"To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed A different fortune and more different mind-- Me from the spot where first I sprang to light Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix'd Its first domestic loves; and hence through life Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while Some have preserved me from life's pelting ills; But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem, If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once Dropp'd the collected shower; and some most false, False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel, Have tempted me to slumber in their shade E'en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps, Mix'd their own venom with the rain from Heaven, That I woke poison'd! But, all praise to Him Who gives us all things, more have yielded me _Permanent shelter_; and beside one friend, [19] Beneath the impervious covert of one oak, I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names Of husband and of father; not unhearing Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice, Which from my _childhood to maturer years_ Spake to me of predestinated wreaths, Bright with no fading colours!" These beautiful and affecting lines to his brother are dated May 26th, 1797, Nether Stowey, Somerset. In his will, dated Highgate, July 2nd, 1830, he again refers to this friend, and directs his executor to present a plain gold mourning ring to Thomas Poole, Esq., of Nether Stowey. "The Dedicatory Poem to my 'Juvenile Poems,' and my 'Fears in Solitude,'[20] render it unnecessary to say more than what I then, in my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a gray-headed man, still think and feel." In this volume, dedicated to his brother, are to be found several poems in early youth and upwards, none of later date than 1796. The "Ode," he says, "on the Departing Year, was written on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and published separately on the last day of that year. 'The Religious Musings' were written as early as Christmas 1794." He then was about to enter his 23rd year. The preface to this volume is a key to his opinions and feelings at that time, and which the foregoing part of this memoir is also intended to illustrate. "Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a history or epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write sonnets or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when, perhaps, nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort.