THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, VOL. 8 (Completed)

NOVEMBER 1836

Composed 1836.--Published 1837.

One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."--ED.

Even so for me a Vision sanctified

The sway of Death; long ere mine eyes had seen

Thy countenance--the still rapture of thy mien--

When thou, dear Sister![58] wert become Death's Bride:

No trace of pain or languor could abide

That change:--age on thy brow was smoothed--thy cold

Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold

A loveliness to living youth denied.

Oh! if within me hope should e'er decline,

The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn;

Then may that heaven-revealing smile of thine,

The bright assurance, visibly return:

And let my spirit in that power divine

Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.

[58] Sarah Hutchinson--Mrs. Wordsworth's sister--died at Rydal on the 23rd June 1836. It was after her that the poet named one of the two"heath-clad rocks" referred to in the "Poems on the naming of Places,"and which he called respectively "Mary-Point" and "Sarah-Point." In 1827 he inscribed to her the sonnet beginning--

Excuse is needless when with love sincere,

and the lines she wrote To a Redbreast, beginning--

Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay,

were published among Wordsworth's own poems.

The sonnet written in 1806, beginning--

Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne,

was, Wordsworth tells us, a great favourite with S. H. He adds, "WhenI saw her lying in death I could not resist the impulse to compose the sonnet that follows it." (See vol. iv. p. 46.)

In a letter to Southey (unpublished), Wordsworth refers to her death and adds: "I saw her within an hour after her decease, in the silence and peace of death, with as heavenly an expression on her countenance as ever human creature had. Surely there is food for faith in these appearances: for myself, I can say that I have passed a wakeful night, more in joy than in sorrow, with that blessed face before my eyes perpetually as I lay in bed."