Note 10 — Early Poems

This stanza was added in 1842, taking the place of the following which was excised:— Sometimes I whistled in the wind, Sometimes I angled, thought and deed Torpid, as swallows left behind That winter ’neath the floating weed: At will to wander every way From brook to brook my sole delight, As lithe eels over meadows gray Oft shift their glimmering pool by night. In 1833 this stanza ran thus:— I loved from off the bridge to hear The rushing sound the water made, And see the fish that everywhere In the back-current glanced and played; Low down the tall flag-flower that sprung Beside the noisy stepping-stones, And the massed chestnut boughs that hung Thick-studded over with white cones,