No More Learning

The moment was
important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness
of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been
unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as I was
acquainted with them; and I made a resolution to supply in some degree
the deficiency. I could not have been at that time above fourteen
years of age. The description of the swans, that follows, was taken
from the daily opportunities I had of observing their habits, not as
confined to the gentleman's park, but in a state of nature. There were
two pairs of them that divided the lake of Esthwaite, and its
in-and-out flowing streams, between them, never trespassing a single
yard upon each other's separate domain. They were of the old
magnificent species, bearing in beauty and majesty about the same
relation to the Thames swan which that does to the goose. It was from
the remembrance of those noble creatures, I took, thirty years after,
the picture of the swan which I have discarded from the poem of
'Dion'. [B] While I was a schoolboy, the late Mr. Curwen introduced a
little fleet of these birds, but of the inferior species, to the lake
of Windermere. Their principal home was about his own island; but they
sailed about into remote parts of the lake, and either from real or
imagined injury done to the adjoining fields, they were got rid of at
the request of the farmers and proprietors, but to the great regret of
all who had become attached to them from noticing their beauty and
quiet habits. I will conclude my notice of this poem by observing that
the plan of it has not been confined to a particular walk, or an
individual place; a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of
my unwillingness to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact and
real circumstance. The country is idealised rather than described in
any one of its local aspects. --I. F. ]

The title of this poem, as first published in 1793, was 'An Evening
Walk. An epistle; in verse.
Addressed to a Young Lady, from the Lakes of
the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B. A. , of St. John's, Cambridge'.
Extracts from it were published in all the collected editions of the
poems under the general title of "Juvenile Pieces," from 1815 to 1843;
and, in 1845 and 1849, of "Poems written in Youth. " The following
prefatory note to the "Juvenile Pieces" occurs in the editions 1820 to
1832.

"They are reprinted with some unimportant alterations that were
chiefly made very soon after their publication. It would have been
easy to amend them, in many passages, both as to sentiment and
expression, and I have not been altogether able to resist the
temptation: but attempts of this kind are made at the risk of injuring
those characteristic features, which, after all, will be regarded as
the principal recommendation of juvenile poems. "

To this, Wordsworth added, in 1836,

"The above, which was written some time ago, scarcely applies to the
Poem, 'Descriptive Sketches', as it now stands. The corrections,
though numerous, are not, however, such as to prevent its retaining
with propriety a place in the class of 'Juvenile Pieces. '"

In May 1794 Wordsworth wrote to his friend Mathews,

"It was with great reluctance that I sent these two little works into
the world in so imperfect a state. But as I had done nothing at the
University, I thought these little things might show that I _could_ do
something. "

Wordsworth's notes to this poem are printed from the edition of 1793.
Slight variations in the text of these notes in subsequent editions, in
the spelling of proper names, and in punctuation, are not noted.