That in its beauty Cardiff may rejoice!
Oh! in the past if cause there was for shame,
Let not our times halt in their better choice.
Rydal Mount, 23rd Jan. 1842.
THE PILLAR OF TRAJAN
The Fenwick note to The Pillar of Trajan mentions that the author’s son having declined to attempt to compete for the Oxford prize poem on “The Pillar of Trajan,” his father wrote it, to show him how the thing might be done. This son—the Rev. John Wordsworth of Brigham—wrote Latin verse with considerable success; and as specimens of the poetic work of Dorothy Wordsworth and of Sarah Hutchinson are included in these volumes, the following Epistola ad Patrem suum, written at Madeira by John Wordsworth in 1844, may be reproduced.—Ed.
I pete longinquas, non segnis Epistola, terras,
I pete, Rydaliae conscia saxa lyrae:
I pete quà valles rident, sylvaeque lacusque,
Quamvis Arctoo paenè sub axe jacent.