ovember 1806, and one to Lady Beaumont in December
1806.--Ed.]

[Footnote D:

"March 18, 1708. The Coleridges left us. A cold windy morning. Walked
with them half-way. On our return, sheltered under the hollies during
a hail shower. The withered leaves danced with the hailstones. William
wrote a description of the storm"

(Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden Journal).--Ed.]

* * * * *

THE THORN

Composed March 19, 1798.--Published 1798.

In the editions of 1800-1805, Wordsworth added the following note to
this poem:

"This Poem ought to have been preceded by an introductory Poem, which
I have been prevented from writing by never having felt myself in a
mood when it was probable that I should write it well.--The character
which I have here introduced speaking is sufficiently common. The
Reader will perhaps have a general notion of it, if he has ever known
a man, a Captain of a small trading vessel for example, who being past
the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity or small
independent income to some village or country town of which he was not
a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live. Such men
having little to do become credulous and talkative from indolence; and
from the same cause, and other predisposing causes by which it is
probable that such men may have been affected, they are prone to
superstition. On which account it appeared to me proper to select a
character like this to exhibit some of the general laws by which
superstition acts upon the mind. Superstitious men are almost always
men of slow faculties and deep feelings; their minds are not loose but
adhesive; they have a reasonable share of imagination, by which word I
mean the faculty which produces impressive effects out of simple
elements; but they are utterly destitute of fancy, the power by which
pleasure and surprise are excited by sudden varieties of situation and
by accumulated imagery.

"It was my wish in this poem to shew the manner in which such men
cleave to the same ideas; and to follow the turns of passion, always
different, yet not palpably different, by which their conversation is
swayed. I had two objects to attain; first, to represent a picture
which should not be unimpressive yet consistent with the character
that should describe it, secondly, while I adhered to the style in
which such persons