society, who fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs.
Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn's 15
Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched;
Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir
Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers,
Or from before it chasing wantonly
The many-coloured images imprest 20
Upon the bosom of a placid lake.

On February 28, 1810, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Lady Beaumont,
"Catherine is the only funny child in the family; the rest of the
children are _lively_, but Catherine is comical in every look and
motion. Thomas perpetually forces a tender smile by his simplicity, but
Catherine makes you laugh outright, though she can hardly say a dozen
words, and she joins in the laugh, as if sensible of the drollery of her
appearance."--ED.

SPANISH GUERILLAS, 1811

Composed 1811.--Published 1815

Classed among the "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty."--ED.

They seek, are sought; to daily battle led,
Shrink not, though far outnumbered by their Foes,
For they have learnt to open and to close
The ridges of grim war;[A] and at their head
Are captains such as erst their country bred 5
Or fostered, self-supported chiefs,--like those
Whom hardy Rome was fearful to oppose;
Whose desperate shock the Carthaginian fled.
In One who lived unknown a shepherd's life
Redoubted Viriatus breathes again;[B] 10
And Mina, nourished in the studious shade,[C]
With that great Leader[D] vies, who, sick of strife
And bloodshed, longed in quiet to be laid
In some green island of the western main.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Compare _Paradise Lost_, book vi. ll. 235-36--

and when to close
The ridges of grim war. ED.

[B] Viriatus, for eight or fourteen years leader of the Lusitanians in
the war with the Romans in the middle of the second century B.C. He
defeated many of the Roman generals, including Q. Pompeius. Some of the
historians say that he was originally a shepherd, and then a robber or
guerilla chieftain. (See Livy, books 52 and 54.)--ED.

[C] "Whilst the chief force of the French was occupied in Portugal and
Andalusia, and there remained in the interior of Spain only a few weak
corps, the Guerilla system took deep root, and in the course of 1811
attained its greatest per