“We arrived at Calais at four o’clock on Sunday morning, the 3rd of July....  We found out Annette and C., chez Madame Avril dans la rue de la Tete d’or.  The weather was very hot.  We walked by the shore almost every evening with Annette and Caroline, or William and I alone....  It was beautiful on the calm hot night to see the little boats row out of harbour with wings of fire, and the sail-boats with the fiery track which they cut as they went along, and which closed up after them with a hundred thousand sparkles and streams of glowworm light.  Caroline was delighted.”

I have been unable to discover who Annette and Caroline were.  Dorothy Wordsworth frequently records in her Grasmere Journal that either William, or she, “wrote to Annette,” but who she was is unknown to either the Wordsworth or the Hutchinson family.—­Ed.]

[Footnote B:  Compare: 

  ‘The Child is father of the Man, etc.’

p. 292.

Also S. T. C. in ‘The Friend’, iii. p. 46: 

  ‘The sacred light of childhood,’

and ‘The Prelude’, book v. l. 507.  Ed.]

* * * * *

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC

Composed August, 1802.—­Published 1807

This and the following ten sonnets were included among the “Sonnets dedicated to Liberty”; re-named in 1845, “Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.”—­Ed.

  Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
  And was the safeguard of the west:  the worth
  Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
  Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. 
  She was a maiden City, bright and free; 5
  No guile seduced, no force could violate;
  And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
  She must espouse the everlasting Sea. [A]
  And what if she had seen those glories fade,
  Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; 10
  Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
  When her long life hath reached its final day: 
  Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
  Of that which once was great, is passed away.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  Compare ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ (canto iv.  II): 

  ‘The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord.’

Ed.]

  “Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee.”

The special glory of Venice dates from the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins in 1202.  The fourth Crusade—­in which the French and Venetians alone took part—­started from Venice, in October 1202, under the command of the Doge, Henry Dandolo.  Its aim, however, was not the recovery of Palestine, but the conquest of Constantinople.  At the close of the crusade, Venice received the Morea, part of Thessaly, the Cyclades, many of the Byzantine cities, and the coasts of the Hellespont, with three-eighths of the city of Constantinople itself, the Doge taking the curious title of Duke of three-eighths of the Roman Empire.