These lines were placed by Wordsworth amongst the "Evening Voluntaries" in the two editions of Yarrow Revisited and other Poems (1835, 1836); but they were never afterwards reprinted in his life-time.--ED.
For printing the following Piece, some reason should be given, as not a word of it is original: it is simply a fine stanza of Akenside,[401]connected with a still finer from Beattie[402]by a couplet of Thomson.[403] This practice, in which the author sometimes indulges, of linking together, in his own mind, favourite passages from different authors, seemed in itself unobjectionable; but, as the _publishing_such compilations might lead to confusion in literature, he should deem himself inexcusable in giving this specimen, were it not from a hope that it might open to others a harmless source of private gratification.--W. W. 1835.
Throned in the Sun's descending car,
What Power unseen diffuses far
This tenderness of mind?
What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
What God in whispers from the wood
Bids every thought be kind?
O ever-pleasing solitude,
Companion of the wise and good.
Thy shades, thy silence, now be mine
Thy charms my only theme;
Why haunt the hollow cliff whose Pine
Waves o'er the gloomy stream;
Whence the scared Owl on pinions grey
Breaks from the rustling boughs,
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose!
[401] See his Ode V., Against Suspicion, stanza viii.--ED.
[402] See his poem, Retirement, 1758.--ED.
[403] See his Hymn on Solitude, which begins, "Hail, ever-pleasing Solitude!"--ED.
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THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, VOL. 8 (Completed)
PoetryThe Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. 8. Edited by William Knight
