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Though martial songs have banished songs of love,
And nightingales desert the village grove,1
Scared by the fife and rumbling drum's alarms,
And the short thunder, and the flash of arms;
That cease not till night falls, when far and nigh,
Sole sound, the Sourd * prolongs his mournful cry! 2
-Yet, hast thou found that Freedom spreads her power
Beyond the cottage-hearth, the cottage-door:

All nature smiles, and owns beneath her eyes

Her fields peculiar, and peculiar skies.
Yes, as I roamed where Loiret's waters glide
Through rustling aspens heard from side to side,
When from October clouds a milder light
Fell where the blue flood rippled into white;
Methought from every cot the watchful bird

Crowed with ear-piercing power till then unheard;

621

625

Each clacking mill, that broke the murmuring streams, 630
Rocked the charmed thought in more delightful dreams;
Chasing those pleasant dreams,3 the falling leaf
Awoke a fainter sense 4 of moral grief;
The measured echo of the distant flail
Wound in more welcome cadence down the vale;
With more majestic course the water rolled,

1 1836.

635

Though now no more thy maids their voices suit
To the low-warbled breath of twilight lute,
And, heard the pausing village hum between,
No solemn songstress lull the fading green,

1820.

Though martial songs have banish'd songs of love,
And nightingales forsake the village grove,
(Compressing the four lines of 1820 into two.)

1827.

2 1836.

While, as Night bids the startling uproar die,
Sole sound, the Sourd renews his mournful cry!

1820.

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* 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
-But foes are gathering-Liberty must raise
Red on the hills her beacon's far-seen blaze;
Must bid the tocsin ring from tower to tower!—
Nearer and nearer comes the trying hour!2
Rejoice, brave Land, though pride's perverted ire
Rouse hell's own aid, and wrap thy fields in fire:
Lo, from the flames a great and glorious birth;

640

As if a new-made heaven were hailing a new earth! 3 645
-All cannot be the promise is too fair

For creatures doomed to breathe terrestrial air:
Yet not for this will sober reason frown

Upon that promise, nor the hope disown;
She knows that only from high aims ensue

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,
And glowed the sun-gilt groves in richer gold.
2 1836. (Compressing six lines into four.)

-Though Liberty shall soon, indignant, raise
Red on the hills his beacon's comet blaze;
Bid from on high his lonely cannon sound,
And on ten thousand hearths his shout rebound;
His larum-bell from village-tower to tower
Swing on the astounded ear its dull undying roar;

3 1836.

1820.

1820.

Yet, yet rejoice, though Pride's perverted ire
Rouze Hell's own aid, and wrap thy hills on fire!
Lo! from the innocuous flames, a lovely birth,
With its own Virtues springs another earth:

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,
Unbreathing Justice her still beam surveys.

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:
So shall its waters, from the heavens supplied
In copious showers, from earth by wholesome springs,
Brood o'er the long-parched lands with Nile-like wings!
And grant that every sceptred child of clay
Who cries presumptuous, "Here the flood shall stay,'
May in its progress see thy guiding hand,
And cease the acknowledged purpose to withstand;
Or, swept in anger from the insulted shore,
Sink with his servile bands, to rise no more! 3

4

To-night, my Friend, within this humble cot
Be scorn and fear and hope alike forgot
In timely sleep; and when, at break of day,
On the tall peaks the glistening sunbeams play,5
With a light heart our course we may renew,
The first whose footsteps print the mountain dew.6
(Expanding eight lines into nine.)

1 1836.

Oh give, great God, to Freedom's waves to ride
Sublime o'er Conquest, Avarice, and Pride,

To sweep where Pleasure decks her guilty bowers

"1

2

And dark Oppression builds her thick-ribbed towers!
-Give them, beneath their breast while gladness springs

To brood the nations o'er with Nile-like wings;

And grant that every sceptred Child of clay,

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Who cries, presumptuous, here their tides shall stay,"

2 This couplet was added in 1836.

1820.

660

665

670

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Swept in their anger from the affrighted shore,
With all his creatures sink-to rise no more!

1820.

1820

1836.

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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

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