Note GE — 1820
Reading edition
"On the left or east bank of the Duddon, a little higher than Ulpha Bridge, near a farmhouse called New Close is a small enclosure, 44 feet square, with two old fir-trees and a quantity of laurels, which there can be little doubt is the scene of Sonnet XXIX.
The enclosure, known to the country people as the Sepulchre, is an old burial-place of the Society of Friends, none having been interred there since 1755, when a Friend from Birker, a small hamlet about four miles distant, was buried.[464]
The following two lines literally describe the condition of the little burial-ground:—
Yet, to the loyal and the brave, who lie In the blank earth, neglected and forlorn;—
the earth is 'blank,' because there is not a single tombstone, and the graves are (at any rate at the present time) most literally 'neglected and forlorn,' for the place is a tangle of rank grass and untrimmed bushes.
About the year 1842 it was planted with fruit-trees, but when Wordsworth saw it, it probably presented much the same appearance as at present.
The opening lines—
No record tells of lance opposed to lance, etc.,
and indeed the whole sonnet obtains a new significance from the association of the spot which it describes with the men of peace." (Herbert Rix.)
"There are few more touching scenes in the Duddon Valley than the little lonely hillside burial-place of the early Friends, spoken of in Sonnet XXIX. All round the inside of the rude wall enclosure are still to be seen the stone seats used by the followers of Fox, who were forbidden to hold their meetings under any lower roof than the canopy of Heaven. The Scotch firs have grown into stately shade since the Quakers sat in silent meditation high up, lifted above the life of the valley and the noise of Duddon and the tributary stream just opposite. But though the Friends lie here in unvisited graves, the earth is neither blank nor forlorn. Laurels glisten above their rest, and the Spiræa salicifolia waves its light wands of flower above their sleep, all evidences of care for the heroes of a cause that is not dead yet." (H. D. Rawnsley.)