While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness—
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!
This sonnet was first published in The Examiner (March 31, 1816). It was composed in December 1815. On November 27, Haydon wrote to Wordsworth: "I have benefited, and have been supported in the troubles of life by your poetry. I will bear want, pain, misery, and blindness, but I will never yield one step I have gained on the road I am determined to travel over." (See his Correspondence and Table Talk, vol. ii. pp. 19, 20.) To this Wordsworth replied in the following letter which is explanatory of the above sonnet, and of the two sonnets that follow it.
"Rydal Mount, near Ambleside,
December 21st, 1815.
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