“If there be sprites in earth or air, / They surely have their dwelling there” (MS VIII)—The poem seems suggested by Manfredʼs invocation of the “Spirits of Earth and Air” in Byronʼs Manfred (I.i.41). The spiritsʼ “dwelling there” in Ruskinʼs poem refers, probably, to the mountains, as in Manfredʼs call to “Mysterious Agency! / Ye spirits of the unbounded Universe! / Whom I have sought in darkness and in light— / Ye, who do compass earth about, and dwell / In subtler essence—ye, to whom the tops / Of mountains inaccessible are haunts, / And earthʼs and oceanʼs caves familiar things”, although Byronʼs spirits haunt many places, “Earth, ocean, air, night, mountains, winds” (Byron, Complete Poetical Works, ed. McGann, 4:54, 57 [I.i.28‐34, 132]).

An association with Byronʼs play may have been suggested by the account of the poetʼs 1816 Continental journey, which traced a path similar to the Ruskinsʼ, and which Ruskin could have read in Thomas Mooreʼs edition of the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, which the family acquired in about December 1833, three months following their return home (Dearden, Library of John Ruskin, 231‐32). In Mooreʼs glossing of Byronʼs impressions of his Alpine journey with lines afterward composed for Manfred, he selects, however, only instances of the terrific and violent sublime, such as views of natureʼs ruin from the cliffs and glaciers of the Jungfrau (I.ii.66‐69, 75‐78, 85‐87; II.iii.4‐8) or of high cataracts in the valleys (II.i.1‐8) (Moore, ed., Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 2:232‐34). By comparison, Ruskinʼs tone seems amazed but serene and reverential, more akin to Victorian fairy lore.