One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”  From 1836 onwards it bore the title ’1801’.—­Ed.

  Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side,
  Together in immortal [1] books enrolled: 
  His ancient dower Olympus hath not sold;
  And that inspiring Hill, which “did divide
  Into two ample horns his forehead wide,” [A] 5
  Shines with poetic radiance as of old;
  While not an English Mountain we behold
  By the celestial Muses glorified. 
  Yet round our sea-girt shore they rise in crowds: 
  What was the great Parnassus’ self to Thee, 10
  Mount Skiddaw?  In his natural sovereignty
  Our British Hill is nobler [2] far; he shrouds
  His double front among Atlantic clouds, [3]
  And pours forth streams more sweet than Castaly.

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VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1: 

1815.

  illustrious ...  MS.]

[Variant 2: 

1837.

  fairer ... 1815.]

[Variant 3: 

1827.

  His double-fronted head in higher clouds, 1815.

  ... among Atlantic clouds, MS.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  See Spenser’s translation of ‘Virgil’s Gnat’, ll. 21-2: 

  ’Or where on Mount Parnasse, the Muses brood. 
  Doth his broad forehead like two horns divide,
  And the sweet waves of sounding Castaly
  With liquid foot doth glide down easily.’

Ed.]

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SELECTIONS FROM CHAUCER

MODERNISED

Wordsworth’s modernisations of Chaucer were all written in 1801.  Two of them were from the Canterbury Tales, but his version of one of these—­’The Manciple’s Tale’—­has never been printed.  Of the three poems which were published, the first—­’The Prioress’ Tale’—­was included in the edition of 1820.  The ‘Troilus and Cressida’ and ’The Cuckoo and the Nightingale’ were included in the “Poems of Early and Late Years” (1842); but they had been published the year before, in a small volume entitled ‘The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernised’ (London, 1841), a volume to which Elizabeth Barrett, Leigh Hunt, R. H. Home, Thomas Powell, and others contributed.  Wordsworth wrote thus of the project to Mr. Powell, in an unpublished and undated letter, written probably in 1840: