If his sweet boy he could forsake, 75
            With me he never would have stayed: 
            From him no harm my babe can take;
            But he, poor man! is wretched made;
            And every day we two will pray
            For him that’s gone and far away. 80

IX “I’ll teach my boy the sweetest things: 
            I’ll teach him how the owlet sings. 
            My little babe! thy lips are still,
            And thou hast almost sucked thy fill. 
           —­Where art thou gone, my own dear child? 85
            What wicked looks are those I see? 
            Alas! alas! that look so wild,
            It never, never came from me: 
            If thou art mad, my pretty lad,
            Then I must be for ever sad. 90

X “Oh! smile on me, my little lamb! 
            For I thy own dear mother am: 
            My love for thee has well been tried: 
            I’ve sought thy father far and wide. 
            I know the poisons of the shade; 95
            I know the earth-nuts fit for food: 
            Then, pretty dear, be not afraid: 
            We’ll find thy father in the wood. 
            Now laugh and be gay, to the woods away! 
            And there, my babe, we’ll live for aye.” [A] 100

* * * * *

VARIANTS ON THE TEXT

[Variant 1.

1820.

    ... breasts ... 1798.]

[Variant 2.

1832.

    ...  I will be; 1798.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: 

“For myself, I would rather have written ‘The Mad Mother’ than all the works of all the Bolingbrokes and Sheridans, those brilliant meteors, that have been exhaled from the morasses of human depravity since the loss of Paradise.”

(S.  T. C. to W. Godwin, 9th December 1800.) See ’William Godwin:  his Friends and Contemporaries’, vol. ii. p. 14.—­Ed.]

* * * * *

SIMON LEE, THE OLD HUNTSMAN;

WITH AN INCIDENT IN WHICH HE WAS CONCERNED

Composed 1798.—­Published 1798.

[This old man had been huntsman to the Squires of Alfoxden, which, at the time we occupied it, belonged to a minor.  The old man’s cottage stood upon the Common, a little way from the entrance to Alfoxden Park.  But it had disappeared.  Many other changes had taken place in the adjoining village, which I could not but notice with a regret more natural than well-considered.  Improvements but rarely appear such to those who, after long