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Helen Darbishire and Ernest De Selincourt (eds), The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. 1: Poems Written in Youth; Poems Referring to the Period of Childhood (Second Edition)
Main Text
Editor’s Notepg 296Editor’s NoteXVIISONNET
- 1Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane
- 2At noon, the bank an[d] hedge-rows all the way
- 3Shagged with wild pale green tufts of fragrant hay,
- 4Caught by the hawthorns from the loaded wain,
- 5Which Age with many a slow stoop strove to gain;
- 6And Childhood, seeming still most busy, took
- 7His little rake; with cunning side-long look,
- 8Sauntering to pluck the strawberries wild, unseen.
- Critical Apparatus9Now, too, on melancholy's idle dreams
- 10Musing, the lone spot with my soul agrees,
- 11Quiet and dark; for [through] the thick wove trees
- 12Scarce peeps the curious star till solemn gleams
- 13The clouded moon, and calls me forth to stray
- 14Thro' tall, green, silent woods and ruins gray.
Editor’s Note
p. 296. XVII. Sonnet: preserved in a letter of D. W. to Jane Pollard in May 1792 (E.L., p. 73), and probably written shortly before that date.
Critical Apparatus
XVII. 9 idle: idol MS.
