[Variant 2: 

1845.

  And soon I heard upon the blast
  The voice, and bade .... 1807.]

[Variant 3: 

1845.

  Said I, alighting on the ground,
  “What can it be, this piteous moan?” 1807.

  Forthwith alighted on the ground
  To learn what voice the piteous moan
  Had made, a little girl I found, C.]

[Variant 4: 

1836.

  “My Cloak!” the word was last and first,
  And loud and bitterly she wept,
  As if her very heart would burst; 1807.

  “My cloak, my cloak” she cried, and spake
  No other word, but loudly wept, C.]

[Variant 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.)