My father was the shepherd's son,
Ah were my lot as lowly
My earthly course had softly run.—[MS.]
[298] {395} [Compare Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxxxii. lines 8, 9—
"Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings."
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 73, and note 16, p. 93.]
Ah! what hath been but what shall be,
The same dull scene renewing?
And all our fathers were are we
In erring and undoing.—[MS.]
[lu] When this corroding clay is gone.—[MS. erased.]
[lv] The stars in their eternal way.—[MS. L. erased.]
[lw] {396} A conscious light that can pervade.—[MS. erased.]