Book 2 — HEXAMETERS[304:1]
Reading edition
HEXAMETERS[304:1]
William, my teacher, my friend! dear William and dear Dorothea! Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table; Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing,[304:2] Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic, Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkéd left hand, 5 Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger; Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo; And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you. This is a galloping measure; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop! All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the stag-hounds, 10 Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still onwards,[304:3] I would full fain pull in my hard-mouthed runaway hunter; But our English Spondeans are clumsy yet impotent curb-reins; And so to make him go slowly, no way left have I but to lame him. William, my head and my heart! dear Poet that feelest and thinkest! 15 Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister! Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant, Long, long comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us. [305]O! it is all too far to send you mockeries idle: Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my beloved! 20 Feverish and wakeful I lie,—I am weary of feeling and thinking. Every thought is worn down, I am weary yet cannot be vacant. Five long hours have I tossed, rheumatic heats, dry and flushing, Gnawing behind in my head, and wandering and throbbing about me, Busy and tiresome, my friends, as the beat of the boding night-spider.[305:1] 25
I forget the beginning of the line:
. . . my eyes are a burthen, Now unwillingly closed, now open and aching with darkness. O! what a life is the eye! what a strange and inscrutable essence! Him that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him; Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother; 30 Him that smiled in his gladness as a babe that smiles in its slumber; Even for him it exists, it moves and stirs in its prison; Lives with a separate life, and 'Is it a Spirit?' he murmurs: 'Sure it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language.'
There was a great deal more, which I have forgotten. . . . The last line which I wrote, I remember, and write it for the truth of the sentiment, scarcely less true in company than in pain and solitude:—
William, my head and my heart! dear William and dear Dorothea! 35 You have all in each other; but I am lonely, and want you!
1798-9.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
[
28
]
strange] fine Letter, 1798-9, Cottle, 1837.
[
29
]
Him] He Cottle, 1837.
[
30
]
Him] He Cottle, 1837.
[
31
]
Him that ne'er smiled at the bosom as babe Letter, 1798-9: He that smiled at the bosom, the babe Cottle, 1837.
[
32
]
Even to him it exists, it stirs and moves Letter, 1798-9: Even to him it exists, it moves and stirs Cottle, 1837.
[
33
]
a Spirit] the Spirit Letter, 1798-9.
[
34
]
a] its Letter, 1798-9.