(Horsham).
Monday, July 18, 1803.
Dear Kate,
We have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday; and if you will come to-morrow morning I would be much obliged to you; and if you could any how bring Tom over to stay all night, I would thank you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, and come home to eat a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon your bringing Tom over to-morrow, and if you don't we shall be very much disappointed.
Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a fairing—which is some ginger-bread, sweetmeat, hunting-nuts, and a pocket book. Now I end.
I am not,
Your obedient servant,
P. B. Shelley
Even before Mr. Nahum's tower-room, I loved the "bonny brown hair" of this poem. Was it squirrel brown, or chestnut, or hazelnut, or autumn-beech, or heather-brown, or walnut, or old hay colour, or undappled-fawn, or dark lichen, or velvet brown, or marigold or pansy or wallflower-brown—or yet another?—every one of which would look charming beneath the rim of a round blue-ribanded "little straw hat."
[80]. "Widdecombe Fair."
To an eye looking down, the steeple of Widdecombe Church rises in the midst of Dartmoor like a lovely needle of ivory; and hidden beneath the turf around it lie, waiting, the bones of Tom Pearse, Bill Brewer ... Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
[83]. "There were Three Gipsies"
—and they were of England (Somerset), though to judge from this old ballad they may have padded it down from the Highlands:
There cam' Seven Egyptians on a day,
And wow, but they sang bonny!
And they sang sae sweet, and sae very complete,