No More Learning

]


[Variant 2:

1837.

The western sky did recompence us well
With Grecian Temple, Minaret, and Bower;
And, in one part, a Minster with its Tower
Substantially distinct, a place for Bell
Or Clock to toll from. Many a glorious pile
Did we behold, sights that might well repay
All disappointment! and, as such, the eye
Delighted in them; but we felt, the while, 1807.

Substantially expressed--. . . 1815.

Did we behold, fair sights that might repay 1815.

Yet did the glowing west in all its power 1827.

The text of 1827 is otherwise identical with that of 1837. ]


* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: Called by Wordsworth, "The Hamilton Hills" in the editions
from 1807 to 1827. --Ed. ]


The following extract from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal indicates, as
fully as any other passage in it, the use which her brother occasionally
made of it. We have the "Grecian Temple," and the "Minster with its
Tower":

"Before we had crossed the Hambleton Hill and reached the point
overlooking Yorkshire it was quite dark.
We had not wanted, however,
fair prospects before us, as we drove along the flat plain of the high
hill; far, far off from us, in the western sky, we saw shapes of
castles, ruins among groves--a great, spreading wood, rocks, and
single trees--a Minster with its Tower unusually distinct, Minarets in
another quarter, and a round Grecian Temple also; the colours of the
sky of a bright grey, and the forms of a sober grey, with a dome. As
we descended the hill there was no distinct view, but of a great
space, only near us, we saw the wild (and as the people say)
bottomless Tarn in the hollow at the side of the hill. It seemed to be
made visible to us only by its own light, for all the hill about us
was dark. "

Wordsworth and his sister crossed over the Hambleton (or Hamilton)
Hills, on their way from Westmoreland to Gallow Hill, Yorkshire, to
visit the Hutchinsons, before they went south to London and Calais,
where they spent the month of August, 1802. But after his marriage to
Mary Hutchinson, on the 4th of October, Wordsworth, his wife, and
sister, recrossed these Hambleton Hills on their way to Grasmere, which
they reached on the evening of the 6th October. The above sonnet was
composed on the evening of the 4th October, as the Fenwick note
indicates. --Ed.





* * * * *





TO H. C.

SIX YEARS OLD


Composed 1802. --Published 1807


One of the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood. "--Ed.




O thou! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager! that dost float 5
In such clear water, that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air [A] than on an earthly stream;
Suspended in a stream as clear as sky,
Where earth and heaven do make one imagery; 10
O blessed vision! happy child!