Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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In the month of January, when Dora and I were walking from Town- end, Grasmere, across the vale, snow being on the ground, she espied, in the thick though leafless hedge, a bird’s nest half filled with snow. Out of this comfortless appearance arose this Sonnet, which was, in fact, written without the least reference to any individual object, but merely to prove to myself that I could, if I thought fit, write in a strain that Poets have been fond of. On the 14th of February in the same year, my daughter, in a sportive mood, sent it as a Valentine, under a fictitious name, to her cousin C. W.