ant 3:

1836.

Thou Eglantine whose arch so proudly towers
(Even like a rainbow ... 1800.

... the rainbow ... 1802.

The text of 1815 returns to that of 1800.]

[Variant 4:

1836.

... or ... 1800.]

If the second, third, and fourth stanzas of this poem had been published
without the first, the fifth, and the last, it would have been deemed an
exquisite fragment by those who object to the explanatory preamble, and
to the moralising sequel. The intermediate stanzas suggest Burns's

'Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair!
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
An' I sae weary, fu' o' care!'

and Browning's 'May and Death':

'I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of spring's delightful things;
Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.'

This mood of mind Wordsworth appreciated as fully as the opposite, or
complementary one, which finds expression in the great 'Ode, Intimations
of Immortality' (vol. viii.), l. 26.

'No more shall grief of mine the season wrong,'

and which Browning expresses in other verses of his lyric, and
repeatedly elsewhere. The allusion in the last stanza of this poem is to
Wordsworth's sister Dorothy.--Ed.

* * * * *

THE CHILDLESS FATHER

Composed 1800.-Published 1800 [A]

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. When I was a child at Cockermouth, no
funeral took place without a basin filled with sprigs of boxwood being
placed upon a table covered with a white cloth in front of the house.
The huntings on foot, in which the old man is supposed to join as here
described, were of common, almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when
I was a boy, and the people took much delight in them. They are now less
frequent.--I.F.]

One of the "Poems founded on the Affections."--Ed.

"Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."

--Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green, 5
On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;
With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow,
The girls on the hills made a holiday show.

Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,
Filled the funeral basin [B] at Timoth