Volume 8 — 1798
Reading edition
“THE SNOW-TRACKS OF MY FRIENDS I SEE”
The following incomplete stanzas were evidently written when The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman was being composed. They were all discarded, but have a biographical interest. I assign them to the year 1798.—Ed.
The snow-tracks of my friends I see, Their foot-marks do not trouble me, For ever left alone am I. Then wherefore should I fear to die? They to the last my friends did cherish 5 And to the last were good and kind, Methinks ’tis strange I did not perish The moment I was left behind. Why do I watch those running deer? And wherefore, wherefore come they here? 10 And wherefore do I seem to love The things that live, the things that move? Why do I look upon the sky? I do not live for what I see. Why open thus mine eyes? To die 15 Is all that now is left for me, If I could smother up my heart My life would then at once depart. My friends, you live, and yet you seem To me the people of a dream; 20 A dream in which there is no love, And yet, my friends, you live and move. When I could live without a pain, And feel no wish to be alive, In quiet hopelessness I sleep, 25 Alas! how quiet, and how deep! Oh no! I do not, cannot rue, I did not strive to follow you. I might have dropp’d, and died alone On unknown snows, a spot unknown. 30 This spot to me must needs be dear, Of my dear friends I see the trace. You saw me, friends, you laid me here, You know where my poor bones shall be, Then wherefore should I fear to die? 35 Alas that one beloved, forlorn, Should lie beneath the cold starlight! With them I think I could have borne The journey of another night, And with my friends now far away 40 I could have lived another day.
THE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR
MS. Variants, not inserted in Vol. I.
(l. 3) On a small pile of humble masonry Placed at the foot of … (l. 24) He travels on, a solitary man. His age has no companion. He is weak, So helpless in appearance that, for him The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw With careless hand his pence upon the ground But stops that he may lodge the coin Safe in the old man’s hat: nor quits him so, But as he goes towards him turns a look Sidelong and half-reverted.…