with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, 5
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is:[A] and hence for me,[1]
In sundry moods,'twas pastime to be bound 10
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,[B]
Should find brief[2] solace there, as I have found.

In Wordsworth's time "Furness-fells" was a generic phrase for all the
hills east of the Duddon, south of the Brathay, and west of Windermere;
including the Coniston group, Wetherlam, with the Yewdale and
Tilberthwaite fells. The district of Furness, like that of Craven in
Yorkshire, being originally ecclesiastical, had a wide area, of which
the abbey of Furness was the centre.

In the Fenwick note prefixed to this sonnet, Wordsworth refers to his
earliest attempt at sonnet writing. He says he wrote an irregular one at
school, and the next were three sonnets written one afternoon in Dove
Cottage in the year 1801, after his sister had read the sonnets of
Milton. This note is not, however, to be trusted. It was not in 1801,
but on the 21st of May 1802, that his sister read to him these sonnets
of Milton; and he afterwards wrote not one but two sonnets on
Buonaparte. What the irregular sonnet written at school was it is
impossible to say, unless he refers to the one entitled, in 1807 and
subsequent editions, _Written in Very Early Youth_; and beginning--

Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.

But on a copy of _An Evening Walk_ (1793 edition) Wordsworth
wrote:--"This is the first of my published poems, with the exception of
a sonnet, written when I was a schoolboy, and published in the _European
Magazine_ in June or July 1786, and signed Axiologus." Even as to this
date his memory was at fault. It was published in 1787, when he was
seventeen years of age. Its full title may be given; although, for
reasons already stated, it would be unjustifiable to republish the
sonnet, except in an appendix to the poems, and mainly for its
biographical interest. It was entitled, _Sonnet, on seeing Miss Maria
Williams weep at a Tale of Distress_. But, fully ten years before the
date me