4 JANUARY 1902, Page 14

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the Spectator of

December 28th Mr. W. W. Ward asks for a satisfactory explanation of Wordsworth's line,— " The winds come to me from the fields of sleep."

In my ignorance of any discussion on this subject I had never any doubts as to the meaning since the day I first read this ode. I was sitting in a house in Hawes alter a long forenoon in Wensleydale, just before " coasting " down Garsdale into Sedbergh. The fields of corn had been one mass of scarlet with the flower of the opium-bearing and sleep-bringing poppy, or popover soniniferum, as the botanists call it. What more natural than to think this the poet's meaning ? The wind from the poppy-laden fields, which even as I read was making " wares of shadow pass over the wheat."—I am, Sir, Eittd12. WILKINS.