Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine. ED.
]
[Footnote HT: Grasmere churchyard was, in Wordsworth's time,
almost wholly free
From interruption of sepulchral stones.
Compare the Fenwick note to the _Epistle to Sir George Beaumont_ (vol.
iv. p. 258). Dr. Cradock wrote in 1878--"I cannot count more than two or
three gravestones of earlier date than 1800. Most of the others are of a
much more recent date."--ED.]
[Footnote HU: Was he thinking of such a spectacle as the churchyard at
Crosthwaite, Keswick, now presents?--ED.]
[Footnote HV: "This person lived at Town-end, and was almost our next
neighbour.... She was a most striking instance how far a woman may
surpass in talent, in knowledge, and culture of mind, those with and
among whom she lives, and yet fall below them in Christian virtues of the
heart and spirit."--I.F.]
[Footnote HW: As is notably the case with the beck in Tongue Ghyll.--ED.]
[Footnote HX: This "long stone seat" (now a thing of the past) was fixed
to the wall on the left of the south entrance-gate into the churchyard;
and not--as might have been supposed--on the opposite wall, which reaches
from the entrance-gate to the poet's grave. The old wall was rebuilt by
the late rector, but the seat was not replaced.--ED.]
[Footnote HY: "The story was told to Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister, by
the sister of this unhappy young woman. Every particular was exactly as
I have related.... She lived at Hawkshead."--I. F. See the whole of the
Fenwick note, also Charles Lamb's remarks, in his letter of Aug. 14,
1814.--ED.]
[Footnote HZ: Compare the Hon. Justice Coleridge's "Reminiscences" of
a walk and conversation with Wordsworth (October 1836) in Easdale,
where--at the pool, which many have identified as "Emma's Dell"--he said,
"I have often thought what a solemn thing it would be could we have
brought to our mind at once all the scenes of distress and misery which
any spot, however beautiful and calm before us, has been witness to since
the beginning." (See vol. ii. p. 156.)--ED.]
[Footnote IA: Compare _Hamlet_, act III. scene i. l. 72--
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay. ED.
]
[Footnote IB: This custom still survives in the country; sons working as
servants on ground belonging to their parents, and receiving payment for
it.--ED.]