Mar. Ay, what shall we encounter next? This issue-
'Twas nothing more than darkness deepening darkness,
And weakness crowned with the impotence of death!-
Your pupil is, you see, an apt proficient, (ironically).
Start not! Here is another face hard by;
Come, let us take a peep at both together,
And, with a voice at which the deaf will quake,
Resound the praise of your morality—

Of this too much.

[Drawing OSWALD towards the Cottage— stops short at the door.

Men are there, millions, Oswald,

Who with bare hands would have plucked out thy heart

And flung it to the dogs: but I am raised
Above, or sunk below, all further sense
Of provocation. Leave me, with the weight
Of that old Man's forgiveness on thy heart,
Pressing as heavily as it doth on mine.

Coward I have been; know, there lies not now
Within the compass of a mortal thought,

A deed that I would shrink from;-but to endure,
That is my destiny. May it be thine:
Thy office, thy ambition, be henceforth
To feed remorse, to welcome every sting

Of penitential anguish, yea with tears.
When seas and continents shall lie between us-
The wider space the better-we may find
In such a course fit links of sympathy,

An incommunicable rivalship

Maintained, for peaceful ends beyond our view.

[Confused voices-several of the band enter -rush upon OSWALD and seize him.

One of them. I would have dogged him to the jaws of

hell

Osw. Ha! is it so!-That vagrant Hag!-this comes Of having left a thing like her alive!

Several voices. Despatch him!

Osw.

If I pass beneath a rock

And shout, and, with the echo of my voice,

Bring down a heap of rubbish, and it crush me,

I die without dishonour. Famished, starved,

A Fool and Coward blended to my wish!

[Aside.

[Smiles scornfully and exultingly at MARMADUKE.

Wal. "Tis done! (stabs him).

Another of the band. The ruthless traitor!

Mar.

A rash deed!

With that reproof I do resign a station

Of which I have been proud.

Wil. (approaching MARMADUKE). O my poor master!
Mar. Discerning Monitor, my faithful Wilfred,

Why art thou here?

[Turning to WALLACE.

Wallace, upon these Borders,
Many there be whose eyes will not want cause
To weep that I am gone. Brothers in arms!
Raise on that weary Waste a monument
That may record my story: nor let words-
Few must they be, and delicate in their touch
As light itself be there withheld from Her
Who, through most wicked arts, was made an orphan
By One who would have died a thousand times,
To shield her from a moment's harm.
Wallace and Wilfred, I commend the Lady,
By lowly nature reared, as if to make her

To you,

In all things worthier of that noble birth,

Whose long-suspended rights are now on the eve
Of restoration with your tenderest care
Watch over her, I pray-sustain her

Several of the band (eagerly).

Captain!

Mar. No more of that; in silence hear my doom: A hermitage has furnished fit relief

To some offenders; other penitents,

Less patient in their wretchedness, have fallen,
Like the old Roman, on their own sword's point.
They had their choice: a wanderer must I go,
The Spectre of that innocent Man, my guide.
No human ear shall ever hear me speak;
No human dwelling ever give me food,

Or sleep, or rest: but, over waste and wild,
In search of nothing that this earth can give,
But expiation, will I wander on-

A Man by pain and thought compelled to live,
Yet loathing life-till anger is appeased

In Heaven, and Mercy gives me leave to die.

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.

Comp. 1797.

Pub. 1800.

[Written 1801 or 1802. This arose out of my observations of the affecting music of these birds, hanging in this way in the London streets during the freshness and stillness of the spring morning.]

The preceding Fenwick note to this poem is manifestly inaccurate as to date, since the poem is printed in the Lyrical Ballads of 1800. In the edition of 1836 the date of composition is given as 1797, and this date is followed by Mr Carter, the editor of 1857. Miss Wordsworth's journal gives no date; and, as the Fenwick note is certainly incorrect-and the poem must have been written before the edition of 1800 came out-it seems best to trust to the date sanctioned by Wordsworth himself in 1836, and followed by his literary executor in 1857.-ED.

AT the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has hung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

She sees

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her?
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The only one dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes!1

1798.

.

[Composed on the road between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden, extempore. I distinctly recollect the very moment when I was struck, as described,-"He looks up, the clouds are split," &c.]

-THE sky is overcast

With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light

So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,

1 In the edition of 1800 the following stanza is added :--
Poor Outcast! return-to receive thee once more
The house of thy Father will open its door,
And then once again, in thy plain russet gown,
May'st hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own.

Chequering the ground-from rock, plant, tree, or tower.

At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam

Startles the pensive traveller while he treads

His lonesome path, with unobserving eye

Bent earthwards; he looks up the clouds are split
Asunder, and above his head he sees

The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;-still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,

Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

At length the Vision closes; and the mind,

Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,

Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

[Written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798, under circumstances somewhat remarkable. The little girl who is the heroine, I met within the area of Goodrich Castle in the year 1793. Having left the Isle of Wight, and crossed Salisbury Plain, as mentioned in the preface to "Guilt and Sorrow," I proceeded by Bristol up the Wye, and so on to N. Wales to the Vale of Clwydd, where I spent my summer under the roof of the father of my friend, Robert Jones.

In reference to this Poem, I will here mention one of the most remark able facts in my own poetic history, and that of Mr Coleridge. In the spring of the year 1798, he, my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Lenton and the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the