1835.
1835
Two Evening Voluntaries, two Elegies (on the deaths of Charles Lamb and James Hogg), the lines on the Bird of Paradise, and a few sonnets, make up the poems belonging to the year 1835.—Ed.
“WHY ART THOU SILENT? IS THY LOVE A PLANT”
Composed 1835 (or earlier).—Published 1835
[In the month of January,—when Dora and I were walking from Town-end, Grasmere, across the Vale, snow being on the ground, she espied, in the thick though leafless hedge, a bird’s nest half-filled with snow. Out of this comfortless appearance arose this Sonnet, which was, in fact, written without the least reference to any individual object, but merely to prove to myself that I could, if I thought fit, write in a strain that Poets have been fond of. On the 14th of February in the same year, my daughter, in a sportive mood, sent it as a Valentine, under a fictitious name, to her cousin C.W.—I.F.]
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”—Ed.
Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant