[Footnote A:  The work was ‘The Prelude’.  See book ix., p. 310 of this volume.—­Ed.]

[Footnote B:  Compare ‘The Prelude’, book ix. l. 548, p. 310, where Wordsworth says it was told him “by my Patriot friend.”—­Ed.]

In the preface to his volume, “‘Poems of Wordsworth’ chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold,” that distinguished poet and critic has said (p. xxv.), “I can read with pleasure and edification ... everything of Wordsworth, I think, except ’Vaudracour and Julia’.”—­Ed.

* * * * *

1805

During 1805, the autobiographical poem, which was afterwards named by Mrs. Wordsworth ‘The Prelude’, was finished.  In that year also Wordsworth wrote the ‘Ode to Duty’, ‘To a Sky-Lark’, ‘Fidelity’, the fourth poem ‘To the Daisy’, the ’Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm’, the ‘Elegiac Verses’ in memory of his brother John, ‘The Waggoner’, and a few other poems.—­Ed.

* * * * *

FRENCH REVOLUTION,

AS IT APPEARED TO ENTHUSIASTS AT ITS COMMENCEMENT

Reprinted from ‘the friend’

Composed 1805.—­Published 1809

[An extract from the long poem on my own poetical education.  It was first published by Coleridge in his ‘Friend’, which is the reason of its having had a place in every edition of my poems since.—­I.  F.]

These lines appeared first in ‘The Friend’, No. 11, October 26, 1809, p. 163.  They afterwards found a place amongst the “Poems of the Imagination,” in all the collective editions from 1815 onwards.  They are part of the eleventh book of ‘The Prelude’, entitled “France—­ (concluded),” ll. 105-144.  Wordsworth gives the date 1805, but these lines possibly belong to the year 1804.—­Ed.

  Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! 
  For mighty were [1] the auxiliars which then stood
  Upon our side, we [2] who were strong in love! 
  Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
  But to be young was very heaven!—­Oh! times, 5
  In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
  Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
  The attraction of a country in romance! 
  When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
  When most intent on making of herself 10
  A prime Enchantress [3]—­to assist the work,
  Which then was going forward in her name! 
  Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
  The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
  (As at some moment might not be unfelt [4] 15
  Among the bowers of paradise itself)
  The budding rose above the rose full blown. 
  What temper at the prospect did not wake
  To happiness unthought of?  The inert
  Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!