15.  THE GREETING GIVEN, THE MUSIC PLAYED. Till the greeting had been given and the music played.

17.  Attributive to “name” (l. 16.)

18.  Explain the construction of “wished.”

50.  AMBIENT=_winding_.

51.  CYTHEREA’S ZONE.  The goddess Venus was named Cytherea because she was supposed to have been born of the foam of the sea near Cythera, an island off the coast of the Peloponnesus.  Venus was the goddess of love, and her power over the heart was strengthened by the marvellous zone or girdle she wore.

52.  THE THUNDERER.  The reference is to Jupiter, who is generally represented as seated upon a golden or ivory throne holding in one hand the thunderbolts, and in the other a sceptre of cypress.

55-60.  Suggest how this stanza is characteristic of Wordsworth.

65.  LAMBETH’S VENERABLE TOWERS.  Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is on the Thames.  Wordsworth’s brother Christopher, afterwards Master of Trinity College, was then (1820) Rector of Lambeth.

ELEGIAC STANZAS

  SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, IN A STORM,
  PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT.

  I was thy neighbor once, thou rugged Pile! 
  Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee: 
  I saw thee every day; and all the while
  Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

  So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! 5
  So like, so very like, was day to day! 
  Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
  It trembled, but it never passed away.

  How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
  No mood, which season takes away, or brings:  10
  I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
  Was even the gentlest, of all gentle Things.

  Ah!  THEN, if mine had been the Painter’s hand,
  To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
  The light that never was.  On sea or land, 15
  The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;

  I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile,
  Amid a world how different from this! 
  Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
  On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 20

  Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
  Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;—­
  Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
  The very sweetest had to thee been given.

  A Picture had it been of lasting ease, 25
  Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
  No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
  Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.

  Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
  Such Picture would I at that time have made:  30
  And seen the soul of truth in every part,
  A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.