Any one who compares this passage with Wordsworth’s ‘Joanna’ will see the difference between the elaborate fancy of a topographical narrator, and the vivid imagination of a poetical idealist.  A somewhat similar instance of indebtedness—­in which the debt is repaid by additional insight—­is seen when we compare a passage from Sir John Davies’s ‘Orchestra, or a poem on Dancing’ (stanza 49), with one from ’The Ancient Mariner’, Part VI. stanzas 2 and 3—­although there was more of the true imaginative light in Davies than in Drayton.

  ’For lo, the sea that fleets about the land,
    And like a girdle clips her solid waist,
  Music and measure both doth understand;
    For his great crystal eye is always cast
    Up to the moon, and on her fixed fast: 
      And as she danceth in her palid sphere
      So danceth he about his centre here.’

DAVIES

    ’Still as a slave before his lord,
    The ocean hath no blast;
    His great bright eye most silently
    Up to the moon is cast—­

    If he may know which way to go;
    For she guides him smooth or grim. 
    See, brother, see! how graciously
    She looketh down on him.’

COLERIDGE.

These extracts show how both Wordsworth and Coleridge assimilated past literary products, and how they glorified them by reproduction.  There was little, however, in the poetic imagery of previous centuries that Wordsworth reproduced.  His imagination worked in a sphere of its own, free from the trammels of precedent; and he was more original than any other nineteenth century poet in his use of symbol and metaphor.  The poem ‘To Joanna’ was probably composed on August 22, 1800, as the following occurs in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal under that date: 

  “William was composing all the morning ...  W. read us the poem of
  Joanna, beside the Rothay, by the roadside.”

Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth in January 1801, of

  “these continuous echoes in the story of ‘Joanna’s laugh,’ when the
  mountains and all the scenery seem absolutely alive.”

Ed.

* * * * *

“THERE IS AN EMINENCE,—­OF THESE OUR HILLS”

Composed 1800.—­Published 1800

[It is not accurate that the Eminence here alluded to could be seen from our orchard-seat.  It rises above the road by the side of Grasmere Lake towards Keswick, and its name is Stone-Arthur.—­I.F.]

  There is an Eminence,—­of these our hills
  The last that parleys with the setting sun;
  We can behold it from our orchard-seat;
  And, when at evening we pursue our walk
  Along the public way, this Peak, [1] so high 5
  Above us, and so distant in its height,
  Is visible; and often seems to send
  Its own deep quiet to restore our hearts.