With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh.

As to the other which she objects to, I will only observe, that there is a misprint in the last line but two,

    And though this wilderness,

for

    And through this wilderness,

that makes it unintelligible.  This latter sonnet, for many reasons (though I do not abandon it), I will not now speak of; but upon the other, I could say something important in conversation, and will attempt now to illustrate it by a comment, which, I feel, will be inadequate to convey my meaning.  There is scarcely one of my poems which does not aim to direct the attention to some moral sentiment, or to some general principle, or law of thought, or of our intellectual constitution.  For instance, in the present case, who is there that has not felt that the mind can have no rest among a multitude of objects, of which it either cannot make one whole, or from which it cannot single out one individual whereupon may be concentrated the attention, divided among or distracted by a multitude?  After a certain time, we must either select one image or object, which must put out of view the rest wholly, or must subordinate them to itself while it stands forth as a head: 

        How glowed the firmament
    With living sapphires!  Hesperus, that led
    The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon,
    Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
    Apparent Queen, unveiled her peerless light,
    And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.

Having laid this down as a general principle, take the case before us.  I am represented in the sonnet as casting my eyes over the sea, sprinkled with a multitude of ships, like the heavens with stars.  My mind may be supposed to float up and down among them, in a kind of dreamy indifference with respect either to this or that one, only in a pleasurable state of feeling with respect to the whole prospect.  ‘Joyously it showed.’  This continued till that feeling may be supposed to have passed away, and a kind of comparative listlessness or apathy to have succeeded, as at this line,

    Some veering up and down, one knew not why.

All at once, while I am in this state, comes forth an object, an individual; and my mind, sleepy and unfixed, is awakened and fastened in a moment.

               Hesperus, that led
    The starry host,

is a poetical object, because the glory of his own nature gives him the pre-eminence the moment he appears.  He calls forth the poetic faculty, receiving its exertions as a tribute.  But this ship in the sonnet may, in a manner still more appropriate, be said to come upon a mission of the poetic spirit, because, in its own appearance and attributes, it is barely sufficiently distinguished to rouse the creative faculty of the human mind, to exertions at all times welcome, but doubly so when they come upon us when in a state of remissness.  The mind being once fixed and roused, all the rest comes from itself; it is merely a lordly ship, nothing more: