[Footnote A: This motto was added in the edition of 1837.—Ed.]
[Footnote B: Compare S. T. C. in ‘The Friend’ (edition 1818, vol. iii. p. 62),
“Its instinct, its safety, its benefit,
its glory is to love, to
admire, to feel, and to labour.”
Ed.]
[Footnote C: Compare Churchill’s ‘Gotham’, i. 49:
‘An Englishman in chartered freedom born.’
Ed.]
[Footnote D: Compare in ‘Sartor Resartus’,
“Happy he for whom a kind of heavenly
sun brightens it [Necessity]
into a ring of Duty, and plays round it
with beautiful prismatic
refractions.”
Ed.]
[Footnote E: Compare Persius, ‘Satura’, ii. l. 38:
‘Quidquic calcaverit hic, rosa fiat.’
And Ben Jonson, in ‘The Sad Shepherd’, act I. scene i. ll. 8, 9:
’And where she went, the flowers
took thickest root,
As she had sow’d them with her odorous
foot.’
Also, a similar reference to Aphrodite in Hesiod, ‘Theogony’, vv. 192 ’seq.’—Ed.]
[Footnote F: Compare S. T. C. in ‘The Friend’ (edition 1818), vol. iii. p. 64.—Ed.]
Mr. J. R. Tutin has supplied me with the text of a proof copy of the sheets of the edition of 1807, which was cancelled by Wordsworth, in which the following stanzas take the place of the first four of that edition:
’There are who tread a blameless
way
In purity, and love, and truth,
Though resting on no better stay
Than on the genial sense of youth:
Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do the right, and know it not:
May joy be theirs while life shall last
And may a genial sense remain, when youth
is past.
Serene would be our days and bright;
And happy would our nature be;
If Love were an unerring light;
And Joy its own security.
And bless’d are they who in the
main,
This creed, even now, do entertain,
Do in this spirit live; yet know
That Man hath other hopes; strength which
elsewhere must grow.
I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust;
Resolv’d that nothing e’er
should press
Upon my present happiness,
I shov’d unwelcome tasks away:
But henceforth I would serve; and strictly
if I may.
O Power of duty! sent from God
To enforce on earth his high behest,
And keep us faithful to the road
Which conscience hath pronounc’d
the best:
Thou, who art Victory and Law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free,
From Strife, and from Despair, a glorious
Ministry! [G]’
Ed.
[Footnote G: In the original Ms. sent to the printer, I find that this stanza was transcribed by Coleridge.—Ed.]
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