so as
if possible to preclude a comparison between that mode of dealing with
the subject and the mode I meant to adopt, may here, perhaps, perceive
that this poem originated in the four last lines of the first stanza.
These specks of snow reflected in the lake, and so transferred, as it
were, to the subaqueous sky, reminded me of the swans which the fancy of
the ancient classic poets yoked to the car of Venus. Hence the tenor of
the whole first stanza and the name of Lycoris, which with some readers,
who think mythology and classical allusion too far-fetched, and
therefore more or less unnatural or affected, will tend to unrealise the
sentiment that pervades these verses. But surely one who has written so
much in verse as I have done may be allowed to retrace his steps into
the regions of fancy which delighted him in his boyhood, when he first
became acquainted with the Greek and Roman Poets. Before I read Virgil I
was so strongly attached to Ovid, whose _Metamorphoses_ I read at
school, that I was quite in a passion whenever I found him, in books of
criticism, placed below Virgil. As to Homer, I was never weary of
travelling over the scenes through which he led me. Classical literature
affected me by its own beauty. But the truths of Scripture having been
entrusted to the dead languages, and these fountains having been
recently laid open at the Reformation, an importance and a sanctity were
at that period attached to classical literature that extended, as is
obvious in Milton's _Lycidas_, for example, both to its spirit and form
in a degree that can never be revived. No doubt the hackneyed and
lifeless use into which mythology fell towards the close of the 17th
century, and which continued through the 18th, disgusted the general
reader with all allusion to it in modern verse. And though, in deference
to this disgust, and also in a measure participating in it, I abstained
in my earlier writings from all introduction of pagan fable,--surely,
even in its humble form, it may ally itself with real sentiment--as I
can truly affirm it did in the present case.

444. *_Memory_. [XXVIII.]

The verses 'Or strayed from hope and promise, self-betrayed,' were, I am
sorry to say, suggested from apprehensions of the fate of my friend
H.C., the subject of the verses addressed to H.C. when six years old.
The piece which follows, to 'Memory,' arose out of similar feelings.

445. *_This Lawn_. [XXIX.]

This lawn is the sloping one