And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
That died to succour me!
O, think ye not my heart was sair
When my love dropt down and spake na mair?

Compare this with,--

Proud Gordon cannot bear the thoughts
That through his brain are travelling,
And, starting up, to Bruce's heart
He launched a deadly javelin:
Fair Ellen saw it when it came,
And, _stepping forth to meet the same_,
Did with her body cover
The Youth, her chosen lover.

* * * * *

And Bruce (_as soon as he had slain_
_The Gordon_) sailed away to Spain,
And fought with rage incessant
Against the Moorish Crescent.

These are surely the versos of an attorney's clerk 'penning a
stanza when he should engross'. It will be noticed that
Wordsworth here also departs from his earlier theory of the
language of poetry by substituting a javelin for a bullet as
less modern and familiar. Had he written

And Gordon never gave a hint,
But, having somewhat picked his flint,
Let fly the fatal bullet
That killed that lovely pullet,

it would hardly have seemed more like a parody than the rest.
He shows the same insensibility in a note upon the _Ancient
Mariner_ in the second edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_: 'The
poem of my friend has indeed great defects; first, that the
principal person has no distinct character, either in his
profession of mariner, or as a human being who, having been
long under the control of supernatural impressions, might be
supposed himself to partake of something supernatural;
secondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted
upon; thirdly, that the events, having no necessary
connexion, do not produce each other; and lastly, that the
imagery is somewhat laboriously accumulated.' Here is an
indictment, to be sure, and drawn, plainly enough, by the
attorney's clerk aforenamed. One would think that the strange
charm of Coleridge's most truly original poems lay in this
very emancipation from the laws of cause and effect.

[49]

A hundred times when, roving high and low,
I have been harassed with the toil of verse,
Much pains and little progress, and at once
Some lovely Image