[CA] See, at the close of the poem (p. 122), several experimental renderings of this stanza, printed from MS.—Ed.
[CB] That Wordsworth knew the Elgin marbles—where the half-recumbent Ilissus, a torso, is one of the finest pieces of the pediment—is certain. There is a reproduction of it in his nephew's (the late Bishop of Lincoln's) book on Greece. In Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary (vol. ii. p. 195) there is an interesting account of the poet's visit to the British Museum, to see the Elgin marbles, etc. See also the Autobiography of B. R. Haydon, where, in a letter to the artist, Wordsworth says, "I am not surprised to hear that Canova expressed himself highly pleased with the Elgin marbles: a man must be senseless as a clod, or as perverse as a fiend, not to be enraptured with them" (vol. i. p. 325).—Ed.
A FACT, AND AN IMAGINATION;
Or, Canute and Alfred, on the Sea-shore[199]
Composed 1816.—Published 1820
[The first and last fourteen lines of this poem each make a sonnet, and were composed as such; but I thought that by intermediate lines they might be connected so as to make a whole. One or two expressions are taken from Milton's History of England.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."—Ed.
The Danish Conqueror, on his royal chair,
Mustering a face of haughty[200] sovereignty,