One hour is theirs, nor more is mine—
Sad thought, which I would banish,
But that I know, where'er I go,
Thy genuine image, Yarrow!
Will dwell with me—to heighten joy,
And cheer my mind in sorrow.
Compare Yarrow Unvisited, vol. ii. p. 411; also Yarrow Revisited, composed in 1831; and Principal Shairp's Essay entitled "The Three Yarrows," in his Aspects of Poetry. "I meant to mention Yarrow Visited, with that stanza, 'But thou, that didst appear so fair'; than which I think no lovelier stanza can be found in the wide world of poetry;—yet the poem, on the whole, seems condemned to leave behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfaction, as if you had wronged the feeling with which, in what preceded it, you had resolved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined, in the most delicate manner, to make you, and scarce make you, feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other,[R] which has but one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the last two: this is all fine, except perhaps that that of 'studious ease, and generous cares,' has a little tinge of the less romantic about it." Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, in 1815. (See The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p. 286.)—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[36] 1815.