Stars, moons, and meteors, ray opposed to ray,
And solemn midnight pours the blaze of day.
He was a man of ardent feeling, and his faculties of mind, particularly his memory, were extraordinary. Brief notices of his life ought to find a place in the History of Westmoreland.—W. W. 1820.
[FE] "Even in the 'unfruitful solitudes' of Wrynose, one may find—sheltered in the little gullies which the rills have worn down the fell-side—not only the strawberry, speedwell, and thyme, mentioned in the sonnet, but sundry other flowers, such as the Spearwort, Milkwort, Small Bedstraw, Euphrasia officinalis, and Potentilla tormentilla, but this and the following Sonnet were perhaps inspired by the beauty of the flowery meadows just below Cockley Beck." (Herbert Rix.)
"Wordsworth, from his Sonnet VI., would seem to have been describing the Duddon in April; and though by some misnomer 'the little speedwell's darling blue' has by him been called the 'trembling eyebright,' to-day in July 1884—though the time of the singing of birds who 'warble to their paramours' is over and gone—one can see by Duddon-side these 'old remains of hawthorn bowers.'
But I shall never forget the beauty or the size of the golden feathery spikes of sweet-scented Gallium (lady's bed straw), or the wonderful odour of the self-heal, and the glory of the harebells, as I saw them carpeting the meadows near Cockley Beck, this July day, 1884; and, as I plucked the very faintly scented euphrasia (or eyebright), I wondered much which were the spring-flowers Wordsworth had in his mind that by their breath invited no caress. Would it be the buttercup, the daisy, or which? He must have had some definite flower—scentless, but not less beautiful—in his eye as he wrote Sonnet VI." (H. D. Rawnsley.)
[438] This refers to the year 1820, and the sentence only occurs in the edition of 1820.—Ed.