25
  And luxuries extract from bleakest moors;
  With prompt embrace all beauty to enfold,
  And having rights in all that we behold. 
—­Then why these lingering steps?—­A bright adieu,
  For a brief absence, proves that love is true; 30
  Ne’er can the way be irksome or forlorn
  That winds into itself for sweet return.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  This first poem referring to the Scottish Tour of 1803, was not actually written till 1811.  It originally formed the opening paragraph of the ‘Epistle to Sir George Beaumont’.  Wordsworth himself dated it 1804.  It is every way desirable that it should introduce the series of poems referring to the Tour of 1803.—­Ed.]

The following is from Dorothy Wordsworth’s ’Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland’: 

  “William and I parted from Mary on Sunday afternoon, August 14th,
  1803; and William, Coleridge, and I left Keswick on Monday morning,
  the 15th.”

Ed.

* * * * *

AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS, 1803.  SEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH

Composed 1803. [A]—­Published 1842

[For illustration, see my Sister’s Journal.  It may be proper to add that the second of these pieces, though felt at the time, was not composed till many years after.—­I.  F.]

  I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,
  At thought of what I now behold: 
  As vapours breathed from dungeons cold
      Strike pleasure dead,
  So sadness comes from out [1] the mould 5
      Where Burns is laid.

  And have I then thy bones so near,
  And thou forbidden to appear? 
  As if it were thyself that’s here
      I shrink with pain; 10
  And both my wishes and my fear
      Alike are vain.
  [2]
  Off weight—­nor press on weight!—­away
  Dark thoughts!—­they came, but not to stay;
  With chastened feelings would I pay 15
      The tribute due
  To him, and aught that hides his clay
      From mortal view.

  Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
  He sang, his genius “glinted” forth, [B] 20
  Rose like a star that touching earth,
      For so it seems,
  Doth glorify its humble birth
      With matchless beams.

  The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow, 25
  The struggling heart, where be they now?—­
  Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,
      The prompt, the brave,
  Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
      And silent grave. 30

  I mourned with thousands, but as one
  More deeply grieved, for He was gone
  Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
      And showed my youth [3]
  How Verse may build a princely throne 35
      On humble truth.