1817
The year 1817 was not specially productive of new poems. They may be arranged thus, The Vernal Ode, The Ode to Lycoris, its Sequel, The Longest Day, The Pass of Kirkstone, Hints from the Mountains, and the Lament of Mary Queen of Scots.
VERNAL ODE[220]
Composed 1817.—Published 1820
[Composed at Rydal Mount, to place in view the immortality of succession where immortality is denied, as far as we know, to the individual creature.—I. F.][CI]
Rerum Natura tota est nusquam magis quam in minimis.
Plin. Nat. Hist.[CJ]
This Vernal Ode was first published in the volume entitled "The River Duddon, a series of Sonnets: Vaudracour and Julia: and other poems. To which is annexed, a Topographical Description of the Country of the Lakes, in the north of England." In that volume its title was Ode.—1817. In 1820 it was placed among the "Poems of the Imagination." Its title was merely Ode, and in the table of contents it was called "Beneath the Concave"; the page heading "Vernal Ode" being given to it on the last three of its six pages. In 1827, and 1832, it was transferred to the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection." In 1836 it was returned to the class of "Poems of the Imagination."—Ed.
I