Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/49

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Thus shall our healths do others good,

Whilst we ourselves do all we would;

For, freed from envy and from care,

What would we be but what we are?"

It remains that I should express my regret at the necessity of separating my compositions from some beautiful Poems of Mr. Coleridge, with which they have been long associated in publication. The feelings, with which that joint publication was made, have been gratified; its end is answered, and the time is come when considerations of general propriety dictate the separation. Three short pieces (now first published) are the work of a Female Friend; and the Reader, to whom they may be acceptable, is indebted to me for his pleasure; if any one regard them with dislike, or be disposed to condemn them, let the censure fall upon him, who, trusting in his own sense of their merit and their fitness for the place which they occupy, extorted them from the Authoress.

When I sate down to write this preface it was my intention to have made it more