ABSTRACT
Composed in the early winter of 1811 at Keswick, or-less probably-of 1812 at Tanyrallt. Early winter seems indicated by lines 13–14 (‘And winter reassume the sway / That shall so long endure’). There were fine days, in south-west England at least, through 1–3 December 1812 (GM lxxxii (December 1812) 498); if ‘cascades’ (4) was intended for a genitive singular this would support the 1812 dating, as a cascade murmurs just outside the then front door of Tanyrallt; and ‘the moor’ (12) may have been suggested by ‘Traeth Mawr’ the wide expanse of the Glaslyn estuary behind the house, uncovered at low tide 192(though S. must have known that the name meant ‘Great Sands’). But cascade and moor are also compatible with the Keswick area, in December 1811, and (as Cameron noted: Esd Nbk 194) the poem is close in style and content to other poems certainly written at Keswick. The structure of successive questions resembles that of ‘Passion’ (No. 66), and has the same origin in Wordsworth’s ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (published 1800), which S. quoted to Elizabeth Hitchener from Keswick on 2 January 1812 (L i 217); moreover stanza 4 may well refer, like ‘Passion’, to Hogg’s infatuation with Harriet S. It is similar in theme to To November’ (No. 64), and both poems have a prosodic affinity with Wordsworth’s ‘The Green Linnet’ (published 1807). The middle stanza dispenses with a seventh line.
