To The Lady Mary Lowther[Ej]

With a selection from the Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchelsea; and extracts of similar character from other Writers; transcribed by a female friend.

Composed 1820.--Published 1820

One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."--ED.

Lady! I rifled a Parnassian cave (But seldom trod) of mildly-gleaming ore; And culled, from sundry beds, a lucid store Of genuine crystals, pure as those that pave The azure brooks, where Dian joys to lave Her spotless limbs; and ventured to explore Dim shades--for reliques, upon Lethe's shore, Cast up at random by the sullen wave. To female hands the treasures were resigned; And lo this Work!--a grotto bright and clear From stain or taint; in which thy blameless mind May feed on thoughts though pensive not austere; Or, if thy deeper spirit be inclined To holy musing, it may enter here.

In the "Essay Supplementary to the Preface" of the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads (see "Prose Works," vol. ii. p. 240), Wordsworth wrote, "it is remarkable that, excepting The Nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the Poetry of the period intervening between the publication of Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature." The Nocturnal Reverie was written by Anne, Countess of Winchelsea, daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, Southampton.--ED.

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