Elegiac Stanzas

COMPOSED 1805: PUBLISHED 1807.

Further references to John Wordsworth will be found in the following poems:--To the Daisy ("Sweet Flower"), Elegiac Verses in Memory of My Brother, When to the Attractions of the Busy World, The Brothers, and The Happy Warrior.

With lines 33-40, and 57-60, compare the Intimations of Immortality, ll. 176-187:--

"What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind."