Up the Haymarket hill he oft whistles his way,
Thrusts his hands in a waggon, and smells at the hay;
He thinks of the fields he so often hath mown,
And is happy as if the rich freight were his own.

81

But chiefly to Smithfield he loves to repair,-
If you pass by at morning, you'll meet with him there.
The breath of the cows you may see him inhale,
And his heart all the while is in Tilsbury Vale.

Now farewell, old Adam! when low thou art laid,
May one blade of grass spring up over thy head;
And I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be,
Will hear the wind sigh through the leaves of a tree.

1800

90

Τ'

III

THE SMALL CELANDINE

HERE is a flower, the lesser Celandine,

That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain ;

And, the first moment that the sun may shine,

Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,

Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed
And recognised it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
'It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.

'The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.'
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.

To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!

1804

IV

THE TWO THIEVES

OR, THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE

NOW that the genius of Bewick were mine,

And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne,

Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.

What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book-learning and books should be banished the land:
And, for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls,
Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair; Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care!

ΙΟ

For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his sheaves, Oh, what would they be to my tale of two Thieves?

The One, yet unbreeched, is not three birthdays old,
His Grandsire that age more than thirty times told;
There are ninety good seasons of fair and foul weather
Between them, and both go a-pilfering together.

With chips is the carpenter strewing his floor?
Is a cart-load of turf at an old woman's door?
Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide!
And his Grandson's as busy at work by his side.

Old Daniel begins; he stops short-and his eye,
Through the lost look of dotage, is cunning and sly:
"Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own,
But tells a plain tale of the days that are flown.

He once had a heart which was moved by the wires
Of manifold pleasures and many desires:

And what if he cherished his purse? 'Twas no more
Than treading a path trod by thousands before.

20

'Twas a path trod by thousands; but Daniel is one
Who went something farther than others have gone; 30
And now with old Daniel you see how it fares;
You see to what end he has brought his grey hairs.

The pair sally forth hand in hand: ere the sun
Has peered o'er the beeches, their work is begun :
And yet, into whatever sin they may fall,
This child but half knows it, and that not at all.

40

They hunt through the streets with deliberate tread,
And each, in his turn, becomes leader or led;
And, wherever they carry their plots and their wiles,
Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles.
Neither checked by the rich nor the needy they roam;
For the grey-headed Sire has a daughter at home,
Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done;
And three, were it asked, would be rendered for one.
Old Man! whom so oft I with pity have eyed,
I love thee, and love the sweet Boy at thy side:
Long yet may'st thou live! for a teacher we see
That lifts up the veil of our nature in thee.

V

Published 1800

ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY

THE little hedgerow birds,

That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression: every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak

A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought. He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect that the young behold
With envy, what the Old Man hardly feels.

ΙΟ

NOTES

MEMORIALS OF A TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1803

P. 1. I. DEPARTURE. From the Vale of Grasmere. August, 1803. 1811:-The verses that stand foremost among these memorials were not actually written for the occasion, but transplanted from my Epistle to Sir George Beaumont.-I. F.

P. 2. II. AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS, 1803 :-At Dumfries.
L. 20. Glinted':-Cp. Burns, To a Mountain Daisy, l. 15 :

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth!

P. 39, 1. 3. Criffel:-In Kirkcudbright. Dorothy Wordsworth in her account of this visit to Dumfries (Journal, Thursday, Aug. 18, 1803) says: Drayton has prettily described the connection which this neighbourhood has with ours when he makes Skiddaw say:

Scarfell [Criffel] from the sky,

That Anadale [Annandale] doth crown with a most amorous eye,
Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim,

Oft threatening me with clouds, as I oft threatening him!'

[The quotation has been corrected by Prof. Knight.]

L. 50. 'Poor Inhabitant below':-Cp. Burns, A Bard's Epitaph, 11. 19-20. The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn and wise to know.

P. 4. Published 1842:-Written according to Wordsworth in 1803, but probably not completed then.

P. 5. III. THOUGHTS. Suggested the day following, on the banks of Nith, near the poet's residence. Finished 1839:-Wordsworth told Miss Fenwick this poem was felt at the time of his visit to the grave of Burns, but not composed till many years after. In 1839, in a letter to Henry Reed, he said that he had lately added the concluding stanza. To THE SONS OF BURNS, after visiting the grave of their Lonely heights and hows':-Burns, Epistle to James Smith,

P. 7. IV. father, 1. 31.

stanza ix.

Ll. 41-42. Light which leads astray, is light from Heaven' :-Burns, The Vision, Duan Second, stanza xviii.

L. 48. Written partly in 1803. Stanzas 2, 3, 4, 8 were published in 1807; 1, 5, 6, 7 in 1827. In 1820 stanza 3 was omitted; it was replaced in 1827.

483

P. 8. V. ELLEN IRWIN: or, the Braes of Kirtle. Published 1800:Written probably after the first edition of Lyrical Ballads (1798).

P. 10. VII. GLEN ALMAIN; or, The Narrow Glen :-Glenalmond, sometimes spelt Glen Almen, in Perthshire. Cp. Written in a blank leaf of Macpherson's Ossian, above, p. 312.

P. 13. IX. THE SOLITARY REAPER, 1. 32. The last line of this poem was taken verbatim (as Wordsworth stated in a note to the edition of 1807) from a MS. Tour in Scotland by his friend Wilkinson, the whole poem being suggested by a description in that MS. (published 1824). The variants in different editions of the poem are interesting. L. 10 was originally 'So sweetly to reposing bands'; 1. 13, 'No sweeter voice was ever heard.' Wordsworth altered these lines-the second for the better, the former surely for the worse-from a consciousness of the too great frequency of his use of the epithet 'sweet.' 'Anyhow,' says Mr. Hutchinson (in his edition [1897] of the Poems in Two Volumes of 1807) ' in 1827 Wordsworth removed this word from ten places in his poems; in 1832 he removed it from one place; in 1836-37 from ten; in 1840 from one; and in 1845 from three.' L. 29 was altered, in an access of false elegance, from the expressive line, 'I listen'd till I had

my fill.'

P. 14. X. ADDRESS TO KILCHURN CASTLE, UPON LOCH AWE. Published 1827:-The first three lines were thrown off at the moment I first caught sight of the Ruin, from a small eminence by the wayside; the rest was added many years after.-I. F.

P. 14. XI. ROB ROY'S GRAVE. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Loch Ketterine :— I have since been told that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of Rob Roy.-I. F. It is in the Kirkton of Balquwhidder, at the lower end of Loch Voil, in Perthshire.

P. 17, l. 95. Her present Boast' :-Napoleon.

L. 119. A good example of 'second thoughts are best.' In edition 1807 the line is, ' And kindle, like a fire new stirr❜d.'

P. 17. XII. SONNET. Composed at Castle:-Neid path, near Peebles. The 'degenerate Douglas' was the 4th Duke of Queensberry. He stripped the wooded demesnes of Neidpath and Drumlanrig (Scott's Journal, Aug. 24, 1826; Letters, 1. pp. 304, 434 ; 11. 24) in order to furnish a dowry for Maria Fagniani (whom he supposed to be his daughter) on her marriage with the Earl of Yarmouth. Cp. the Verses on the Destruction of the Woods near Drumlanrig of Burns, and his Stanzas on the Duke of Queensberry. . . . Wordsworth sent to Sir G. Beaumont and Walter Scott respectively copies of this sonnet, beginning:

Now, as I live, I pity that great Lord
Whom pure despite . .

'In this original shape Scott always recited it, and few lines in the language were more frequently in his mouth (Lockhart, Life of Sir