[Headed in I.F.MSS.

'The Ode.'] This was composed during my residence at Town-End, Grasmere.

Two years at least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part.

To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself, but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or _experiences_ of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests.

Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being.