When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
William Wordsworth. 1799.
Mr. W. Davenport Adams has asserted that the second verse of the above was written by Mrs. Wordsworth. Now Wordsworth was not married until 1802, three years after the poem on “Lucy” was written, and it seems very improbable that Mary Hutchinson would have contributed a verse praising a former sweetheart, even although she were dead.
On Wordsworth.
He lived amidst th’ untrodden ways
To Rydal Lake[74] that lead;
A bard whom there were none to praise,