The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 3 by William Wordsworth
page 140 of 661 (21%)
page 140 of 661 (21%)
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1st, 1800, was the first part of this very poem.
If this supposition is correct, some light is cast both on the "Inscription of the Pathway." and on the date assigned by Wordsworth himself to the poem. There is a certain fitness, however, in this poem being placed--as it now is--in sequence to the 'Elegiac Verses' in memory of John Wordsworth, beginning, "The Sheep-boy whistled loud," and near the fourth poem 'To the Daisy', beginning, "Sweet Flower! belike one day to have." The "Fir-grove" still exists. It is between Wishing Gate and White Moss Common, and almost exactly opposite the former. Standing at the gate and looking eastwards, the grove is to the left, not forty yards distant. Some of the firs (Scotch ones) still survive, and several beech trees, not "a single beech-tree," as in the poem. From this, one might infer that the present colony had sprung up since the beginning of the century, and that the special tree, in which was the thrush's nest, had perished; but Dr. Cradock wrote to me that "Wordsworth pointed out the tree to Miss Cookson a few days before Dora Wordsworth's death. The tree is near the upper wall and tells its own tale." The Fir-grove--"John's Grove"--can easily be entered by a gate about a hundred yards beyond the Wishing-gate, as one goes toward Rydal. The view from it, the "visionary scene," 'the spectacle Of clouded splendour, ... this dream-like sight Of solemn loveliness,' is now much interfered with by the new larch plantations immediately below the firs. It must have been very different in Wordsworth's time, |
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