Thus, gifted Friend, but with the placid brow That woman ne'er should forfeit, keep _thy_ vow; With modest scorn reject whate'er would blind 135 The ethereal eyesight, cramp the wingèd mind! Then, with a blessing granted from above To every act, word, thought, and look of love, Life's book for Thee may lie unclosed, till age Shall with a thankful tear bedrop its latest page.[616] 140 FOOTNOTES: [600] 1835. SEQUEL TO THE PRECEDING 1837. The text of 1857 returns to that of 1835. [601] See the Sonnet (p. 168) beginning-- While Anna's peers and early playmates tread. ED. [602] See _The Faërie Queene_, book i. canto 2, stanza 43-- Till we be bathed in a living well. ED. [603] This "elfin pool," to which the gold and silver fishes were removed, still exists beneath the pollard oak tree in "Dora's Field," at Rydal Mount. The field is now the property of Mr. Gordon Wordsworth.--ED. [604] 1845. ... Well; That spreads into an elfin pool opaque Of which close boughs a glimmering mirror make, On whose smooth breast with dimples light and small 1835. [605] 1845. The fly may settle, leaf or blossom fall. 1835. The fly may settle, or the blossom fall. 1837. [606] 1845. They pined, perhaps, ... 1835. [607] See the reference to the Eagle in _The Power of Sound_ (p. 212), and in the "Poems composed or suggested during a Tour in the Summer of 1833," _The Dunolly Eagle_.--ED. [608] See, in "The Canterbury Tales," _The Squire's Tale_, ll. 598-611.--ED. [609] 1837. ... which ... 1835. [610] These last five lines are amongst the best instances of Wordsworth's appreciation of one of his great predecessors. Compare the second of the two poems _September_ 1819.--ED. [611] "The Sabine farm was situated in the valley of Ustica, thirty miles from Rome and twelve miles from Tivoli. It possessed the attraction, no small one to Horace, of being very secluded: yet, at the same time, within an easy distance of Rome. When his spirits wanted the stimulus of society or the bustle of the capital, which they often did, his ambling mule would speedily convey him thither; and when jaded, on the other hand, by the noise and racket and dissipations of Rome, he could, in the same homely way, bury himself in a few hours among the hills, and there, under the shadow of his favourite Lucretilis, or by the banks of the clear-flowing and ice-cold Digentia, either stretch himself to dream upon the grass, lulled by the murmurs of the stream, or do a little farming in the way of clearing his fields of stones, or turning over a furrow here and there with the hoe." (See Sir Theodore Martin's _Horace_, p. 68.)--ED. [612] See Horace, _Odes_, II. 18--