Rydale. No letters. They are slashing away in Benson's wood. William has since tea been talking about publishing the Yorkshire Wolds Poem with The Pedlar.
Thursday.—A fine morning. William worked at the poem of The Singing Bird.[1] Just as we were sitting down to dinner we heard Mr. Clarkson's voice. I ran down, William followed. He was so finely mounted that William was more intent upon the horse than the rider, an offence easily forgiven, for Mr. Clarkson was as proud of it himself as he well could be. . . .
Friday.—A very fine morning. We went to see Mr. Clarkson off. The sun shone while it rained, and the stones of the walls and the pebbles on the road glittered like silver. . . . William finished his poem of The Singing Bird. In the meantime I read the remainder of Lessing. In the evening after tea William wrote Alice Fell. He went to bed tired, with a wakeful mind and a weary body. . . .
Saturday Morning.—It was as cold as ever it has been all winter, very hard frost. . . . William finished Alice Fell, and then wrote the poem of The Beggar Woman, taken from a woman whom I had seen in May (now nearly two years ago) when John and he were at Gallow Hill. I sate with him at intervals all the morning, took down his stanzas, etc. . . . After tea I read to William that account of the little boy belonging to the tall woman, and an unlucky thing it was, for he could not escape from those very words, and so he could not write the poem. He left it unfinished, and went tired to bed. In our walk from Rydale he had got warmed with the subject, and had half cast the poem.
Sunday Morning.—William . . . got up at nine o'clock, but before he rose he had finished The Beggar Boy, and while we were at breakfast . . .he wrote the poem To a Butterfly! He ate not a morsel, but sate
- ↑ First published in 1807, under the title of The Sailor's Mother.—Ed.
