friend; not Tom Butler, but the conveyancer : when I was in town in spring, he happened to see the volumes lying on Montagu's mantelpiece, and to glance his eye upon the very poem of 'The Daffodils.' 'Aye,' says he, a fine morsel this for the Reviewers.' When this was told me (for I was not present) I observed that there were two lines in that little poem which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine-tenths of the reviews of the kingdom, as they would find no readers. The lines I alluded to were these

"They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude." "

In

These two lines were composed by Mrs. Wordsworth. 1877 the daffodils were still growing in abundance on the shore of Ullswater, below Gowbarrow Park.

Compare the last four lines of James Montgomery's poem, The Little Cloud

Bliss in possession will not last :
Remembered joys are never past :
At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
They were they are-they yet shall be.

THE AFFLICTION OF MARGARET

Composed 1804.-Published 1807

ED.

*

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. This was taken from the case of a poor widow who lived in the town of Penrith. Her sorrow was well known to Mrs. Wordsworth, to my sister, and, I believe, to the whole town. She kept a shop, and when she saw a stranger passing by, she was in the habit of going out into the street to enquire of him after her son.-I. F.]

Included by Wordsworth among his "Poems founded on the Affections."-ED.

I

WHERE art thou, my beloved Son,

Where art thou, worse to me than dead?

Oh find me, prosperous or undone !
Or, if the grave be now thy bed,

of

* In the edition of 1807, the title was The Affliction of Margaret ; in 1820, it was The Affliction of Margaret; and in 1845, it was as above. In an early MS. it was The Affliction of Mary ofan as yet unpublished Preface to it, see volume viii. of this edition.-ED.

For

Why am I ignorant of the same
That I may rest; and neither blame
Nor sorrow may attend thy name?

II

Seven years, alas! to have received
No tidings of an only child;

To have despaired, have hoped, believed,
And been for evermore beguiled;1
Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss!
I catch at them, and then I miss ;
Was ever darkness like to this?

III

He was among the prime in worth,
An object beauteous to behold;

Well born, well bred; I sent him forth
Ingenuous, innocent, and bold:
If things ensued that wanted grace,

As hath been said, they were not base;
And never blush was on my face.

IV

Ah! little doth the young-one dream,
When full of play and childish cares,
What power is in 2 his wildest scream,
Heard by his mother unawares !
He knows it not, he cannot guess :
Years to a mother bring distress;
But do not make her love the less.

V

Neglect me! no, I suffered long

5

ΙΟ

15

20

25

From that ill thought; and, being blind,

30

Said, "Pride shall help me in my wrong:
Kind mother have I been, as kind
As ever breathed:" and that is true;
I've wet my path with tears like dew,
Weeping for him when no one knew.

VI

My Son, if thou be humbled, poor,
Hopeless of honour and of gain,

Oh! do not dread thy mother's door;
Think not of me with grief and pain:
I now can see with better eyes;
And worldly grandeur I despise,
And fortune with her gifts and lies.

VII

Alas! the fowls of heaven have wings,
And blasts of heaven will aid their flight;
They mount-how short a voyage brings
The wanderers back to their delight!
Chains tie us down by land and sea;
And wishes, vain as mine, may be
All that is left to comfort thee.

[This was an overflow from The Affliction of Margaret, and was excluded as superfluous there, but preserved in the faint hope that it may turn to account by restoring a shy lover to some forsaken damsel. My poetry has been complained of as deficient in interests of this sort,-a charge which the piece beginning, "Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live," will scarcely tend to obviate. The natural imagery of these verses was supplied by frequent, I might say intense, observation of the Rydal torrent. What an animating contrast is the ever-changing aspect of that, and indeed of every one of our mountain brooks, to the monotonous tone and unmitigated fury of such streams among the Alps as are fed all the summer long

by glaciers and melting snows. A traveller observing the exquisite purity of the great rivers, such as the Rhone at Geneva, and the Reuss at Lucerne, when they issue out of their respective lakes, might fancy for a moment that some power in nature produced this beautiful change, with a view to make amends for those Alpine sullyings which the waters exhibit near their fountain heads; but, alas! how soon does that purity depart before the influx of tributary waters that have flowed through cultivated plains and the crowded abodes of men.-—I. F.]

Included by Wordsworth among his "Poems founded on the Affections."-ED.

THE peace which others seek they find;
The heaviest storms not longest last;
Heaven grants even to the guiltiest mind
An amnesty for what is past;

When will my sentence be reversed?
I only pray to know the worst ;
And wish as if my heart would burst.

O weary struggle ! silent years
Tell seemingly no doubtful tale;
And yet they leave it short, and fears
And hopes are strong and will prevail.
My calmest faith escapes not pain;
And, feeling that the hope is vain,
I think that he will come again.

5

ΙΟ

REPENTANCE

A PASTORAL BALLAD

Composed 1804.-Published 1820

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. Suggested by the conversation of our next neighbour, Margaret Ashburner.-I. F.]

This "next neighbour" is constantly referred to in Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal.