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THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT

BY MY SISTER

Composed 1805.—­Published 1815

[Suggested to her, while beside my sleeping children.—­I.  F.]

One of the “Poems founded on the Affections.”—­Ed.

  The days are cold, the nights are long,
  The north-wind sings a doleful song;
  Then hush again upon my breast;
  All merry things are now at rest,
    Save thee, my pretty Love! 5

  The kitten sleeps upon the hearth,
  The crickets long have ceased their mirth;
  There’s nothing stirring in the house
  Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse,
    Then why so busy thou? 10

  Nay! start not at that sparkling light;
  ’Tis but the moon that shines so bright
  On the window pane bedropped with rain: 
  Then, little Darling! sleep again,
    And wake when it is day. 15

This poem underwent no change in successive editions.  The title in all the earlier ones (1815 to 1843) was ’The Cottager to her Infant.  By a Female Friend’; and in the preface to the edition of 1815, Wordsworth wrote,

“Three short pieces (now first published) are the work of a Female Friend; ... if any one regard them with dislike, or be disposed to condemn them, let the censure fall upon him, who, trusting in his own sense of their merit, and their fitness for the place which they occupy, extorted them from the Authoress.”

In the edition of 1845, he disclosed the authorship; and gave the more natural title, ‘By my Sister’.  Other two poems by her were introduced into the edition of 1815, and subsequent ones, viz. the ’Address to a Child’, and ‘The Mother’s Return’.  In an appendix to a MS. copy of the ‘Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland’, by Dorothy Wordsworth, transcribed by Mrs. Clarkson, I find the poem ’The Cottager to her Infant’ with two additional stanzas, which are there attributed to Wordsworth.  The appendix runs thus: 

  “To my Niece Dorothy, a sleepless Baby

THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT

  (The third and fourth stanzas which follow by W. W.)

    ’Ah! if I were a lady gay
    I should not grieve with thee to play;
    Right gladly would I lie awake
    Thy lively spirits to partake,
      And ask no better cheer.

    But, Babe! there’s none to work for me. 
    And I must rise to industry;
    Soon as the cock begins to crow
    Thy mother to the fold must go
      To tend the sheep and kine.’”

Ed.

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THE WAGGONER [A]