The lines were composed on the road between Moresby and Whitehaven, while I was on a visit to my son, then rector of Moresby.  This succession of Voluntaries, with the exception of the 8th and 9th, originated in the concluding lines of the last paragraph of this poem.  With this coast I have been familiar from my earliest childhood, and remember being struck for the first time by the town and port of Whitehaven, and the white waves breaking against its quays and piers, as the whole came into view from the top of the high ground down which the road,—­which has since been altered,—­then descended abruptly.  My sister, when she first heard the voice of the sea from this point, and beheld the scene spread before her, burst into tears.  Our family then lived at Cockermouth, and this fact was often mentioned among us as indicating the sensibility for which she was so remarkable.

381. *_By the Sea-side_. [III.]

These lines were suggested during my residence under my son’s roof at Moresby on the coast near Whitehaven, at the time when I was composing those verses among the Evening Voluntaries that have reference to the Sea.  In some future edition I purpose to place it among that class of poems.  It was in that neighbourhood I first became acquainted with the ocean and its appearances and movements.  My infancy and early childhood were passed at Cockermouth, about eight miles from the coast, and I well remember that mysterious awe with which I used to listen to anything said about storms and shipwrecks.  Sea-shells of many descriptions were common in the town, and I was not a little surprised when I heard Mr. Landor had denounced me as a Plagiarist from himself for having described a boy applying a sea-shell to his ear, and listening to it for intimation of what was going on in its native element.  This I had done myself scores of times, and it was a belief among us that we could know from the sound whether the tide was ebbing or flowing.

382. Not in the lucid intervals of life. [IV.]

The lines following, ‘Nor do words,’ &c., were written with Lord Byron’s character as a poet before me, and that of others among his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences.

383. The leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill. [VII.]

Composed by the side of Grasmere Lake.  The mountains that enclose the vale, especially towards Easedale, are most favourable to the reverberation of sound:  there is a passage in ‘The Excursion,’ towards the close of the 4th book, where the voice of the raven in flight is traced through the modifications it undergoes, as I have often heard it in that vale and others of this district.

384. Impromptu. [VIII.]

This Impromptu appeared, many years ago, among the Author’s Poems, from which, in subsequent editions, it was excluded.  It is reprinted at the request of the Friend in whose presence the lines were thrown off.