"Now, in a well-known and often-quoted passage in Wordsworth's letter in answer to Mathetes (Friend, vol. iii. 35, etc.), he speaks of the 'sullen light' which survives the extinguished flame of the candle that the schoolboy has blown out. 'It continues,' he says, 'to shine with an endurance which in its apparent weakness is a mystery; it protracts its existence so long ... that the observer who had lain down in his bed so easy-minded, becomes sad and melancholy,' etc. etc. etc.
"In the sonnet the same ideas occur, only the 'melancholy' is here predicated figuratively of the 'light' itself:—
the sky,
Muffled in clouds, affords no company
To mitigate and cheer its loneliness.
Yet, round the body of that joyless Thing
Which sends so far its melancholy light,
Perhaps are seated, etc. etc.
"This paper in The Friend was written in 1810; and it is possible that the sonnet was written at about the same time.—W. A. Harrison."—Ed.