To warn the living, truth were ever told
DION
(See Plutarch)
Composed 1816.—Published 1820
[This poem was first introduced by a stanza that I have since transferred to the Notes, for reasons there given,[BZ] and I cannot comply with the request expressed by some of my friends that the rejected stanza should be restored. I hope they will be content if it be, hereafter, immediately attached to the poem, instead of its being degraded to a place in the Notes.—I. F.]
FOOTNOTE:
[BZ] To the edition of 1837, and subsequent ones, Wordsworth appended the following note:—