[Variant 21: 

    He’s ten birth-days younger, he’s green, and he’s stout,
  Twice as fast as before does his blood run about,
  You’d think it the life of a Devil in H—­l,
  But Nature is kind, and with Adam ’twas well.

This stanza appeared only in 1800.  It was followed by that which now forms lines 53-56 of the final text.]

[Variant 22: 

1815.

  He’s ten birth-days younger, he’s green, and he’s stout, 1800.]

[Variant 23: 

1815.

  You’d ... 1800.]

[Variant 24: 

1815.

  ... does ... 1800.]

[Variant 25: 

1815.

  ... in ... 1800.]

[Variant 26: 

1800.

  ... have come ... 1815.

The text of 1820 returns to that of 1800.]

[Variant 27: 

1815.

  ...he’ll stand 1800.]

[Variant 28: 

1837.

   Where proud Covent-Garden, in frost and in snow,
  Spreads her fruits and her flow’rs, built up row after row;
  Old Adam will point with his finger and say,
  To them that stand by, “I’ve seen better than they.” 1800.

  ... her fruit ... 1815.

(The text of 1815 is otherwise identical with that of 1837.)]

[Variant 29: 

  Where the apples are heap’d on the barrows in piles,
  You see him stop short, he looks long, and he smiles;
  He looks, and he smiles, and a Poet might spy
  The image of fifty green fields in his eye.

Only in the text of 1800.]

[Variant 30: 

1837.

  ... in the waggons, and smells to the hay; 1800.

  ... in the Waggon, and smells at ... 1815.]

[Variant 31: 

1815.

  ... has mown,
  And sometimes he dreams that the hay is his own. 1800.]

[Variant 32: 

1815.

  ... where’er ... 1800.]

[Variant 33: 

1850.

  ... spring up o’er ... 1800.

  ... over ... 1815.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  i. e. first published in the 1815 edition of the Poems:  but, although dated by Wordsworth 1803, it had appeared in ’The Morning Post’ of July 21, 1800, under the title, ’The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale.  A Character’.  It was then unsigned.—­Ed.]

* * * * *

POEMS ON THE NAMING OF PLACES

ADVERTISEMENT

By Persons resident in the country and attached to rural objects, many places will be found unnamed or of unknown names, where little Incidents will have occurred, or feelings been experienced, which will have given to such places a private and peculiar interest.  From a wish to give some sort of record to such Incidents or renew the gratification of such Feelings, Names have been given to Places by the Author and some of his Friends, and the following Poems written in consequence. [A]—­W.  W. 1800.