XV.

He told, that to these waters he had come 1
To gather leeches, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:

From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance;
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

XVI.

The old Man still stood talking by my side;
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the Man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream;
Or like a man from some far region sent,

To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.2

XVII.

My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;

And hope that is unwilling to be fed;

Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;

And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
-Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,3
My question eagerly did I renew,

"How is it that you live, and what is it you

do?"

And now, not knowing what the Old Man said,

1807.

But now, perplexed by what the Old Man had said, 1815.

XVIII.

He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said, that, gathering leeches, far and wide
He travelled; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the pools1 where they abide.
"Once I could meet with them on every side;
But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may."

XIX.

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old Man's shape, and speech-all troubled me:
In my mind's eye
I seemed to see him pace

About the weary moors continually,

Wandering about alone and silently.

While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.

XX.

And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended,
I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.

"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;

I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!"

"May 7.-W. wrote the Leech-Gatherer" (Dorothy Wordsworth's Diary). The pool, "bare to the eye of heaven," is doubtless the small pool on White Moss Common. In an earlier journal, under date Friday, 3d October 1800, the Sister writes:-"N.B. When Wm. and I returned from accompanying Jones, we met an old man almost double. He had

1 1827.

ponds

1807.

on a coat thrown over his shoulders above his waistcoat and coat. Under this he carried a bundle, and had an apron on, and a night-cap. His face was interesting. He had dark eyes, and a long nose. John, who afterwards met him at Wythburn, took him for a Jew. He was of Scotch parents, but had been born in the army. He had had a wife, ' and a good woman, and it pleased God to bless him with ten children.' All these were dead but one, of whom he had not heard for many years, a sailor. His trade was to gather leeches; but now leeches were scarce, and he had not strength for it. He lived by begging, and was making his way to Carlisle where he would buy a few books to sell. He said leeches were very scarce, partly owing to this dry season; but many years they had been scarce. He supposed it owing to their being much sought after; that they did not breed fast; and were of slow growth. Leeches were formerly 2s. 6d. the 100; now they were 30s. He had been hurt in driving a cart, his leg broken, his body driven over, his skull fractured. He felt no pain till he recovered from his first insensibility. It was late in the evening, when the light was just going away."

Wordsworth's own note on this poem illustrates his habit of blending in one description details which were originally separate, both as to time and place. The scenery and the incidents of the poem are alike composite. As he tells us that he met the leech-gatherer a few hundred yards from Dove Cottage, the "lonely place" with its "pool, bare to the eye of heaven," at once suggests White Moss Common and its small tarn or pool. But he adds that, in the opening stanzas of the poem, he is describing a state of feeling he was in, when crossing the Fells at the foot of Ullswater to Askam, and that the image of the hare "running races in her mirth," with the glittering mist accompanying her, was observed by him, not on White Moss Common, but in one of the ridges of Moor Divock.-ED.

"I GRIEVED FOR BUONAPARTÉ, &c."

[In the cottage of Town-end, one afternoon in 1801, my sister read to me the sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion with the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them-in character so totally different from the Italian, and still more so from Shakespeare's fine sonnets. I took fire, if I may be allowed to say so, and produced three sonnets the same afternoon, the first I ever wrote, except an irregular one at school. Of these three the only one I distinctly remember is 'I grieved for Buonaparte, &c.'; one of the others was never written down; the third, which was I believe preserved, I cannot particularise.]

I GRIEVED for Buonaparté, with a vain

And an unthinking grief! The tenderest mood1
Of that Man's mind-what can it be? what food
Fed his first hopes? what knowledge could he gain?
'Tis not in battles that from youth we train
The Governor who must be wise and good,
And temper with the sternness of the brain
Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.
Wisdom doth live with children round her knees:
Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk
Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk
Of the mind's business; these are the degrees
By which true Sway doth mount; this is the stalk
True Power doth grow on; and her rights are these.

"May 21.-W. wrote two sonnets on Buonaparte, after I had read Milton's sonnets to him" (Dorothy Wordsworth's Diary).

The "irregular" sonnet written "at school" to which Wordsworth refers in the Fenwick note to this poem, is doubtless the sonnet published in the European Magazine in 1787, Vol. XI. p. 302, and signed Axiologus.-ED.

[Composed just before my Sister and I went to fetch Mrs Wordsworth from Gallow-hill, near Scarborough.]

FAREWELL, thou little Nook of mountain-ground
Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair

Of that magnificent temple which doth bound
One side of our whole vale with grandeur rare;

To genuine greatness but from just desires,
And knowledge such as he could never gain?

1815.

Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair,

The loveliest spot that man hath ever found, Farewell!—we leave thee to Heaven's peaceful care Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround.

Our boat is safely anchored by the shore,
And there will safely ride when we are gone;
The flowering shrubs that deck our humble door
Will prosper, though untended and alone:
Fields, goods, and far-off chattels we have none :
These narrow bounds contain our private store
Of things earth makes, and sun doth shine upon;
Here are they in our sight-we have no more.

Sunshine and shower be with you, bud and bell!
For two months now in vain we shall be sought;
We leave you here in solitude to dwell
With these our latest gifts of tender thought;

Thou, like the morning, in thy saffron coat,
Bright gowan, and marsh-marigold, farewell!
Whom from the borders of the Lake we brought,
And placed together near our rocky Well.

We go for One to whom ye will be dear;
And she will prize this Bower, this Indian shed,
Our own contrivance, Building without peer!
-A gentle Maid, whose heart is lowly bred,
Whose pleasures are in wild fields gathered,
With joyousness, and with a thoughtful cheer,
Will come to you;1 to you herself will wed;
And love the blessed life that we lead here.

1

1820.

Still come to you

1815.