Oh what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech! Yet--though dread Powers, that work in mystery, spin Entanglings of[56] the brain; though shadows stretch O’er the chilled heart--reflect; far, far within Hers is a holy Being, freed from Sin. 5 She is not what she seems, a forlorn wretch, But delegated Spirits comfort fetch To Her from heights that Reason may not win. Like Children, She is privileged to hold Divine communion;[57] both do live and move, 10 Whate’er to shallow Faith their ways unfold, Inly illumined by Heaven’s pitying love; Love pitying innocence not long to last, In them--in Her our sins and sorrows past. [55] Mrs. Southey died 16th November 1837. She had long been an invalid. See Southey’s _Life and Correspondence_, vol. vi. p. 347.--ED. [56] 1842. … for … 1838. [57] Compare a remark of Wordsworth’s that he never saw those with mind unhinged, but he thought of the words, “Life hid in God.” It is a curious oriental belief that idiots are in closer communion with the Infinite than the sane are.--ED. 1836 So far as can be ascertained, only one sonnet was written by Wordsworth in 1836. The verses _To a Redbreast_, by his sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, may however be placed alongside of the sonnet addressed to her.--ED. NOVEMBER 1836 Composed 1836.--Published 1837. One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”--ED. Even so for me a Vision sanctified The sway of Death; long ere mine eyes had seen Thy countenance--the still rapture of thy mien-- When thou, dear Sister![58] wert become Death’s Bride: No trace of pain or languor could abide 5 That change:--age on thy brow was smoothed--thy cold Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold A loveliness to living youth denied. Oh! if within me hope should e’er decline, The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn; 10 Then may that heaven-revealing smile of thine, The bright assurance, visibly return: And let my spirit in that power divine Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn. [58] Sarah Hutchinson--Mrs. Wordsworth’s sister--died at Rydal on the 23rd June 1836. It was after her that the poet named one of the two “heath-clad rocks” referred to in the “Poems on the naming of Places,” and which he called respectively “Mary-Point” and “Sarah-Point.” In 1827 he inscribed to her the sonnet beginning-- Excuse is needless when with love sincere, and the lines she wrote _To a Redbreast_, beginning-- Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay, were published among Wordsworth’s own poems. The sonnet written in 1806, beginning-- Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne, was, Wordsworth tells us, a great favourite with S. H. He adds, “When I saw her lying in death I could not resist the impulse to compose the sonnet that follows it.” (See vol. iv. p. 46.)