360. The Cross.

    ’Yet will we not conceal the precious Cross,
    Like men ashamed.’ [Sonnet XL. ll. 9-10.]

The Lutherans have retained the Cross within their churches:  it is to be regretted that we have not done the same.

361. Monte Rosa.

    Or like the Alpine Mount, that takes its name
    From roseate hues,’ &c. [Sonnet XLVI. ll. 5-6.]

Some say that Monte Rosa takes its name from a belt of rock at its summit—­a very unpoetical and scarcely a probable supposition.

XV.  ‘YARROW REVISITED,’ AND OTHER POEMS.

COMPOSED (TWO EXCEPTED) DURING A TOUR IN SCOTLAND, AND ON THE ENGLISH BORDER, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1831.

362. Dedication.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

     As a testimony of friendship, and acknowledgment of intellectual
     obligations, these Memorials are affectionately inscribed.

Rydal Mount, Dec. 11, 1834.

The following stanzas [’Yarrow Revisited’] are a memorial of a day passed with Sir Walter Scott, and other friends, visiting the banks of the Yarrow under his guidance, immediately before his departure from Abbotsford for Naples.

The title ‘Yarrow Revisited’ will stand in no need of explanation, for Readers acquainted with the Author’s previous poems suggested by that celebrated stream.

363. *_Yarrow Revisited_.

I first became acquainted with this great and amiable man (Sir Walter Scott) in the year 1803, when my sister and I, making a tour in Scotland, were hospitably received by him in Lasswade, upon the banks of the Esk, where he was then living.  We saw a good deal of him in the course of the following week.  The particulars are given in my sister’s journal of that tour.

(2) *_Ibid._

In the autumn of 1831, my daughter and I set off from Rydal to visit Sir Walter Scott, before his departure for Italy.  This journey had been delayed, by an inflammation in my eyes, till we found that the time appointed for his leaving home would be too near for him to receive us without considerable inconvenience.  Nevertheless, we proceeded, and reached Abbotsford on Monday.  I was then scarcely able to lift up my eyes to the light.  How sadly changed did I find him from the man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful a few years before, when he said at the inn at Paterdale, in my presence, his daughter Anne also being there, with Mr. Lockhart, my own wife and daughter, and Mr. Quillinan, ‘I mean to live till I am eighty, and shall write as long as I live.’  Though we had none of us the least thought of the cloud of misfortune which was then going to break upon his head, I was startled, and almost shocked, at that bold saying, which could scarcely be uttered by such a man, sanguine as he was, without a momentary forgetfulness of the instability of human life.  But to return