No More Learning

. 1800. ]



[Variant 2:

1802.

The only one . . . 1800. ]


[Variant 3: The following stanza, in the edition of 1800, was omitted in
subsequent ones:

Poor Outcast! return--to receive thee once more
The house of thy Father will open its door,
And thou once again, in thy plain russet gown,
May'st hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own. [i]]



* * * * *

FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT


[Footnote A: Wordsworth originally wrote "sees. " S. T. C. suggested
"views. "--Ed.
]


* * * * *

SUB-FOOTNOTE ON VARIANT 3

[Sub-Footnote i:

"Susan stood for the representative of poor '_Rus in urbe_. ' There was
quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing never to be forgotten;
'bright volumes of vapour,' etc. The last verse of Susan was to be got
rid of, at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral
conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling her mop, and
contemplating the whirling phenomenon through blurred optics; but to
term her 'a poor outcast' seems as much as to say that poor Susan was
no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant to
express. "

Charles Lamb to Wordsworth. See 'The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by
Alfred Ainger, vol. i. , p. 287. --Ed. ]





* * * * *





1798

A NIGHT PIECE


Composed 1798. --Published 1815.


[Composed on the road between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden, extempore. I
distinctly recollect the very moment when I was struck, as
described,--'He looks up, the clouds are split,' etc.