He swore they would return with haste;
Whither they went I cannot tell-
I thought I heard, some minutes past,
Sounds as of a castle bell.

Stretch forth thy hand," thus ended she,
"And help a wretched maid to flee.”

*

ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1843)

THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE

A well there is in the West country,
And a clearer one never was seen;
There is not a wife in the West country

But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne. 4

An oak and an elm tree stand beside,

And behind does an ash-tree grow,
And a willow from the bank above
Droops to the water below.

A traveller came to the Well of St. Keyne;
Joyfully he drew nigh,

For from cock-crow he had been travelling,
And there was not a cloud in the sky.

He drank of the water so cool and clear,
For thirsty and hot was he,

And he sat down upon the bank,
Under the willow-tree.

There came a man from the house hard by
At the well to fill his pail,

On the well-side he rested it,

And he bade the stranger hail.

12

16

20

8

"If the Husband of this gifted well
Shall drink before his Wife,
A happy man thenceforth is he,
For he shall be Master for life.

36

40

This, we think, has the merit of being the very worst poem we ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume; and though it was scarcely to be expected, we confess, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his ambition, should so soon have attained to that distinction, the wonder may perhaps be diminished when we state, that it seems to us to consist of a happy union of all the faults, without any of the beauties, which belong to his school of poetry. It is just such a work, in short, as some wicked enemy of that school might be supposed to have devised, on purpose to make it ridiculous; and when we first took it up, we could not help suspecting that some ill-natured critic had actually taken this harsh method of instructing Mr. Wordsworth, by example, in the nature of those errors, against which our precepts had been so often directed in vain. We had not gone far, however, till we felt intimately that nothing in the nature of a joke could be so insupportably dull; and that this must be the work of one who