IV.

Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears

Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres

Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers;

this well

May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

V.

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons-but she matches
Peter,

Though he took nineteen years, and she three days

In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays, Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

Like King Lear's "looped and windowed raggedness."

VI.

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow

Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;

In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello,

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate

Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.

END OF VOL. III.