172. *_The Primrose of the Rock_. [XLIII.]

Rydal Mount, 1821.  It stands on the right hand, a little way leading up the vale from Grasmere to Rydal.  We have been in the habit of calling it the glow-worm rock, from the number of glow-worms we have often seen hanging on it as described.  The tuft of primrose has, I fear, been washed away by heavy rains.

173. *_Presentiments_. [XLIV.]

Rydal Mount, 1830.

174. *_Vernal Ode_. [XLV.]

Rydal Mount, 1817.  Composed to place in view the immortality of succession where immortality is denied, so far as we know, to the individual creature.

175. *_Devotional Incitements_. [XLVI.]

Rydal Mount, 1832.

176. *_The Cuckoo-Clock_. [XLVII.]

Of this clock I have nothing further to say than what the poem expresses, except that it must be here recorded that it was a present from the dear friend for whose sake these notes were chiefly undertaken, and who has written them from my dictation.

177. *_To the Clouds_. [XLVIII.]

These verses were suggested while I was walking on the foot-road between Rydal Mount and Grasmere.  The clouds were driving over the top of Nab-Scar across the vale; they set my thoughts agoing, and the rest followed almost immediately.

178. *_Suggested by a Picture of the Bird of Paradise_. [XLIX.]

This subject has been treated of before (see a former note).  I will here only, by way of comment, direct attention to the fact, that pictures of animals and other productions of Nature, as seen in conservatories, menageries and museums, &c., would do little for the national mind, nay, they would be rather injurious to it, if the imagination were excluded by the presence of the object, more or less out of the state of Nature.  If it were not that we learn to talk and think of the lion and the eagle, the palm-tree, and even the cedar, from the impassioned introduction of them so frequently in Holy Scripture, and by great poets, and divines who write as poets, the spiritual part of our nature, and therefore the higher part of it, would derive no benefit from such intercourse with such subjects.

179. *_A Jewish Family_. [L.]

Coleridge and my daughter and I in 1828 passed a fortnight upon the banks of the Rhine, principally under the hospitable roof of Mr. Aders at Gotesburg, but two days of the time were spent at St. Goa or in rambles among the neighbouring vallies.  It was at St. Goa that I saw the Jewish family here described.  Though exceedingly poor, and in rags, they were not less beautiful than I have endeavoured to make them appear.  We had taken a little dinner with us in a basket, and invited them to partake of it, which the mother refused to do both for herself and her children, saying it was with them a fast-day; adding diffidently, that whether such observances were right or wrong, she felt it her duty to keep them