VARIANT:
[444] 1837.
1820.
Cluster'd, . . .
FOOTNOTES:
[FL] "In determining the spot to which this sonnet belongs two conditions have to be satisfied. In the first place, Seathwaite must be seen from it; and, in the second, there must be an open prospect of fields. Now, from Cockley Beck to Ulpha there is no single spot upon the road satisfying these two conditions. Unless the line of the river is entirely abandoned, and some point of view high up on the fells is taken, there is, I believe, only one station in all the valley which supplies them, and that is the summit of a rock called in maps and guide-books 'Pen Crag,' but which the dalesmen always call simply 'The Pen' (not to be confounded with the mountain of that name lower down the valley on the west). There is an additional reason for regarding the Pen as the station whence Wordsworth viewed his 'open prospect,' namely, that the point from which the ascent of the crag is most conveniently made is identical with the point where the Duddon makes his second plunge into a rocky abyss, which plunge is signalised in the very next sonnet (XIV.). Thus, at the very spot where the poet is enabled to gain a view of 'the haunts of men,' 'some awful Spirit' impels the torrent 'utterly to desert' those haunts, and to make a second plunge into the wilderness. An increased significance is thus given to each of the sonnets (XIII. and XIV.) by the juxtaposition of the localities which they describe.
I should explain, in connection with this, that the Pen stands in the centre of the valley, a prominent and inviting look-out, and that the easy slope, by which it is on one side ascended, rises from the high-road, so that anybody who cares for views at all—and Wordsworth above all people—would not think of passing by without climbing to such an obvious point of vantage.
The 'one small hamlet' (line 2) is Seathwaite, which lies just below the Pen.