No More Learning

They seem . . . 1800. ]



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FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: These Stanzas were designed to introduce a Ballad upon the
Story of a Danish Prince who had fled from Battle, and, for the sake of
the valuables about him, was murdered by the Inhabitant of a Cottage in
which he had taken refuge. The House fell under a curse, and the Spirit
of the Youth, it was believed, haunted the Valley where the crime had
been committed. --W. W. 1827. ]





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LUCY GRAY; OR, SOLITUDE


Composed 1799. --Published 1800


[Written at Goslar, in Germany, in 1799. It was founded on a
circumstance told me by my sister, of a little girl, who, not far from
Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow storm. Her footsteps were
tracked by her parents to the middle of a lock of a canal, and no other
vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however,
was found in the canal. The way in which the incident was treated, and
the spiritualizing of the character, might furnish hints for contrasting
the imaginative influences, which I have endeavoured to throw over
common life, with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of handling subjects of
the same kind.
This is not spoken to his disparagement, far from it; but
to direct the attention of thoughtful readers into whose hands these
notes may fall, to a comparison that may enlarge the circle of their
sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a catholic judgment. --I. F. ]

One of the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood. "--Ed.




Oft I had heard [1] of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; 5
She dwelt on a wide moor, [2]
--The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green; 10
But the sweet [3] face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night--
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light 15
Your mother through the snow. "

"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon--
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon! " 20

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped [4] a faggot-band;
He plied his work;--and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe: 25
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down; 30
And many a hill did Lucy climb
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight 35
To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.