ABSTRACT
Composed probably towards the end of July 1811. As Cameron shows (Esd Nbk 211–12), the setting and situation are those of S.’s first visit to Cwm Elan in Radnorshire, the summer estate of his cousin Thomas Grove, Harriet Grove’s brother, who had invited him. The poet Bowles had stayed there, and in 1798 published a 350-line descriptive poem, ‘Coombe-Ellen’, which S. certainly knew. The river Elan, a tributary of the Wye, flowed through wild and wooded mountain scenery, and in this poem S. first uses the landscape allegorically with full consciousness. The rocky ascent symbolizes the course of his emotional life, part more constant (the rocks), part less so (the oak), but all at the mercy of Time. Memory shrinks from contemplating not only the dim mists of antiquity, geology and Druids, but also his associations with Harriet Grove, who knew the place well and had often described it to him (Hogg ii 554). Was his unhappiness over her prophetic of the future too, or was the sunlight (Harriet Westbrook) attainable? The ambiguous ‘It burns!’ (line 30) applies both to the sun and to the torment of S.’s uncertainty.
