SIMON LEE, THE OLD HUNTSMAN; * WITH AN INCIDENT IN WHICH HE WAS CONCERNED. In the sweet shire of Cardigan, * Written at Alfoxden, 1797. The old man had been huntsman to the Squires of that ilk. In the Edition of 1815 the first three stanzas ran thus: In the sweet shire of Cardigan, No doubt, a burthen weighty; A long blue livery coat has he, Yet meet him where you will, you see At once that he is poor. Full five-and-twenty years he lived A running huntsman merry ; And though he has but one eye left, His cheek is like a cherry. No man like him the horn could sound, And no man was so full of glee, To say the least, four counties round Had heard of Simon Lee; His master's dead, and no one now Dwells in the hall of Ivor; Men, dogs, and horses all are dead; And still the centre of his cheek No man like him the horn could sound, In those proud days, he little cared To blither tasks did Simon rouse The sleepers of the village. He all the country could outrun, Could leave both man and horse behind; And still there's something in the world For when the chiming hounds are out, He dearly loves their voices! * But, oh the heavy' change!-bereft Of health, strength, friends, and kindred, see! In liveried poverty.† * After this stanza the Edition of 1815 contains the following : His hunting feats have him bereft Of his right eye, as you may see: And then what limbs those feats have left To poor old Simon Lee ! He has no son, he has no child, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village common. This quatrain is not in the Edition of 1815. His Master's dead,—and no one now Dwells in the Hall of Ivor; Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; He is the sole survivor. And he is lean and he is sick ; One prop he has, and only one, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Beside their moss-grown hut of clay, This scrap of land he from the heath Oft, working by her Husband's side, Ruth does what Simon cannot do ; For she, with scanty cause for pride, Is stouter of the two.t * When he was young he little knew Of husbandry or tillage, And now is forced to work, though weak, Old Ruth works out of doors with him, And, though you with your utmost skill From labour could not wean them, 'Tis little, very little—all That they can do between them. Few months of life has he in store As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more My gentle Reader, I perceive O Reader! had you in your mind What more I have to say is short, And you must kindly take it : One summer-day I chanced to see The mattock tottered in his hand; * I hope you'll kindly take it.-Edit. 1815. "You're overtasked, good Simon Lee, I struck, and with a single blow At which the poor old Man so long The tears into his eyes were brought, -I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.* THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS.† WE walked along, while bright and red And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said, A village schoolmaster was he, *S. T. Coleridge, quoting this passage, and also the beginning of the last stanza but three in this poem, remarks that even in the smaller poems of Wordsworth "there is scarcely one that is not rendered valuable by some just and original reflection." Written at Goslar, 1799. |