last in Bristol, the day I meant to devote to you, was such a day of
sadness, I could do nothing. On the Saturday, the Sunday, and ten days
after my arrival at Stowey, I felt a depression too dreadful to be
described.

So much I felt my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat; Nature within me seemed
In all her functions, weary of herself,

Wordsworth's[23] conversation aroused me somewhat, but even now I am not
the man I have been, and I think I never shall. A sort of calm
hopelessness diffuses itself over my heart. Indeed every mode of life
which has promised me bread and cheese, has been, one after another, torn
away from me, but God remains. I have no immediate pecuniary distress,
having received ten pounds from Lloyd. I employ myself now on a book of
morals in answer to Godwin, and on my tragedy.

* * * * *

There are some poets who write too much at their ease, from the facility
with which they please themselves. They do not often enough

'Feel their burdened breast
Heaving beneath incumbent Deity.'

So that to posterity their wreaths will look unseemly. Here, perhaps, an
everlasting Amaranth, and, close by its side, some weed of an hour, sere,
yellow, and shapeless. Their very beauties will lose half their effect,
from the bad company they keep. They rely too much on story and event, to
the neglect of those lofty imaginings that are peculiar to, and definite