Composed At The Same Time And On The Same Occasion

Composed 1808.--Published 1815

One of the "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty."--ED.

I dropped my pen; and listened to the Wind That sang of trees up-torn and vessels tost-- A midnight harmony; and wholly lost To the general sense of men by chains confined Of business, care, or pleasure; or resigned To timely sleep. Thought I, the impassioned strain, Which, without aid of numbers, I sustain, Like acceptation from the World will find. Yet some with apprehensive ear shall drink A dirge devoutly breathed o'er sorrows past; And to the attendant promise will give heed-- The prophecy,--like that of this wild blast, Which, while it makes the heart with sadness shrink, Tells also of bright calms that shall succeed.

1809

The poems belonging to the years 1809 and 1810 were mainly sonnets--although The Excursion was being added to at intervals. Of twenty-four which were included by Wordsworth, in the final arrangement of his poems, among those "dedicated to National Independence and Liberty," fourteen belong to the year 1809, and ten to 1810. It is difficult to ascertain the principle which guided him in determining the succession of these sonnets. They were not placed in chronological order; nor is there any historical or topographical reason for their being arranged as they were. I have therefore felt at liberty to depart from his order, to the following extent.

The six sonnets referring to the Tyrolese have been brought together in one group. Those containing allusions to Spain might have been similarly treated; but the sonnets on Schill, the King of Sweden, and Napoleon--as arranged by Wordsworth himself--do not break the continuity of the series on Spain, in the same way that the insertion of those on Palafox and Zaragoza interferes with the unity of the Tyrolean group; and the re-arrangement of the latter series enables me more conveniently to append to it a German translation of the sonnets, and a paper upon them, by Alois Brandl.--ED.