Written with a Slate Pencil on a Stone, on the side of the Mountain of Black Comb 281 November, 1813 282 WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS 1806 Wordsworth left Grasmere with his household for Coleorton in November 1806, and there is no evidence that he returned to Westmoreland till April 1808; although his sister spent part of the winter of 1807-8 at Dove Cottage, while he and Mrs. Wordsworth wintered at Stockton with the Hutchinson family. Several of the sonnets which are published in the "Poems" of 1807 refer, however, to Grasmere, and were probably composed there. I have conjecturally assigned a good many of them to the year 1806. Some may have been composed earlier than 1806, but it is not likely that any belong to a later year. In addition to these, the poems of 1806 include the _Character of the Happy Warrior_, unless it should be assigned to the close of the previous year (see the note to the poem, p. 11), _The Horn of Egremont Castle_, the three poems composed in London in the spring of the year (April or May)--viz. _Stray Pleasures_, _Power of Music_, and _Star-gazers_--the lines on the Mountain Echo, those composed in expectation of the death of Mr. Fox, and the _Ode, Intimations of Immortality_.[A] Southey, in writing to Sir Walter Scott, on the 4th of February 1806, said, "Wordsworth has of late been more employed in correcting his poems than in writing others."--ED. FOOTNOTES: [A] For reasons stated in the preface to vol. i. this Ode is printed in vol. viii. at the close of the poems.--ED. TO THE SPADE OF A FRIEND (AN AGRICULTURIST) COMPOSED WHILE WE WERE LABOURING[A] TOGETHER IN HIS PLEASURE-GROUND Composed 1806.--Published 1807