In him the savage virtue of the Race, 165 Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead: Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred. Glad were the vales, and every cottage-hearth; The Shepherd-lord was honoured more and more; 170 And, ages after he was laid in earth, "The good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore. The original text of this _Song_ was altered but little in succeeding editions, and was not changed at all till 1836 and 1845. The following is Wordsworth's explanatory note, appended to the poem in all the editions:-- "Henry Lord Clifford, etc. etc., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John, Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field,[H] which John, Lord Clifford, as is known to the Reader of English History, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, Son of the Duke of York who had fallen in the battle, 'in part of revenge' (say the Authors of the _History of Cumberland and Westmoreland_); 'for the Earl's Father had slain his.' A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); But who, as he adds, 'dare promise any thing temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak.' This, no doubt, I would observe by the bye, was an action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; 'for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this (say the Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she was born); that he was the next Child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her Children, see Austin Vincent in his book of Nobility, page 622, where he writes of them all. It may further be observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only twenty-five years of age, had been a leading Man and Commander, two or three years together in the Army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be entitled to mercy from his youth.--But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the Battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of the Poem, was deprived of his estate and honours during the space of twenty-four years; all which time he lived as a shepherd in Yorkshire, or in