XXXII. It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, Breathless with adoration; the broad sun The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea : And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder-everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, XXXIII. COMPOSED ON THE EVE OF THE MARRIAGE OF A FRIEND WHAT need of clamorous bells, or ribands gay, * The gentleness of heaven is on the sea.-Edit. 1815. Even for such omen would the Bride display No mirthful gladness.-Edit. 1815. Modest her mien; and she, whose thoughts keep pace Will thank you. Faultless does the Maid appear; XXXIV. ON APPROACHING HOME. FLY, some kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale! While we have wandered over wood and wild Smile on his Mother now with bolder cheer. This sonnet was written between Dalston and Grasmere, in returning from a tour in Scotland, September, 1803. XXXV. FROM the dark chambers of dejection freed, Rise, GILLIES, rise: the gales of youth shall bear Then droop not thou, In the low dell 'mid Roslin's faded grove : XXXVI. TO THE MEMORY OF RAISLEY CALVERT. CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them This care was thine when sickness did condemn * * Raisley Calvert was son of R. Calvert, Esq., Steward to the Duke of Norfolk. Wordsworth nursed the young man in a fatal illness, and after his death received what was for him a most important bequest of £900, to enable him to live without the drudgery of authorship for his daily bread, while cultivating his poetic genius. Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stemThat I, if frugal and severe, might stray Where'er I liked; and finally array My temples with the Muse's diadem. Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth; SONNETS DEDICATED TO NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE PART I.+ I. COMPOSED BY THE SEA-SIDE, NEAR CALAIS, FAIR Star of evening, Splendour of the west, * * * In a letter to Lady Beaumont, of May, 1807, Mr. Wordsworth says"The Sonnets to Liberty have a connection with, or a bearing upon each other, and therefore if individually they want weight, perhaps as a body, they may not be so deficient: but I would boldly say at once that these Sonnets, while they each fix the attention upon some important sentiment separately considered, do at the same time collectively make a Poem on the subject of Civil Liberty and National Independence, which either for simplicity of style, or grandeur of moral sentiment, is likely to have few parallels in the poetry of the present day." + Sara Coleridge says, in the notes to her father's Biographia Literaria, that the finest set of Wordsworth's Sonnets, is, in her opinion, Part I. of those dedicated to Liberty. |