which, as he himself observed to Barron Field, is the very word wanted here. It was often in the mouths of the Lake poets: Coleridge has it in Frost at Midnight (1798); Wordsworth employs it in a cancelled passage of Michael (see Knight, Life of W. W., i., p. 388) as well as here; and Southey (in a letter quoted in Dowden's Life of him, page 88: "There are no goings on under a clear sky") of the marvellous atmospheric effects in the land of lake and mountain. Line 22 became, in 1820, "(By nature transient) than such torpid life;" To the Cuckoo (page 57).-Composed March 2326, 1802 (D. W.). Cf. note on O Nightingale! thou surely art, etc.; also Dorothy's Journal under the dates just given, under May 1, 1802 ("Heard the cuckoo to-day, this 1st of May"), and under June 3 ("The Cuckoo sang in Easedale: after dinner we read the life and some of the writings of poor Logan "). These stanzas are clearly modelled on Logan's address To the Cuckoo. Cf. in particular: "What time the daisy decks the green The schoolboy, wandering through the wood, Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear, Stanza ii. affords a signal example of perfection of utterance attained through repeated effort. It was recast in 1815, and again in 1820, 1827, and 1845. We quote the final revision; "While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near." Stanza iii., revised in 1815 and 1820, took shape finally in 1827: "Though babbling only, to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours." To a Butterfly (page 60).-Composed April 20, 1802 (D. W.), as 66 a conclusion to the Poem of the Butterfly" of March 14 (p. 39). Lines 12, 13 were somewhat improved in 1815: "Here rest your wings when they are weary; Here lodge as in a sanctuary! י! "It is no spirit," etc. (page 62).—Composed 1803 (W.-1836). Lines 9-14 were replaced in 1820 by others of similar purport; but in 1836 the original passage was restored. "Compare these lines (9-17) with those prefixed in 1845 to the entire collection of Wordsworth's poetry- If thou indeed derive thy light from heaven,'" etc. (Dowden). The Blind Highland Boy (page 65).-The story here related was obtained by Wordsworth from George Mackereth, the parish-clerk of Grasmere, an eyewitness of the occurrence (Fenwick Note). The poem is not given by Dorothy in her Recollections of a Tour, etc., so that it probably belongs to some date later than 1804-not unlikely to the close of 1806 (see Knight, Life of W. W., vol. ii., pp. 107-8). The one noteworthy change in this poem the substitution in ed. 1815 of a turtle-shell for the 66 harmless, necessary" household tub-was made by the advice of Coleridge, who in 1808 or 1809 wrote in his pocket-book (An. Poeta, p. 207): "I almost fear that the alteration would excite surprise and uneasy contempt in Verbidigno's [Wordsworth's] mind (towards one less loved at least); but had I written the sweet tale of the Blind Highland Boy, I would have substituted for the washing-tub, and the awkward stanza in which it is specified, the images suggested in the following lines from Dampier's Travels, vol. i., pp. 105-6: 'I heard of a monstrous green turtle once taken at the Port Royal, in the Bay of Campeachy, that was four feet deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six feet broad. Capt. Rock's son, of about nine years of age, went in it as in a boat, on board his father's ship, about a quarter of a mile from the shore.'. . . Why might not some mariners have left this shell on the shore of Loch Leven for a while, and the blind boy have found it? Would not the incident be in equal keeping with that of the child as well as the image and tone of romantic uncommonness ? " The household tub proved, as doubtless Wordsworth foresaw, a fine morsel for the Reviewers." Jeffrey and the 66 author of the Simpliciad concurred in thinking that the occasion was not one for firing with blank cartridges. Nothing under small capitals would seem to convey their horror of so outrageous a defiance of decorum. Jeffrey, with the forced calmness of desperation, observes: "This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter as far as it will go; nor is there anything-down to the wiping of shoes or the evisceration of chickens-which may not be introduced in poetry, if this is tolerated." Urged thus alike by friend and foe, Wordsworth yielded, and, in 1815, replaced stanzas xxii.-xxiv. with the following nine stanzas (we give the text as finally revised in 1837): “But say what bears him ?—Ye have seen Rare beasts, and birds with plumage bright; Are brought in ships from far. Such gifts had those seafaring men |