Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9783849652210
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía europea

The Ballad as a humble literary type had a certain vogue towards the end of the eighteenth century. It covered the crudest realism as well as the most fantastical romance, and varied in style and treatment as widely as in subject-matter and level of culture. But it hardly held full rank as serious poetry. It was not considered to belong to the literature of culture, but rather to the ruder poetry of the common people. Hence the very title of the new 'experiment', Lyrical Ballads, marked somewhat emphatically the limited pretensions of the supposed single author. In this volume Coleridge as well as Wordsworth joined literary forces.

THE LAST OF THE FLOCK.

In distant countries I have been,

And yet I have not often seen

A healthy man, a man full grown

Weep in the public roads alone.

But such a one, on English ground,

And in the broad high-way, I met;

Along the broad high-way he came,

His cheeks with tears were wet.

Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;

And in his arms a lamb he had.

He saw me, and he turned aside,

As if he wished himself to hide:

Then with his coat he made essay

To wipe those briny tears away.

I follow'd him, and said, "My friend

"What ails you? wherefore weep you so?"

—"Shame on me, Sir! this lusty lamb,

He makes my tears to flow.

To-day I fetched him from the rock;

He is the last of all my flock.

When I was young, a single man.

And after youthful follies ran,

Though little given to care and thought,

Yet, so it was, a ewe I bought;

And other sheep from her I raised,

As healthy sheep as you might see,

And then I married, and was rich

As I could wish to be;

Of sheep I number'd a full score,

And every year encreas'd my store.

Year after year my stock it grew,

And from this one, this single ewe,

Full fifty comely sheep I raised,

As sweet a flock as ever grazed!

Upon the mountain did they feed;

They throve, and we at home did thrive.

—This lusty lamb of all my store

Is all that is alive:

And now I care not if we die,

And perish all of poverty.

Ten children, Sir! had I to feed,

Hard labour in a time of need!

My pride was tamed, and in our grief,

I of the parish ask'd relief.

They said I was a wealthy man;

My sheep upon the mountain fed,

And it was fit that thence I took

Whereof to buy us bread:"

"Do this; how can we give to you,"

They cried, "what to the poor is due?"

I sold a sheep as they had said,

And bought my little children bread,

And they were healthy with their food;

For me it never did me good.

A woeful time it was for me,

To see the end of all my gains,

The pr...

Table of contents

• ADVERTISEMENT.
• THE FOSTER-MOTHER'S TALE, A DRAMATIC FRAGMENT.
• LINES WRITTEN AT A SMALL DISTANCE FROM MY HOUSE,
• THE THORN.
• THE LAST OF THE FLOCK.
• LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY,