THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - VOL. 2 (Completed)

THE TWO THIEVES; OR, THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE

Composed 1798.--Published 1800

[This is described from the life, as I was in the habit of observing when a boy at Hawkshead School. Daniel was more than eighty years older than myself when he was daily, thus occupied, under my notice. No books have so early taught me to think of the changes to which human life issubject, and while looking at him I could not but say to myself--we may, one of us, I or the happiest of my playmates, live to become still more the object of pity, than this old man, this half-doatingpilferer.--I.F.]Included among the "Poems referring to the Period of Old Age."--Ed.

O now that the genius of Bewick [A] were mine,

And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne,

Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,

For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose. [1]

What feats would I work with my magical hand

Book-learning and books should be banished the land: [2]

And, for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls,

Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair;

Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw. Would he care!

For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his sheaves,

Oh, what would they be to my tale of two Thieves?

The One, yet unbreeched, is not three birthdays old,[3]

His Grandsire that age more than thirty times told;

There are ninety good seasons of fair and foul weather

Between them, and both go a-pilfering [4] together.

With chips is the carpenter strewing his floor?

Is a cart-load of turf [5] at an old woman's door?

Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide!

And his Grandson's as busy at work by his side.

Old Daniel begins; he stops short--and his eye,

Through the lost look of dotage, is cunning and sly:

'Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own,