Expedients, too, of simplest sort he tried:  55
  Long blades of grass, plucked round him as he lay,
  Made, to his ear attentively applied,
  A pipe on which the wind would deftly play;
  Glasses he had, that little things display,
  The beetle panoplied in gems and gold, [2] 60
  A mailed angel on a battle-day;
  The mysteries that cups of flowers enfold, [3]
  And all the gorgeous sights which fairies do behold.

  He would entice that other Man to hear
  His music, and to view his imagery:  65
  And, sooth, these two were each to the other dear: 
  No livelier love in such a place could be:  [4]
  There did they dwell-from earthly labour free,
  As happy spirits as were ever seen;
  If but a bird, to keep them company, 70
  Or butterfly sate down, they were, I ween,
  As pleased as if the same had been a Maiden-queen.

* * * * *

VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1: 

1836.

  ... did ... 1815.]

[Variant 2: 

1827.

  The beetle with his radiance manifold, 1815.]

[Variant 3: 

1827.

  And cups of flowers, and herbage green and gold; 1815.]

[Variant 4: 

1836.

  And, sooth, these two did love each other dear,
  As far as love in such a place could be; 1815.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  Compare

  ’And oft he traced the uplands to survey,
  When o’er the sky advanced the kindling dawn,
  The crimson cloud.’

Beattie’s ‘Minstrel’, book I, st. 20.

  ’And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb
  When all in mist the world below was lost.’

Book I. st. 21.

  ’And of each gentle, and each dreadful scene
  In darkness, and in storm, he found delight.’

Book I. st. 22.  Ed.]

[Footnote B:  Compare the stanza in ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (p. 77), beginning

  ‘He is retired as noontide dew.’

Ed.]

[Footnote C:  Many years ago Canon Ainger pointed out to me a parallel between Beattie’s description of ‘The Minstrel’ and Wordsworth’s account of himself in this poem.  It is somewhat curious that Dorothy Wordsworth, writing to Miss Pollard from Forncett in 1793, quotes the line from ’The Minstrel’, book I. stanza 22,

  “In truth he was a strange and wayward wight,”

and adds

  “That verse of Beattie’s ‘Minstrel’ always reminds me of him, and
  indeed the whole character of Edwin resembles much what William was
  when I first knew him after leaving Halifax.”