Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/245

BOOK VIII.] Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow

Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps

To the cold grave in which her husband slept,

One night, or haply more than one, through pain

Or half-insensate impotence of mind,

The fact was caught at greedily, and there

She must be visitant the whole year through,

Wetting the turf with never-ending tears.

Through quaint obliquities I might pursue

These cravings; when the fox-glove, one by one,

Upwards through every stage of the tall stem,

Had shed beside the public way its bells,

And stood of all dismantled, save the last

Left at the tapering ladder's top, that seemed

To bend as doth a slender blade of grass

Tipped with a rain-drop, Fancy loved to seat,

Beneath the plant despoiled, but crested still

With this last relic, soon itself to fall,

Some vagrant mother, whose arch little ones,

All unconcerned by her dejected plight,

Laughed as with rival eagerness their hands

Gathered the purple cups that round them lay,

Strewing the turf's green slope.

A diamond light