FOOTNOTE:
[GE] "On the left or east bank of the Duddon, a little higher than Ulpha Bridge, near a farmhouse called New Close is a small enclosure, 44 feet square, with two old fir-trees and a quantity of laurels, which there can be little doubt is the scene of Sonnet XXIX.
The enclosure, known to the country people as the Sepulchre, is an old burial-place of the Society of Friends, none having been interred there since 1755, when a Friend from Birker, a small hamlet about four miles distant, was buried.[464]
The following two lines literally describe the condition of the little burial-ground:—
Yet, to the loyal and the brave, who lie
In the blank earth, neglected and forlorn;—
the earth is 'blank,' because there is not a single tombstone, and the graves are (at any rate at the present time) most literally 'neglected and forlorn,' for the place is a tangle of rank grass and untrimmed bushes.
About the year 1842 it was planted with fruit-trees, but when Wordsworth saw it, it probably presented much the same appearance as at present.
The opening lines—