nt 5:

1815.

... off the Chaise ... 1807.]

[Variant 6:

1845.

'Twas twisted betwixt nave and spoke;
Her help she lent, and with good heed
Together we released the Cloak; 1807.

... between ... 1840.]

[Variant 7:

1836.

A wretched, wretched rag indeed! 1807.]

[Variant 8:

1845.

She sate like one past all relief;
Sob after sob she forth did send
In wretchedness, as if her grief 1807.]

[Variant 9:

1836.

And then, ... 1807.]

[Variant 10:

1836.

... she'd lost ... 1807.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: There was no sub-title in the edition of 1807.--Ed.]

Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth in 1815, referring to
the revisions of this and other poems:

"I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I
would not have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the
stript shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their
malice; I would not have given 'em a red cloak to save their souls."

See 'Letters of Charles Lamb' (Ainger), vol. i. p. 283.--Ed.

* * * * *

BEGGARS

Composed March 13th and 14th, 1802.--Published 1807

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. Met, and described to me by my sister,
near the quarry at the head of Rydal Lake, [A] a place still a chosen
resort of vagrants travelling with their families.--I.F.]

The following are Dorothy Wordsworth's references to this poem in her
Grasmere Journal. They justify the remark of the late Bishop of Lincoln,

"his poems are sometimes little more than poetical versions of her
descriptions of the objects which she had seen, _and he treated them
as seen by himself_."

(See
'Memoirs of Wordsworth', vol. i. pp. 180-1.)

"Saturday (March 13, 1802).--William wrote the poem of the Beggar
Woman, taken from a woman whom I had seen in May (now nearly two years
ago), when John and he were at Gallow Hill. I sat with him at
intervals all the morning, and took down his stanzas. After tea I read
W. the account I had written of the little boy belonging to the tall
woman: and an unlucky thing it was, for he could not escape from those
very words, and so he could not write the poem. He left it unfinished,
and went tired to bed. In our walk from Rydal he had got warmed with
the subject, and had half cast