[Variant 1: 

  ... pleasure ...  Ms.]

[Variant 2: 

  ... will be proud, and that same spot
  Be dear unto the Muses evermore.  Ms.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  In the edition of 1842 the following footnote is given by Wordsworth,

  “This biographical Sonnet, if so it may be called, together with the
  Epistle that follows, have been long suppressed from feelings of
  personal delicacy.”

The “Epistle” was that addressed to Sir George Beaumont in 1811.—­Ed.]

This little property at Applethwaite now belongs to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth, the grandson of the poet.  It is a “sunny dell” only in its upper reaches, above the spot where the cottage—­which still bears Wordsworth’s name—­is built.  This sonnet, and Sir George Beaumont’s wish that Wordsworth and Coleridge should live so near each other, as to be able to carry on joint literary labour, recall the somewhat similar wish and proposal on the part of W. Calvert, unfolded in a letter from Coleridge to Sir Humphry Davy.—­Ed.

* * * * *

VAUDRACOUR AND JULIA

Composed 1804.—­Published 1820

The following Tale was written as an Episode, in a work from which its length may perhaps exclude it. [A] The facts are true; no invention as to these has been exercised, as none was needed.—­W.  W. 1820.

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere.  Faithfully narrated, though with the omission of many pathetic circumstances, from the mouth of a French lady, [B] who had been an eye-and-ear witness of all that was done and said.  Many long years after, I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.—­I.  F.]

This was included among the “Poems founded on the Affections.”—­Ed.

  O happy time of youthful lovers (thus
  My story may begin) O balmy time,
  In which a love-knot on a lady’s brow
  Is fairer than the fairest star in heaven! 
  To such inheritance of blessed fancy 5
  (Fancy that sports more desperately with minds
  Than ever fortune hath been known to do)
  The high-born Vaudracour was brought, by years
  Whose progress had a little overstepped
  His stripling prime.  A town of small repute, 10
  Among the vine-clad mountains of Auvergne,
  Was the Youth’s birth-place.  There he wooed a Maid
  Who heard the heart-felt music of his suit
  With answering vows.  Plebeian was the stock,
  Plebeian, though ingenuous, the stock, 15
  From which her graces and her honours sprung: 
  And hence the father of the enamoured Youth,
  With haughty indignation, spurned the thought
  Of such alliance.—­From their