615 Though martial songs have banished songs of love, All nature smiles, and owns beneath her eyes Her fields peculiar, and peculiar skies. Crowed with ear-piercing power till then unheard; 621 625 Each clacking mill, that broke the murmuring streams, 630 1 1836. 635 Though now no more thy maids their voices suit 1820. Though martial songs have banish'd songs of love, 1827. 2 1836. While, as Night bids the startling uproar die, 1820. * An insect so called, which emits a short, melancholy cry, heard, at the close of the summer evenings, on the banks of the Loire.-W. W. 1793. And ripening foliage shone with richer gold.1 640 As if a new-made heaven were hailing a new earth! 3 645 For creatures doomed to breathe terrestrial air: Upon that promise, nor the hope disown; Rich guerdons, and to them alone are due. 4 650 Great God! by whom the strifes of men are weighed In an impartial balance, give thine aid To the just cause; and, oh! do thou preside 1 1836. A more majestic tide * the water roll'd, -Though Liberty shall soon, indignant, raise 3 1836. 1820. 1820. Yet, yet rejoice, though Pride's perverted ire 1820. 4 1836. Lines 646-651 were previously Nature, as in her prime, her virgin reign Begins, and Love and Truth compose her train; While, with a pulseless hand, and stedfast gaze, 1820. * Compare the Sonnet entitled The Author's Voyage down the Rhine, thirty years ago, in the "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent' in 1820, and the note appended to it.-ED. * 655 Over the mighty stream now spreading wide: 4 To-night, my Friend, within this humble cot 1 1836. Oh give, great God, to Freedom's waves to ride To sweep where Pleasure decks her guilty bowers "1 2 And dark Oppression builds her thick-ribbed towers! To brood the nations o'er with Nile-like wings; And grant that every sceptred Child of clay, Who cries, presumptuous, here their tides shall stay," 2 This couplet was added in 1836. 1820. 660 665 670 Swept in their anger from the affrighted shore, 1820. 1820 1836. 1820. The first whose footsteps print the mountain dew. 1827. * The duties upon many parts of the French rivers were so exorbitant that the poorer people, deprived of the benefit of water carriage, were obliged to transport their goods by land.-W. W. 1793. GUILT AND SORROW; OR, INCIDENTS UPON SALISBURY PLAIN Composed 1791-4.- Published as The Female Vagrant in "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798, and as Guilt and Sorrow in the "Poems of Early and Late Years," and in "Poems written in Youth," in 1845, and onward. ADVERTISEMENT, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS POEM, PUBLISHED IN 1842. Not less than one-third of the following poem, though it has from time to time been altered in the expression, was published so far back as the year 1798, under the title of The Female Vagrant. The extract is of such length that an apology seems to be required for reprinting it here; but it was necessary to restore it to its original position, or the rest would have been unintelligible. The whole was written before the close of the year 1794, and I will detail, rather as matter of literary biography than for any other reason, the circumstances under which it was produced. During the latter part of the summer of 1793, having passed a month in the Isle of Wight, in view of the fleet which was then preparing for sea off Portsmouth at the commencement of the war, I left the place with melancholy forebodings. The American war was still fresh in memory. The struggle which was beginning, and which many thought would be brought to a speedy close by the irresistible arms of Great Britain being added to those of the allies, I was assured in my own mind would be of long continuance, and productive of distress and misery beyond all possible calculation. This conviction was pressed upon me by having been a witness, during a long residence in revolutionary France, of the spirit which prevailed in that country. After leaving the Isle of Wight, I spent two days in wandering on foot over Salisbury Plain, which, though cultivation was then widely spread through parts of it, had upon the whole a still more impressive appearance than it now retains. The monuments and traces of antiquity, scattered in abund * In the Prelude, he says it was "three summer days." See book xiii. 1. 337.-ED. ance over that region, led me unavoidably to compare what we know or guess of those remote times with certain aspects of modern society, and with calamities, principally those consequent upon war, to which, more than other classes of men, the poor are subject. In those reflections, joined with some particular facts that had come to my knowledge, the following stanzas originated. In conclusion, to obviate some distraction in the minds of those who are well acquainted with Salisbury Plain, it may be proper to say, that of the features described as belonging to it, one or two are taken from other desolate parts of England. [Unwilling to be unnecessarily particular, I have assigned this poem to the dates 1793 and '94; but, in fact, much of the Female Vagrant's story was composed at least two years before. All that relates to her sufferings as a sailor's wife in America, and her condition of mind during her voyage home, were faithfully taken from the report made to me of her own case by a friend who had been subjected to the same trials, and affected in the same way. Mr. Coleridge, when I first became acquainted with him, was so much impressed with this poem, that it would have encouraged me to publish the whole as it then stood; but the mariner's fate appeared to me so tragical, as to require a treatment more subdued, and yet more strictly applicable in expression, than I had at first given to it. This fault was corrected nearly sixty years afterwards, when I determined to publish the whole. It may be worth while to remark, that, though the incidents of this attempt do only in a small degree produce each other, and it deviates accordingly from the general rule by which narrative pieces ought to be governed, it is not, therefore, wanting in continuous hold upon the mind, or in unity, which is effected by the identity of moral interest that places the two personages upon the same footing in the reader's sympathies. My ramble over many parts of Salisbury Plain put me, as mentioned in the preface, upon writing this poem, and left upon my mind imaginative impressions, the force of which I have felt to this day. From that district I proceeded to Bath, Bristol, and so on to the banks of the Wye; where I took again to travelling on foot. In remembrance of that part of my journey, which was in '93, I began the verses, Five years have passed,' etc.-I. F.] The foregoing is the Fenwick note to Guilt and Sorrow. The note to The Female Vagrant,—which was the title under |