The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth

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[Footnote B: Charles Lamb, writing to Wordsworth in 1815, spoke of

  “that delicacy towards aberrations from the strict path, which is so
  fine in the ‘Old Thief and the Boy by his side,’ which always brings
  water into my eyes.”

(See ‘Letters of Charles Lamb’, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p. 287.)—Ed.]

* * * * *

WRITTEN WITH A SLATE PENCIL UPON A STONE, THE LARGEST OF A HEAP LYING NEAR A DESERTED QUARRY, UPON ONE OF THE ISLANDS [A] AT RYDAL

Composed 1798.—Published 1800

Included among the “Inscriptions.”—Ed.

  Stranger! this hillock of mis-shapen stones
  Is not a Ruin spared or made by time, [1]
  Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem’st, the Cairn
  Of some old British Chief: ’tis nothing more
  Than the rude embryo of a little Dome 5
  Or Pleasure-house, once destined to be built [2]
  Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle. [3]
  But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned
  That from the shore a full-grown man might wade,
  And make himself a freeman of this spot 10
  At any hour he chose, the prudent Knight [4]
  Desisted, and the quarry and the mound
  Are monuments of his unfinished task.
  The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps,
  Was once selected as the corner-stone 15
  Of that [5] intended Pile, which would have been
  Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill,
  So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush,
  And other little builders who dwell here,
  Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, 20
  For old Sir William was a gentle Knight,
  Bred in this vale, to which he appertained [6]
  With all his ancestry. Then peace to him,
  And for the outrage which he had devised
  Entire forgiveness!—But if thou art one 25
  On fire with thy impatience to become
  An inmate of these mountains,—if, disturbed
  By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn
  Out of the quiet rock the elements
  Of thy trim Mansion destined soon to blaze 30
  In snow white splendour, [B] [7]—think again; and, taught
  By old Sir William and his quarry, leave
  Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose;
  There let the vernal slow warm sun himself,
  And let the redbreast hop from stone to stone. 35