Written of the poet’s child Catherine, who died in 1812 at three years of age, and of whom Wordsworth had also written, “Loving she is, and tractable, though wild.” Forty years after the death of this child and her brother, who died about the same time, the poet spoke of them to Aubrey de Vere with the same acute sense of bereavement as if they had only recently died.
DEATH
It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life’s ruddy springs forget to flow;