Note 417 — CANTO THE EIGHTH.
Reading edition
"But Thy[*] most dreaded instrument, In working out a pure intent, Is Man—arrayed for mutual slaughter,— Yea, Carnage is thy daughter!"
Wordsworth's Thanksgiving Ode (January 18, 1816), stanza xii. lines 20, 23.
[*]To wit, the Deity's: this is perhaps as pretty a pedigree for murder as ever was found out by Garter King at Arms.—What would have been said, had any free-spoken people discovered such a lineage?
[Wordsworth omitted the lines in the last edition of his poems, which was revised by his own hand.]