voted thus, their spirits did unite
By interchange of knowledge and delight.
May Nature's kindliest powers sustain the Tree,
And Love protect it from all injury! 10
And when its potent branches, wide out-thrown,
Darken the brow of this memorial Stone,
[2]Here may some Painter sit in future days,
Some future Poet meditate his lays;
Not mindless of that distant age renowned 15
When Inspiration hovered o'er this ground,
The haunt of him who sang how spear and shield
In civil conflict met on Bosworth-field;
And of that famous Youth, full soon removed
From earth, perhaps by Shakspeare's self approved, 20
Fletcher's Associate, Jonson's Friend beloved.

About twelve years after the last visit of Wordsworth to Coleorton,
referred to in the Fenwick note--of which the date should, I think, be
1842, not 1841--this cedar tree fell, uprooted during a storm. It was,
however, as the Coleorton gardener who was then on the estate told me,
replanted with much labour, and protected with care; although, the top
branches being injured, it was never quite the same as it had been.
During the night of the great storm on the 13th October 1880, however,
it fell a second time, and perished irretrievably. The memorial stone
remains, injured a good deal by the wear and tear of time; and the
inscription is more than half obliterated. It is in a situation much
more exposed to the elements than the other two inscriptions at
Coleorton. He

who sang how spear and shield
In civil conflict met on Bosworth-field,

was Sir John Beaumont, the brother of the dramatist, who wrote a poem on
the battle of Bosworth. (See one of Wordsworth's notes to the _Song at
the Feast of Brougham Castle_, p. 84.) The

famous Youth, full soon removed
From earth,

was Francis Beaumont, the dramatist, who wrote in conjunction with
Fletcher. He died at the age of twenty-nine.

In an undated letter addressed to Sir George Beaumont, Wordsworth wrote,
"I like your ancestor's verses the more, the more I see of them. They
are manly, dignified, and extremely harmonious. I do not remember in any
author of that age such a series of well-tuned couplets."

In another letter written from Grasmere (probably in 1811) to Sir
George, he says in reference to his own poems, "These inscriptions have
all one fault, they are too long; but