Composed 1804.—Published 1807
[The Poem]
[Seen at Town-end, Grasmere. The elder-bush has long since disappeared; it hung over the wall near the cottage: and the kitten continued to leap up, catching the leaves as here described. The Infant was Dora.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems of the Fancy." In Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, etc., under date Sept. 10, 1816, we find,
"He" (Wordsworth) "quoted from 'The Kitten and the Falling Leaves' to show he had connected even the kitten with the great, awful, and mysterious powers of Nature."
Ed.