No More Learning

. if his eyes, which now
Have been so long familiar with the earth,
No more behold the horizontal sun 1800.

. . . if his eyes have now
Been doomed so long to settle on the earth
That not without some effort they behold
The countenance of the horizontal sun, 1815. ]


[Variant 21:

1837.

. . . or by the . . . 1800. ]



* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: In an early MS.
the title of this poem is 'Description of a
Beggar', and in the editions 1800 to 1820 the title was 'The Old
Cumberland Beggar, a Description'. --Ed. ]


[Footnote B: Wordsworth went to Racedown in 1795, when he was
twenty-five years of age; and was at Alfoxden in his twenty-eighth
year. --Ed. ]


[Footnote C: Compare Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' I. 84:

Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque videre
Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

Ed. ]


[Footnote D: With this poem compare Frederick William Faber's "Hymn,"
which he called 'The Old Labourer', beginning:

What end doth he fulfil!
He seems without a will.
Ed. ]


[Footnote E: In January 1801 Charles Lamb thus wrote to Wordsworth of
his 'Old Cumberland Beggar':

"It appears to me a fault that the instructions conveyed in it are too
direct, and like a lecture: they don't slide into the mind of the
reader while he is imagining no such matter,"

At the same time he refers to

"the delicate and curious feeling in the wish of the Beggar that he
may have about him the melody of birds, although he hears them not. "

('The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p.
163. )--Ed.