injury done to the adjoining fields, they were got rid of at the request of the farmers and proprietors, but to the great regret of all who had become attached to them from noticing their beauty and quiet habits.  I will conclude my notice of this poem by observing that the plan of it has not been confined to a particular walk, or an individual place; a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact and real circumstance.  The country is idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects.—­I.  F.]

The title of this poem, as first published in 1793, was ’An Evening Walk.  An epistle; in verse.  Addressed to a Young Lady, from the Lakes of the North of England.  By W. Wordsworth, B.A., of St. John’s, Cambridge’.  Extracts from it were published in all the collected editions of the poems under the general title of “Juvenile Pieces,” from 1815 to 1843; and, in 1845 and 1849, of “Poems written in Youth.”  The following prefatory note to the “Juvenile Pieces” occurs in the editions 1820 to 1832.

“They are reprinted with some unimportant alterations that were chiefly made very soon after their publication.  It would have been easy to amend them, in many passages, both as to sentiment and expression, and I have not been altogether able to resist the temptation:  but attempts of this kind are made at the risk of injuring those characteristic features, which, after all, will be regarded as the principal recommendation of juvenile poems.”

To this, Wordsworth added, in 1836,

“The above, which was written some time ago, scarcely applies to the Poem, ‘Descriptive Sketches’, as it now stands.  The corrections, though numerous, are not, however, such as to prevent its retaining with propriety a place in the class of ‘Juvenile Pieces.’”

In May 1794 Wordsworth wrote to his friend Mathews,

“It was with great reluctance that I sent these two little works into the world in so imperfect a state.  But as I had done nothing at the University, I thought these little things might show that I could do something.”

Wordsworth’s notes to this poem are printed from the edition of 1793.  Slight variations in the text of these notes in subsequent editions, in the spelling of proper names, and in punctuation, are not noted.—­Ed.

’General Sketch of the Lakes—­Author’s regret of his Youth which was passed amongst them—­Short description of Noon—­Cascade—­Noon-tide Retreat—­Precipice and sloping Lights—­Face of Nature as the Sun declines—­Mountain-farm, and the Cock—­Slate-quarry—­Sunset—­Superstition of the Country connected with that moment—­Swans—­Female Beggar—­Twilight-sounds—­Western Lights—­Spirits—­Night—­Moonli
ght—­Hope—­Night-sounds—­Conclusion’.

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THE POEM