NOVEMBER 1
Composed October 1815.—Published January 28, 1816
[Suggested on the banks of the Brathay by the sight of Langdale Pikes. It is delightful to remember these moments of far-distant days, which probably would have been forgotten if the impression had not been transferred to verse. The same observation applies to the next.[AK]—I. F.]
One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets." In the editions of 1816 and 1820 the title was November 1, 1815.—Ed.
How clear, how keen, how marvellously bright
The effluence from yon distant mountain's head,
Which, strewn with snow smooth as the sky can shed,[70]
Shines like another sun—on mortal sight
Uprisen, as if to check approaching Night,
And all her twinkling stars. Who now would tread,
If so he might, yon mountain's glittering head—
Terrestrial, but a surface, by the flight
Of sad mortality's earth-sullying wing,
Unswept, unstained? Nor shall the aërial Powers
Dissolve that beauty, destined to endure,
White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure,
Through all vicissitudes, till genial Spring
Has[71] filled the laughing vales with welcome flowers.
This sonnet originally appeared in The Examiner, January 28, 1816. It is rare indeed, if ever, that the Langdale Pikes retain the first snows of November till spring; although, as described in another poem, the cove on Helvellyn, in which Red Tarn lies—sheltered from the sun, and high up on the mountain—may
Keep till June December's snow.
See Fidelity (vol. iii. p. 44), and the note to the sonnet addressed to Haydon, p. 62 of this vol.—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[70] 1837.
1816.
. . . as smooth as Heaven can shed,
1832.
. . . smooth as the heaven can shed,
[71] 1838.
1816.
Have . . .
FOOTNOTES:
[AK] i.e. the sonnet entitled Composed during a Storm, which followed November 1 in the edition in which the Fenwick notes first appeared.