Erinnerungen an Leo N. Tolstoi
9781465572103
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
TROUBLED YEARS By March 1810, after involving in endless trouble all who helped the editor, The Friend was numbered among the things that had been, and until October the poet lingered on in the Lake Country, apparently at his wits' ends once more. He took his latest failure very much to heart. In September 1814 he joined the Morgans in a cottage at Ashley, on the Bath Road, and planned the creation of some literary monuments, that when they came to be completed were of comparatively small account. He wrote some papers for the Courier, and towards the end of the year went with the Morgans to Calne in Wiltshire. There he wrote begging-letters, visited the leading representatives of the county and enjoyed the entertainment he received, ignored letters from his family, and wasted his great gifts by devoting them to consideration of local questions of small importance. By the kindness of friends, Hartley had been sent to Oxford, so doubtless his father thought he had done well for one of his family. In Koln, a town of monks and bones And pavements fang'd with murderous stones, And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? Stop, Christian Passer-by! Stop, Child of God! And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod There lies a Poet: or what once was He, O lift thy soul in prayer for S. T. C. That He who many a year with toil of breath Found death in life, may here find life in death. Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame He ask'd, and hoped thro' Christ. Do thou the same
