Sole listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played With thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound-- Unfruitful solitudes, that seemed to upbraid The sun in heaven!--but now, to form a shade 5 For Thee, green alders have together wound Their foliage; ashes flung their arms around; And birch-trees risen in silver colonnade. And thou hast also tempted here to rise, 'Mid sheltering pines, this Cottage rude and grey; 10 Whose ruddy children, by the mother's eyes Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day, Thy pleased associates:--light as endless May On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies.[FC] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote FB: "As I went towards the road which leads down from the Three Shire Stones to Cockley Beck, I constantly found myself repeating Sonnet number IV. The stream seemed now 'a loosely-scattered chain to make,' now to 'appear a glittering snake,' silently 'thridding with sinuous lapse the rushes, through' (if we might call the bog-myrtle bushes dwarf willows) 'dwarf willows gliding, and by ferny brake.' I regained the main road, and took a parting, 'no negligent adieu' at the 'cradled nursling'; and saw the cascade at the grotto--wherefrom I first began to track the 'nursling' to its upland cradle--as white as snow in May. There, thought I, is the sight that suggested the line-- Starts from a dizzy steep the undaunted Rill. But, if the poet had needed suggestion of such a picture, and he had been at my side, he would have seen in three other directions, from the place where I was standing, three 'cataracts blowing their trumpets from the steep.' And I could have been induced to follow three other streams up into the Fells towards the north for the birth-place of the 'cradled nursling.' As I descended towards Cockley Beck I constantly looked for the 'rushes,' the 'dwarf willows,' and the 'ferny brake,' spoken of in Sonnet IV., constantly looked for some other spot where I might take a 'parting glance' of the stream, which would satisfy the requirements of the description in Sonnet IV.; but I found none. One thing is worth mentioning. Wordsworth is describing the Duddon as a Cumberland stream, _his native stream_, and he is accurate as ever. For one is struck, in descending from the Three Shire Stones to Cockley Beck, at the way in which all the feeders of the Duddon rise to the north on the Cumbrian Fells, and how comparatively waterless are the slopes of Grey Friars, on the southern or Lancashire side of the pass." (H. D. Rawnsley.)] VI FLOWERS