was stopped by the great and prosperous city of Aquileia, which stood at the head of the Adriatic Sea. Attila forced its surrender, and the fugitives from this and other cities destroyed by him, sought refuge in the scattered islands near the mouth of the river Piave. Out of these settlements grew after a long time the city of Venice.

8. She must...Sea. In 1177 the Pope Alexander III. presented the Doge Liani with a ring, which was to be the sign of the supremacy of Venice over the sea. It then became the annual custom on

Ascension Day for the Doge to proceed in a vessel called the Bucentaur to the Adriatic, and to drop the ring in the waves, thus symbolically wedding the sea. Byron refers to this custom in Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza 11:

"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;

And annual marriage now no more renew'd,

The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored."

9-10. And what...decay. The discovery of America and the consequent diversion of trade from the Mediterranean told upon the prosperity of Venice, and from this time her power began gradually to decay. In 1718 she was worsted in a war with Turkey; throughout the eighteenth century her policy became feebler and her commerce less, so that when, in 1796, Napoleon invaded the city, he found the task of conquest easy.

13, 14. Men...away. Cf. the famous saying of Terence, "Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto."

WRITTEN IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1802.

First published 1807. Wordsworth said of this sonnet that it was written immediately after his return from France (whither he had gone for a brief stay during the cessation of arms that followed the Peace of Amiens) in 1802. He continued, "I could not but be struck, as here described, with the vanity and parade of our own country, especially in great towns and cities, as contrasted with the quiet, and, I may say, the desolation, that the revolution had produced in France. This must be borne in mind, or else the reader may think that in this and the succeeding sonnets, I have exaggerated the mischief engendered and fostered among us by undisturbed wealth."

1. O Friend. The friend was Coleridge.

3, 4. our life is only drest for show. The growing luxury of London life, which must have struck Wordsworth in an exaggerated form, in contrast with his own frugal habits, filled him with alarm, and he feared lest the growing materialism of the nation should prove its downfall. With this sonnet may be compared a passage in a letter to Lady Beaumont, who had condoled with him upon the cold reception of the 1807 edition of his poems: "It is an awful truth that there neither is, nor can be, any genuine enjoyment of poetry among

nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world-among those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, persons of consideration in Society. This is a truth, and an awful one, because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God."

11. Plain living...are no more. Cf. Wordsworth's saying to Sir George Beaumont "It is my opinion that a man of letters, and, indeed, all public men of every pursuit, should be severely frugal."

13. our fearful innocence. Our innocence full of fear, or

reverence.

IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF.

This sonnet was composed in 1802 or 1803, and first published in the Morning Post of April 16, 1803.

4. with pomp...unwithstood. These words are quoted from The Civil Wars of Samuel Daniel (1562–1619), Book II. stanza 7.

5, 6. These lines originally stood

"Road by which all might come and go that would,

And bear out freights of worth to foreign lands."

Referring perhaps to the exiles from foreign countries whom Britain had harboured, and who had learned from her example the lesson of freedom. The two lines which replaced these first appeared in 1827, when Wordsworth was sinking into the conservatism of his middle age. Professor Dowden suggests that by "The mood which spurns the check of salutary bands," is meant the revolt which led to the agitation for Catholic Emancipation, and the Reform Bill, to both of which Wordsworth was opposed.

7-9. That...ever. The apparent feebleness of British policy, which culminated in the Treaty of Amiens in 1801, seemed to Wordsworth inconsistent with the past energy of the race.

10. Armoury. Wordsworth refers to the custom of decorating the walls of country houses with old armour.

14. titles manifold. Wordsworth compares the British people to an heir born of a noble race, and inheriting its claims, not in this case, to material possessions, but to high moral qualities.