editions it was headed by the date _1811_.--ED.

Here pause: the poet claims at least this praise,
That virtuous Liberty hath been the scope
Of his pure song, which did not shrink from hope
In the worst moment of these evil days;
From hope, the paramount _duty_ that Heaven lays, 5
For its own honour, on man's suffering heart.[A]
Never may from our souls one truth depart--
That an accursed[1] thing it is to gaze
On prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye;
Nor--touched with due abhorrence of _their_ guilt 10
For whose dire ends tears flow, and blood is spilt,
And justice labours in extremity--
Forget thy weakness, upon which is built,
O wretched man, the throne of tyranny!

VARIANTS:

[1] The word "accursed" was _italicised_ in the editions of 1815-43.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Compare _The Excursion_ (book iv. l. 763)--

We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love,

and S. T. C. in _The Friend_ (vol. i. p. 172). "What an awful duty, what
a nurse of all others, the fairest virtues, does not Hope become! We are
bad ourselves, because we despair of the goodness of others."--ED.

EPISTLE TO SIR GEORGE HOWLAND BEAUMONT, BART.

FROM THE SOUTH-WEST COAST OF CUMBERLAND.--1811

Composed 1811.--Published 1842

[This poem opened, when first written, with a paragraph that has been
transferred as an introduction to the first series of my Scotch
Memorials. The journey, of which the first part is here described, was
from Grasmere to Bootle on the south-west coast of Cumberland, the whole
among mountain roads through a beautiful country; and we had fine
weather. The verses end with our breakfast at the head of Yewdale in a
yeoman's house, which, like all the other property in that sequestered
vale, has passed or is passing into the hands of Mr. James Marshall of
Monk Coniston--in Mr. Knott's, the late owner's, time called Waterhead.
Our hostess married a Mr. Oldfield, a lieutenant in the Navy. They lived
together for some time at Hacket, where she still resides as his widow.
It was in front of that house, on the mountain side, near which stood
the peasant who, while we were passing at a distance, saluted us, waving
a kerchief in her hand as described in the poem.[A] (This matron and her
husband were then residing at the Hacket. The house and its inmates are
referred to in the fifth book of _The Excursion_, in the passage
beginning--