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.