“beauteous rill” (MS III; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The River Farg; see Glenfarg (place)

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“Streaming through thy mountains high / . . . / hardly seeing the blue sky” (MS III; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The moutains are the Ochils; see Glenfarg (place)

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Queen Victoria, when traveling north in late August 1842 on her first visit to Scotland, commented in her journal on the wooded enclosure of the ravine compared to the preceding flat and barren landscape: "[W}e entered Kinross-shire. Soon after, the country grew prettier, and the hills appeared again, partly wooded. We passed Loch Leven, and saw the castle on the lake from which poor Queen Mary escaped. There the country is rather flat, and the hills are only on one side. . . . Soon after [the village of Kinross], the mountains, which are rather barren, began to appear. Then we passed the valley of Glen Farg; the hills are very high on each side, and completely wooded down to the bottom of the valley, where a small stream runs on one side of the road--it is really lovely".

Victoria remarks that, "[o]n leaving this valley", one arrives "in Perthshire", announced by "a beautiful view of Strathearn and Moncrieffe Hill"--a prospect, that is, of the wide valley of the River Earn stretching to Moncrieffe Hill, which rises beyond the village of Bridge of Earn, extending east-northeast. On the far side of the hill lies the city of Perth. For the queen's entourage, the journey took two hours from entering Kinross-shire, traversing Glenfarg, changing horses at Bridge of Earn, to reaching their destination of Dupplin Castle, the residence of the Early of Kinnoul, a few miles west of Bridge of Earn--the "last part of the road very bad traveling, up and down hill" (Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, 11-12).

“floury mills” (MS III; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Milling was a chief industry in Glenfarg; see Glenfarg (place)

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“charlesʼs wain” (MS III; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Noting the reference to Charlesʼs Wain, Helen Gill Viljoen (“Viljoen Papers”, box F.X) remarks that Ruskin could have learned the constellations from Jeremiah Joyce (Joyce, Scientific Dialogues, ) or from Thomas Day (Day, Sandford and Merton, ). For Ruskinʼs interest in this constellation, see also “Harry and Lucy”, Vol. 2, chap. 1; and “The Constellations: Northern, Some of the Zodiac, and Some of the Southern”.

Between lines 24 and 25—The Library Edition incorrectly identifies John James Ruskin as adding the date 9 September 1826. The hand, which is certainly Margaret Ruskinʼs, is identical to that for a similar annotation in MS I.

“[lost]” (Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—In the first publication of this poem, W. G. Collingwood supplied the word lost “in square brackets”, since it “is wanting in the original”. (Poems [4^o, 1891], 1:xxv; Poems [8^o, 1891], 1:xii). In the sole extant manuscript version, which is a fair copy, there is no evidence of erasure of a word. If a word is missing, it would therefore have been dropped in fair‐copying. Collingwood based his assumption that a word is missing, presumably, on the need of a word ending the second line in the stanza to complete the abab rhyme scheme. He is likely correct that Ruskin intended “lost” to rhyme with “tost”, since the dependency on the pole star to find oneʼs way when lost in the dark is consistent with Ruskinʼs probable sources for learning about the constellations, which typically begin with this practical use of Charlesʼs Wain.