Then to the Fountain of all light returned.
TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
Hounslow, March 6, 1808.
After you left me, I passed Hounslow Heath in a state of moderate fear and alert disquietude. I will tell you, because it will give ease to your mind, that I am at this moment less alarmed and distressed at your absence than I was before it really began. I would not say this perhaps, if you were not what you are, as I might apprehend that it would make you less sensitive to my fears and sorrows on another occasion; but such apprehensions on my part would be as mean as ungrateful.
On Hounslow Heath I made an address improvviso to a gander. You say I have the power d’improvvisare, and I thought I could not make my first essay to a less formidable object, but one whom I had in fact mistaken for a highway robber. I imitated the style of some modern sonneteers, with what success you will tell me.
TO A GANDER ON HOUNSLOW HEATH.
Poor Gander, on this wide and lonely waste,
Patient of ill, and hopeless of all good,
Thou seek’st with toilsome industry thy food,