Without forsaking a too earnest world,
To calm the affections, elevate the soul,
And consecrate her life to truth and love.
FOOTNOTES:
[CD] The opening lines of Milton's Samson Agonistes. Compare also The Wanderings of Cain (canto ii. l. 1), by S. T. Coleridge: "A little farther, O my father, yet a little farther, and we shall come into the open moonlight." ... "Lead on, my child!" said Cain; "guide me, little child!"—Ed.
[CE] Dora Wordsworth died in 1847, a loss which cast a gloom over her father's remaining years; and it is not without interest that in the last revision of the text of his poems, in the year of his own death, he substituted
O my own Dora, my belovèd child!
for the earlier reading,
Ed.