To the paternal floor; or turn aside, 5
In the thronged city, from the walks of gain,
As being all unworthy to detain
A Soul by contemplation sanctified.
There are who cannot languish in this strife,
Spaniards of every rank, by whom the good 10
Of such high course was felt and understood;
Who to their Country's cause have bound a life
Erewhile, by solemn consecration, given
To labour, and to prayer, to nature, and to heaven.[A]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See Laborde's Character of the Spanish People; from him the
sentiment of these two last lines is taken.--W. W. 1815.

THE FRENCH AND THE SPANISH GUERILLAS

Composed 1810.--Published 1815

Hunger, and sultry heat, and nipping blast
From bleak hill-top, and length of march by night
Through heavy swamp, or over snow-clad height--
These hardships ill-sustained, these dangers past,
The roving Spanish Bands are reached at last, 5
Charged, and dispersed like foam: but as a flight
Of scattered quails by signs do reunite,
So these,--and, heard of once again, are chased
With combinations of long-practised art
And newly-kindled hope; but they are fled-- 10
Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead:
Where now?--Their sword is at the Foeman's heart!
And thus from year to year his walk they thwart,
And hang like dreams around his guilty bed.

See the note appended to the sonnet entitled _Spanish Guerillas_ (p.
254).--ED.

MATERNAL GRIEF

Composed 1810.--Published 1842

[This was in part an overflow from the Solitary's description of his own
and his wife's feelings upon the decease of their children. (See
_Excursion_, book 3rd.)--I. F.]

One of the "Poems founded on the Affections."--ED.

Departed Child! I could forget thee once
Though at my bosom nursed; this woeful gain
Thy dissolution brings, that in my soul
Is present and perpetually abides
A shadow, never, never to be displaced 5
By the returning substance, seen or touched,
Seen by mine eyes, or clasped in my embrace.
Absence and death how differ they! and how
Shall I admit that nothing can restore
What one short sigh so easily removed?-- 10
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought,
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know,
O teach m