present collection) so pleased Wordsworth that he wished he had
written the lines. They are very gently touched.


THE LAND OF DREAMS


When Blake writes of sleep and dreams he writes under the very
influence of the hours of sleep--with a waking consciousness of the
wilder emotion of the dream. Corot painted so, when at summer dawn
he went out and saw landscape in the hours of sleep.


SURPRISED BY JOY


It is not necessary to write notes on Wordsworth's sonnets--the
greatest sonnets in our literature; but it would be well to warn
editors how they print this one sonnet; "I wished to share the
transport" is by no means an uncommon reading. Into the history of
the variant I have not looked. It is enough that all the
suddenness, all the clash and recoil of these impassioned lines are
lost by that "wished" in the place of "turned." The loss would be
the less tolerable in as much as perhaps only here and in that
heart-moving poem, 'Tis said that some have died for love, is
Wordsworth to be confessed as an impassioned poet.


STEPPING WESTWARD