of life and
hope. In every line of it we feel the exulting pulse of the

'traveller through the world that lay
Before him on his endless way.'

The later one is stilled down to perfect autumnal quiet. There is in it
the chastened pensiveness of one to whom all things now

'do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.'

But the sadness has at the heart of it peaceful hope. This is
Wordsworth's own comment:--'As recorded in my sister's Journal, I had
first seen the Trossachs in her and Coleridge's company. The sentiment
that runs through this sonnet was natural to the season in which I again
visited this beautiful spot; but this and some other sonnets that follow
were coloured by the remembrance of my recent visit to Sir Walter Scott,
and the melancholy errand on which he was going.']

There's not a nook within this solemn Pass,
But were an apt confessional for One
Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,
That Life is but a tale of morning grass
Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase
That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes
Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities,
Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass
Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest,
If from a golden perch of aspen spray
(October's workmanship to rival May)
The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast
That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,
Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest!

NOTES.

{2} NOTE 1.--'_Hatfield was condemned_.'--PAGE 2.

James Hatfield, indicted for having, in the Lake district, under the
assumed name of Hon. Alexander Augustus Hope, brother of the Earl of
Hopetoun, forged certain bills of exchange. He was condemned to death at
Carlisle on August 16, 1803. His atrocious treatment of a beautiful
girl, known in the district as 'Mary of Buttermere,' had drawn more than
usual attention to the criminal.

{5} NOTE 2.--'_In Captain Wordsworth's ship_.'--PAGES xxx, 3.

The 'Brother John' here alluded to was a sailor. He was about two years
and eight months younger than the poet, who found in him quite a
congenial spirit. He perished, with nearly all his crew, in the 'Earl of
Abergavenny,' East-Indiaman, which he commanded, and which, owing to the
incompetency of a pilot, was in his last outward voyage wrecked on the
Shambles of the Bill of Portland on the night of Friday, Feb