[This Rill trickles down the hill-side into Windermere, near Low-wood. My sister and I, on our first visit together to this part of the country, walked from Kendal, and we rested to refresh ourselves by the side of the lake where the streamlet falls into it. This sonnet was written some years after in recollection of that happy ramble, that most happy day and hour.--I. F.] One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."--ED. There is a little unpretending Rill Of limpid water, humbler far than aught[1] That ever among Men or Naiads sought Notice or name!--It quivers down the hill, Furrowing its shallow way with dubious will; 5 Yet to my mind this scanty Stream is brought[2] Oftener than Ganges or the Nile; a thought Of private recollection sweet and still![3] Months perish with their moons; year treads on year; But, faithful Emma! thou with me canst say 10 That, while ten thousand pleasures disappear, And flies their memory fast almost as they,[4] The immortal Spirit of one happy day Lingers beside that Rill,[5] in vision clear.[6] One of the MS. readings of the ninth line of this sonnet gives the date of the incident as "now seven years gone"; but I leave the date of composition undetermined. If we could know accurately the date of the "first visit" to the district with his sister (referred to in the Fenwick note), and if we could implicitly trust this MS. reading, it might be possible to fix it; but we can do neither. Wordsworth visited the Lake District with his sister as early as 1794, and in December 1799 he took up his abode with her at Dove Cottage. I have no doubt that the sonnet belongs to the year 1806, or was composed at an earlier date. As to the locality of the rill, the late Rev. R. Perceval Graves, of Dublin, wrote to me:-- "It was in 1843, when quitting the parsonage at Bowness, I went to reside at Dovenest, that, calling one day at Rydal Mount, I was told by both Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, as a fact in which I should take a special interest, that the 'little unpretending rill' associated by the poet with 'the immortal spirit of one happy day,' was the rill which, rising near High Skelgill at the back of Wansfell, descends steeply down the hill-side, passes behind the house at Dovenest, and crossing beneath the road, enters the lake near the gate of the drive which leads up to Dovenest. "The authority on which I give this information is decisive of the question. I have often traced upwards the course of the rill; and the secluded hollow, which by its source is beautified with fresh herbage and wild straggling bushes, was a favourite haunt of mine."--ED. VARIANTS: [1] 1820. There is a tiny water, neither rill, Motionless well, nor running brook, nor aught MS. There is a noiseless water, neither rill, Nor spring enclosed in sculptured stone, nor aught MS.