But our little bark
  On a strong river boldly hath been launched; 560
  And from the driving current should we turn
  To loiter wilfully within a creek,
  Howe’er attractive, Fellow voyager! 
  Would’st thou not chide?  Yet deem not my pains lost: 
  For Vaudracour and Julia (so were named 565
  The ill-fated pair) in that plain tale will draw
  Tears from the hearts of others, when their own
  Shall beat no more.  Thou, also, there may’st read,
  At leisure, how the enamoured youth was driven,
  By public power abased, to fatal crime, 570
  Nature’s rebellion against monstrous law;
  How, between heart and heart, oppression thrust
  Her mandates, severing whom true love had joined,
  Harassing both; until he sank and pressed
  The couch his fate had made for him; supine, 575
  Save when the stings of viperous remorse,
  Trying their strength, enforced him to start up,
  Aghast and prayerless.  Into a deep wood
  He fled, to shun the haunts of human kind;
  There dwelt, weakened in spirit more and more; 580
  Nor could the voice of Freedom, which through France
  Full speedily resounded, public hope,
  Or personal memory of his own worst wrongs,
  Rouse him; but, hidden in those gloomy shades,
  His days he wasted,—­an imbecile mind. [Z] 585

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  This must either mean a year from the time at which he took his degree at Cambridge, or it is inaccurate as to date.  He graduated in January 1791, and left Brighton for Paris in November 1791.  In London he only spent four months, the February, March, April, and May of 1791.  Then followed the Welsh tour with Jones, and his return to Cambridge in September 1791.—­Ed.]

[Footnote B:  With Jones in the previous year, 1790.—­Ed.]

[Footnote C:  Orleans.—­Ed.]

[Footnote D:  The Champ de Mars is in the west, the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine (the old suburb of St. Antony) in the east, Montmartre in the north, and the dome of St. Genevieve, commonly called the Pantheon, in the south of Paris.—­Ed.]

[Footnote E:  The clergy, noblesse, and the ‘tiers etat’ met at Notre Dame on the 4th May 1789.  On the following day, at Versailles, the ‘tiers etat’ assumed the title of the ’National Assembly’—­constituting themselves the sovereign power—­and invited others to join them.  The club of the Jacobins was instituted the same year.  It leased for itself the hall of the Jacobins’ convent:  hence the name.—­Ed.]

[Footnote F:  The Palais Royal, built by Cardinal Richelieu in 1636, presented by Louis XIV. to his brother, the Duke of Orleans, and thereafter the property of the house of Orleans (hence the name).  The “arcades” referred to were removed in 1830, and the brilliant ’Galerie d’Orleans’ built in their place.—­Ed.]