On the closed eye of young Endymion fell[358]
That he might wake to clasp thee in the shade,
Each night while I recline within this cell
Guide hither, O sweet Moon, the maid I love so well. 15
The shepherds of Smyrna show a cave, where, as they say, Luna descended to Endymion, laid on a bed under a large oak which was the scene of their loves. See Chandler’s Travels in Asia Minor.
[357] Compare To the Moon, vol. viii. p. 15, l. 64.—Ed.
[358] Compare, in the “Evening Voluntaries,” To Lucca Giordano (1846), p. 183.—Ed.
HOME AT GRASMERE
The canto of Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem, unpublished in The Prelude (1851), and first given to the world in 1888, is appropriately entitled “Home at Grasmere.”
The introduction to The Recluse was not only kept back by him during his lifetime, but was omitted by his representatives—with what must be regarded as true critical insight—when The Prelude was published in 1850. As a whole, it is not equal to The Prelude. Certain passages are very inferior, but there are others that posterity must cherish, and “not willingly let die.” It was probably a conviction of its inequality and inferiority that led Wordsworth to give only one or two selected extracts from this canto to the world, in his own lifetime. Two passages were printed in his Guide to the District of the Lakes; another—a description of the flight and movement of birds—was published in 1827, and subsequent editions, under the title of Water-Fowl; while the Bishop of Lincoln published other two passages in the Memoirs of his uncle, beginning respectively—