Of Wordsworth’s own share--that far greater share of his--in the poems, it is interesting to notice how the general title, _Lyrical Ballads with a few other Poems_, is required to cover the whole of it. For they are of two kinds--Wordsworth’s poems in the volume--the simple stories of humble life, which may or may not be dramatic, in which the ‘I’ of the poet is not necessarily himself, and the poems which record unmistakably his personal feeling and experience, such as ‘The Tables Turned, an Evening Scene,’ the noble lines written near Tintern Abbey, and the small poem which rejoices in perhaps the longest title ever bestowed upon verse, ‘Lines written at a small distance from my house, and sent by my little boy to the person to whom they are addressed.’ These, and one or two others, are the contributions to which Coleridge refers when he says that ‘Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is characteristic of his genius.’ Many of Wordsworth’s verses, whether of the one class or the other, in the _Lyrical Ballads_, bear reference to the circumstances of the moment and the place--are stamped with the mark of his Alfoxden sojourn. ‘The Thorn’ arose out of his observing on the ridge of Quantock Hill a thorn on a stormy day. He had often passed it unnoticed in calm. ‘I said to myself, Cannot I by some invention do as much to make this Thorn prominently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment? I began the poem accordingly, and composed it with great rapidity.’ He adds that Sir George Beaumont painted a picture from it, which Wilkie thought his best. Wilkie--sagacious Scotsman!--did not commit himself too much by such praise. But Wordsworth thought the picture nobly done. The only fault of any consequence, he said, was the woman’s figure--too old and decrepit ‘for one likely to frequent an eminence on such a call.’ ‘Expostulation and Reply,’ which Wordsworth learned was a favourite among the Quakers, was composed in front of the house at Alfoxden, in the spring of 1798. ‘The Tables Turned’ was composed at the same time, in praise of the Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. And of ‘The Last of the Flock,’ the author says that the incident occurred in the village of Holford, close by Alfoxden. But I think the most interesting of the records is the record of ‘We are Seven.’ This was composed while walking in the favourite grove. In Wordsworth’s confession that he composed the last stanza first, we get at the secret of how entirely the subject had struck him from the spiritual side. ‘But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!’ ’Twas throwing words away, for still The little maid would have her will, And said, ‘Nay, we are seven!’