ABSTRACT
This chapter overviews both like and unlike that seen from the top of Black Comb, for here the vale is 'Urn-like' and 'shut out from all the world', not part of a large imperial landscape. The moss-grown alleys, circumscribed shades, and gurgling rills do the work 'more efficaciously' than the Adventurer's map, and given the failure of his own overtly imperial poetry it is hard to argue against him. Certainly it would not be the first or the last time that Wordsworth reacted to Coleridge's praise or criticism through revision or publication. It takes some time for the poem to get to this place, as the poet first describes a journey in and the subsequent dismissal of a fairy boat shaped like the crescent moon and then details the wandering itinerary of the roving Peter Bell.
