’On wings that fear no glance of God’s pure sight,
    No tempest from His breath.’

The reader will find two Poems on pictures of this bird among my Poems.  I will here observe, that in a far greater number of instances than have been mentioned in these Notes one Poem has, as in this case, grown out of another, either because I felt the subject had been inadequately treated or that the thoughts and images suggested in course of composition have been such as I found interfered with the unity indispensable to every work of art, however humble in character.

XIX.  SONNETS DEDICATED TO LIBERTY AND ORDER.

454. Change, [iv. 1. 14.]

    ‘Perilous is sweeping change, all chance unsound.’ 
    ‘All change is perilous, and all chance unsound.’  SPENSER.

455. American Repudiation. [VIII.]

‘Men of the Western World.’

These lines were written several years ago, when reports prevailed of cruelties committed in many parts of America, by men making a law of their own passions.  A far more formidable, as being a more deliberate mischief, has appeared among those States, which have lately broken faith with the public creditor in a manner so infamous.  I cannot, however, but look at both evils under a similar relation to inherent good, and hope that the time is not distant when our brethren of the West will wipe off this stain from their name and nation.

456. To the Pennsylvanians. [IX.]

Happily the language of expostulation in which this Sonnet is written is no longer applicable.  It will be gratifying to Americans and Englishmen (indignos fraternum rumpere foedus) to read the following particulars communicated in a letter from Mr. Reed, dated October 28, 1850.  ’In Mr. Wordsworth’s letters to me you will have observed that a good deal is said on the Pennsylvania Loans, a subject in which, as you are aware, he was interested for his friends rather than for himself.  Last December, when I learned that a new edition of his poems was in press, I wrote to him (it was my last letter) to say frankly that his Sonnet “To Pennsylvanians” was no longer just, and to desire him not to let it stand so for after time.  It was very gratifying to me on receiving a copy of the new edition, which was not till after his death, to find the ‘additional note’ at the end of the fifth volume, showing by its being printed on the unusual place of a fly-leaf, that he had been anxious to attend to such a request.  It was characteristic of that righteousness which distinguished him as an author; and it has this interest (as I conjecture) that it was probably the last sentence he composed for the press.  It is chiefly on this account that I mention it to you.’[7]

[7] Memoirs, ii. p. 114.

457. *_Feel for the Wrongs, &c._ [XIV.]

This Sonnet is recommended to the perusal of the Anti-Corn-Law-Leaguers, the Political Economists, and of all those who consider that the evils under which we groan are to be removed or palliated by measures ungoverned by moral and religious principles.