ght leaps! Yet so deep imprest
Sink the sweet scenes of Childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny haze,
But straight with all their tints, thy waters rise,
Thy crowning plank, thy margin's willowy maze,
And bedded sand that veined with various dyes
Gleamed through thy bright transparence to the gaze!
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled
Lone Manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs,
Ah! that once more I were a careless child!'

Ed.]

[Footnote Z: Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in February
1791, just a month after Wordsworth had taken his B. A. degree, and left
the university.--Ed.]

[Footnote a: Coleridge worked laboriously but unmethodically at
Cambridge, studying philosophy and politics, besides classics and
mathematics. He lost his scholarship however.--Ed.]

[Footnote b: Debt and despondency; flight to London; enlistment in the
Dragoons; residence in Bristol; Republican lectures; scheme, along with
Southey, for founding a new community in America; its abandonment; his
marriage; life at Nether Stowey; editing 'The Watchman'; lecturing on
Shakespeare; contributing to 'The Morning Chronicle'; preaching in
Unitarian pulpits; publishing his 'Juvenile Poems', etc. etc.; and
throughout eccentric, impetuous, original--with contagious enthusiasm
and overflowing genius--but erratic, self-confident, and unstable.--Ed.]

[Footnote c: Robert Jones, of Plas-yn-llan, near Ruthin, Denbighshire,
to whom the 'Descriptive Sketches', which record the tour, were
dedicated.--Ed.]

[Footnote d: See 'Descriptive Sketches', vol. i. p. 35.--Ed.]

[Footnote e: Compare Shakespeare, 'Sonnets', 16:

'Now stand you on the top of happy hours.'

Ed.]

[Footnote f: In 1790, most of what could be shaken in the order of
European, and especially of French society and government, _was_ shaken
and changed. By the new constitution of 1790, to which the French king
took an oath of fidelity, his power was reduced to a shadow, and two
years later France became a Republic.

"We crossed at the time," wrote Wordsworth to his sister, "when the
whole nation was mad with joy in consequence of the Revolution."

Ed.]

[Footnote g:

"We went staff in hand, without knapsacks, and carrying each his
needments tied up in a pocket handkerchief, with about twenty pounds
a-piece in our pockets."

W. W. ('Autobiographical Memoranda.)--Ed.]

[Footnote h: July 14, 17