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PDF[Variant 3:
1820.
She’ll come ... 1815.]
[Variant 4:
1827.
... which ... 1815]
[Variant 5:
1827.
... in ... 1815.]
[Variant 6:
1832.
... sung ... 1815.]
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT
[Footnote A: See ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’, p. 236.—Ed.]
“May 29.—William finished
his poem on going for Mary. I wrote it out.
A sweet day. We nailed up the honeysuckle
and hoed the scarlet beans.”
She added on the 31st,
“I wrote out the poem on our departure,
which he seemed to have
finished;”
and on June 13th,
“William has been altering the poem to Mary this morning.”
The “little Nook of mountain-ground” is in much the same condition now, as it was in 1802. The “flowering shrubs” and the “rocky well” still exist, and “the steep rock’s breast” is “thronged with primroses” in spring. The “bower” is gone; but, where it used to be, a seat is now erected.
The Dove Cottage orchard is excellently characterised in Mr. Stopford Brooke’s pamphlet describing it (1890). See also ‘The Green Linnet’, p. 367, with the note appended to it, and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal, passim.—Ed.
* * * * *
“THE SUN HAS LONG BEEN SET”
Composed June 8, 1802.—Published 1807
[This Impromptu appeared, many years ago, among the Author’s poems, from which, in subsequent editions, it was excluded. [A] It is reprinted, at the request of the Friend in whose presence the lines were thrown off.—I.F.]
One of the “Evening Voluntaries.”—Ed.
The sun has long been set,
The stars are out by twos
and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and trees; [1]
There’s a cuckoo, and one or two
thrushes, 5
And a far-off wind that rushes,
And a sound of water that gushes, [2]
And the cuckoo’s sovereign cry
Fills all the hollow of the sky.
Who would go “parading”
10
In London, “and masquerading,”
[B]
On such a night of June
With that beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses?
On such a night as this is!
15
* * * * *
VARIANTS ON THE TEXT
[Variant 1:
1807.
... and the trees; 1836.
The edition of 1837 returns to the text of 1807.]
[Variant 2:
1835.
And a noise of wind that rushes,
With a noise of water that gushes;
1807.]
