William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Autograph manuscript signed ('William Wordsworth'), transcribing extracts from four poems, Rydal Mount, 22 December 1847
23 lines on two pages, 251 x 202mm, bifolium, signed and dated at the end. Provenance: Property of a California Collector; Sotheby's New York, 10 & 11 December 1993, lot 625.

Lines from four well-known poems, including lines on the 'blessing' conferred by nature. The extracts comprise two lines from the ode 'To Duty' ('Nor know we anything so fair / As is the smile upon thy face'), 2½ lines from book 2 of The Excursion ('Rich in love / And sweet humanity He was himself / To the degree that he desired, beloved'), the first two stanzas of 'To my Sister' (beginning 'It is the first mild day of March') and ten lines (the first and last half-lines) from 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey', beginning 'She can so inform / The mind that is within us'.

The links between the four poems are not immediately evident: they were perhaps favourites of a visitor to Rydal Mount, and copied out for their benefit. It is possible that visitor was Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867), who endured a difficult stay at Rydal Mount over Christmas 1847, from where he wrote of his host’s prolonged grief after the death of his daughter Dora in July: ‘Mr W. keeps very much alone And whichever room I may happen to be in, he goes into the other' (letter to Thomas Robinson, 23 December 1847). Both 'To my Sister' and 'Tintern Abbey' date from 1798, and the two extracts each use the word 'blessing' to reflect nature's beneficent influence.