the two females split the feminine response: one grieved and despaired, like Mary Shelley, and the other wrote warm-hearted outbursts of grief, blotted with tears (these are the two traditional feminine responses); while the male poet, showing tight-lipped restraint in his letter, wrote one controlled and polished expression of grief, formal and deeply movingboth less and more moving than his sister's heartbroken letters.
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Here the chapter should end, but there is a postscript. For Wordsworth wrote one more poem about the death of a child, a poem which has little relation to the rest of this chapter but that it is impossible to omit.
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| | There was a Boy: ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander!many a time At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake, And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him; and they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call, with quivering peals, And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud, Redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild Of jocund din; and, when a lengthened pause Of silence came and baffled his best skill, Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake.
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