rit of pure youth
Called forth, at every season, new delights
Spread round my steps like sunshine o'er green fields.

* * * * *

VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1:

... gloomy Pass, 1845.]

[Variant 2:

At a slow step 1845.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: To Cambridge. The Anglo-Saxons called it 'Grantabridge', of
which Cambridge may be a corruption, Granta and Cam being different
names for the same stream. Grantchester is still the name of a village
near Cambridge. It is uncertain whether the village or the city itself
is the spot of which Bede writes, "venerunt ad civitatulam quandam
desolatam, quae lingua Anglorum 'Grantachester' vocatur." If it was
Cambridge itself it had already an alternative name, _viz._
'Camboricum'. Compare 'Cache-cache', a Tale in Verse, by William D.
Watson. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1862:

"Leaving our woods and mountains for the plains
Of treeless level Granta." (p. 103.)
...
"'Twas then the time
When in two camps, like Pope and Emperor,
Byron and Wordsworth parted Granta's sons."

(p. 121.) Ed.]

[Footnote B: Note the meaning, as well as the 'curiosa felicitas', of
this phrase.--Ed.]

[Footnote C: His Cambridge studies were very miscellaneous, partly owing
to his strong natural disinclination to work by rule, partly to
unmethodic training at Hawkshead, and to the fact that he had already
mastered so much of Euclid and Algebra as to have a twelvemonth's start
of the freshmen of his year.

"Accordingly," he tells us, "I got into rather an idle way, reading
nothing but Classic authors, according to my fancy, and Italian
poetry. As I took to these studies with much interest my Italian
master was proud of the progress I made. Under his correction I
translated the Vision of Mirza, and two or three other papers of the
'Spectator' into Italian."

Speaking of her brother Christopher, then at Cambridge, Dorothy
Wordsworth wrote thus in 1793:

"He is not so ardent in any of his pursuits as William is, but he is
yet particularly attached to the same pursuits which have so
irresistible an influence over William, _and deprive him of the power
of chaining his attention to others discordant to his feelings._"

Ed.]

[Footnote D: April 1804.--Ed.]

[Footnote E: There is no ash tree now in the grove of St. John's