the Rock_. [XLIII.]

Rydal Mount, 1821. It stands on the right hand, a little way leading up
the vale from Grasmere to Rydal. We have been in the habit of calling it
the glow-worm rock, from the number of glow-worms we have often seen
hanging on it as described. The tuft of primrose has, I fear, been
washed away by heavy rains.

173. *_Presentiments_. [XLIV.]

Rydal Mount, 1830.

174. *_Vernal Ode_. [XLV.]

Rydal Mount, 1817. Composed to place in view the immortality of
succession where immortality is denied, so far as we know, to the
individual creature.

175. *_Devotional Incitements_. [XLVI.]

Rydal Mount, 1832.

176. *_The Cuckoo-Clock_. [XLVII.]

Of this clock I have nothing further to say than what the poem
expresses, except that it must be here recorded that it was a present
from the dear friend for whose sake these notes were chiefly undertaken,
and who has written them from my dictation.

177. *_To the Clouds_. [XLVIII.]

These verses were suggested while I was walking on the foot-road between
Rydal Mount and Grasmere. The clouds were driving over the top of
Nab-Scar across the vale; they set my thoughts agoing, and the rest
followed almost immediately.

178. *_Suggested by a Picture of the Bird of Paradise_. [XLIX.]

This subject has been treated of before (see a former note). I will here
only, by way of comment, direct attention to the fact, that pictures of
animals and other productions of Nature, as seen in conservatories,
menageries and museums, &c., would do little for the national mind, nay,
they would be rather injurious to it, if the imagination were excluded
by the presence of the object, more or less out of the state of Nature.
If it were not that we learn to talk and think of the lion and the
eagle, the palm-tree, and even the cedar, from the impassioned
introduction of them so frequently in Holy Scripture, and by great
poets, and divines who write as poets, the spiritual part of our nature,
and therefore the higher part of it, would derive no benefit from such
intercourse with such subjects.

179. *_A Jewish Family_. [L.]

Coleridge and my daughter and I in 1828 passed a fortnight upon the
banks of the Rhine, principally under the hospitable roof of Mr. Aders
at Gotesburg, but two days of the time were spent at St. Goa or in
rambles among the neighbouring vallies. It was at St. Goa that I saw the
Jewish family here described. Though exceedingly poor, and in rags, t