Spaniards of every rank, by whom the good
Of such high course was felt and understood ;
Who to their Country's cause have bound a life
Erewhile, by solemn consecration, given

To labour, and to prayer, to nature, and to heaven.*

THE FRENCH AND THE SPANISH
GUERILLAS

Composed 1810.—Published 1815

HUNGER, and sultry heat, and nipping blast
From bleak hill-top, and length of march by night
Through heavy swamp, or over snow-clad height-
These hardships ill-sustained, these dangers past,
The roving Spanish Bands are reached at last,
Charged, and dispersed like foam: but as a flight
Of scattered quails by signs do reunite,
So these, and, heard of once again, are chased
With combinations of long-practised art
And newly-kindled hope; but they are fled-
Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead :
Where now? Their sword is at the Foeman's heart!
And thus from year to year his walk they thwart,
And hang like dreams around his guilty bed.

10

5

10

See the note appended to the sonnet entitled Spanish Guerillas (p. 254). —ED.

MATERNAL GRIEF

Composed 1810. - Published 1842

[This was in part an overflow from the Solitary's description of his own and his wife's feelings upon the decease of their children. (See Excursion, book 3rd.)-I. F.]

DEPARTED Child! I could forget thee once
Though at my bosom nursed; this woeful gain
Thy dissolution brings, that in my soul
Is present and perpetually abides
A shadow, never, never to be displaced
By the returning substance, seen or touched,
Seen by mine eyes, or clasped in my embrace.
Absence and death how differ they! and how
Shall I admit that nothing can restore
What one short sigh so easily removed?—
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought,
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know,
O teach me calm submission to thy Will!

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10

The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale Of Infancy, but still did breathe the air That sanctifies its confines, and partook Reflected beams of that celestial light *

15

To all the Little-ones on sinful earth

Not unvouchsafed-a light that warmed and cheered Those several qualities of heart and mind

20

Which, in her own blest nature, rooted deep,

Daily before the Mother's watchful eye,

And not hers only, their peculiar charms

Unfolded, beauty, for its present self,
And for its promises to future years,
With not unfrequent rapture fondly hailed.

25

Have you espied upon a dewy lawn
A pair of Leverets each provoking each
To a continuance of their fearless sport,
Two separate Creatures in their several gifts
Abounding, but so fashioned that, in all
That Nature prompts them to display, their looks,
Their starts of motion and their fits of rest,

30

* Compare the Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 1. 4, and passim (vol. viii.)-ED.

An undistinguishable style appears
And character of gladness, as if Spring
Lodged in their innocent bosoms, and the spirit
Of the rejoicing morning were their own?

35

Such union, in the lovely Girl maintained And her twin Brother, had the parent seen, Ere, pouncing like a ravenous bird of prey, Death in a moment parted them, and left The Mother, in her turns of anguish, worse Than desolate; for oft-times from the sound Of the survivor's sweetest voice (dear child, He knew it not) and from his happiest looks, Did she extract the food of self-reproach, As one that lived ungrateful for the stay By Heaven afforded to uphold her maimed And tottering spirit. And full oft the Boy, Now first acquainted with distress and grief, Shrunk from his Mother's presence, shunned with fear Her sad approach, and stole away to find, In his known haunts of joy where'er he might, A more congenial object. But, as time Softened her pangs and reconciled the child To what he saw, he gradually returned, Like a scared Bird encouraged to renew A broken intercourse; and, while his eyes Were yet with pensive fear and gentle awe Turned upon her who bore him, she would stoop To imprint a kiss that lacked not power to spread Faint colour over both their pallid cheeks, And stilled his tremulous lip. Thus they were calmed And cheered; and now together breathe fresh air

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45

50

55

60

In open fields; and when the glare of day
Is gone, and twilight to the Mother's wish
Befriends the observance, readily they join
In walks whose boundary is the lost One's grave,
Which he with flowers hath planted, finding there
Amusement, where the Mother does not miss

65

70 75

Dear consolation, kneeling on the turf
In prayer, yet blending with that solemn rite
Of pious faith the vanities of grief;
For such, by pitying Angels and by Spirits
Transferred to regions upon which the clouds
Of our weak nature rest not, must be deemed
Those willing tears, and unforbidden sighs,
And all those tokens of a cherished sorrow,
Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven
As now it is, seems to her own fond heart,
Immortal as the love that gave it being.

80

1811

IN the spring of 1811 Wordsworth left Allan Bank, to reside for two years in the Rectory, Grasmere. A small fragment on his daughter Catherine, the Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, Bart., from the south-west coast of Cumberland, the lines To the Poet, John Dyer, and four sonnets (mainly suggested by the events of the year in Spain) comprise all the poems belonging to 1811.-ED.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A CHILD THREE
YEARS OLD

Composed 1811.—Published 1815

[Written at Allanbank, Grasmere. Picture of my daughter, Catherine, who died the year after.-I. F.]

Classed among the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."-ED.

LOVING she is, and tractable, though wild ;
And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes;
And feats of cunning; and the pretty round

Of trespasses, affected to provoke

5

Mock-chastisement and partnership in play.
And, as a faggot sparkles on the hearth,

Not less if unattended and alone

Than when both young and old sit gathered round