With the following, "It is scarce a bower, a little parlour only, not enclosed by walls, but shaped out for a resting-place by the rocks, and the ground rising about it. It had a sweet moss carpet," compare l. 14—
Moss-grown alleys, circumscribing shades.
Doubtless Wordsworth drew on his imagination, "making a truth and beauty of his own," in this, as in every other description of place, which has a local colouring in it; but to connect "the dim cave" of the Ode to Lycoris with these conversations between Coleridge and the Wordsworths—mentioned in the Grasmere Journal of the latter, and hinted at in the closing passage of the Ode—is certainly permissible.—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[252] 1827.
1820.
Here, as in . . .
[253] 1827.
1820.