Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by-- this earlier reading continues: To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight Of day or the warm light: A place of thought where we in waiting lie. Another notable omitted passage is the introduction to "Dion," published in 1816: Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing O'er breezeless water on Locarno's lake.... Here nineteen lines full of beauty are sacrificed by Wordsworth in the interest of the unity of the poem. He struck out, too, some lines from "The Daisy," "The Thorn," and "Simon Lee," and eight stanzas have disappeared from "Peter Bell" since the first edition of that poem. Among them are these grotesque lines, favorites with Charles Lamb: Is it a party in a parlour? Cramm'd just as they on earth were cramm'd-- Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, All silent and all damn'd! And here are some verses that have interest from the glimpse they give of Wordsworth's faculty in a field that he declined to cultivate--the amatory or "fleshly," as it has been conveniently named for us of late. I quote from that rare book, the "Descriptive Sketches" of 1793; and as the lines are not included in any edition of his poems, they are unfamiliar to most readers. But two copies of this book, so far as I know, exist in this country. One of them, which belonged to the late Prof. Henry Reed, Wordsworth's American editor, is full of corrections in Wordsworth's own handwriting; and it is by the courtesy of its present owner that I am enabled to give here the early text with these corrections, never before printed. The young Wordsworth takes leave of Switzerland, at the conclusion of his pedestrian tour, with this glowing apostrophe: ye the Farewell! those forms that in thy noontide shade your Rest near their little plots of oaten glade, Dark Those stedfast eyes, that beating breasts inspire, To throw the "sultry rays" of young Desire; soft =Those= lips whose ^ tides of fragrance come and go Accordant to the cheek's unquiet glow; Ye warm Those shadowy breasts In love's soft light array'd And rising by the moon of passion sway'd.[G] [Footnote G: I venture to note, in passing, a small class of corrections in which the poet has cleared his text from certain innocencies of expression that were liable to be misread by persons on the alert for double meanings. The following are among the Wordsworthian simplicities that have been amended in the later editions; the reference is made to the octavos of 1815, which may be compared with any of the editions since 1836: Vol. I., page 111, "The Brothers," passage beginning, "James, tired perhaps." Vol. I., page 210, "Michael," passage beginning, "Old Michael, while he was a babe in arms."