I heard a Stock-dove sing or say
His homely tale, this very day;
His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come-at by the breeze:
He did not cease; but cooed—and cooed; 15
And somewhat pensively he wooed:
He sang of love, with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith, and inward glee;
That was the song—the song for me! 20
Mrs. Wordsworth corrected her husband's note to Miss Fenwick, by adding in the MS., "at Coleorton"; and at Coleorton the Wordsworths certainly spent the winter of 1806, the Town-end Cottage at Grasmere being too small for their increasing household. It is more likely that Wordsworth wrote the poem at Coleorton than at Grasmere, and it looks as if it had been an evening impromptu, after hearing both the nightingale and the stock-dove. There are no nightingales at Grasmere,—they are not heard further north than the Trent valley,—while they used to abound in the "peaceful groves" of Coleorton. If the locality was—as Mrs. Wordsworth states—Coleorton, and if the lines were written after hearing the nightingale, the year would be 1807, and not 1806 (the poet's own date). The nightingale is a summer visitor in this country, and could not have been heard by Wordsworth at Coleorton in 1806, as he did not go south to Leicestershire till November in that year. But it is quite possible that it was "the stock-dove's voice" that alone suggested the lines, and that they were written either in 1806, or (as I think more likely), very early in 1807. In the month of January Wordsworth was corresponding with Scott about the poems in this edition of 1807.—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1807.
A Creature of ebullient heart:— 1815.
The text of 1820 returns to that of 1807.[C]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] See Shakespeare's King Henry VI., Part III., act I. scene iv. l. 87.—Ed.
[B] Compare the lines in The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, vol. ii. p. 255—