"Keswick, Oct. 20, 1802.
My dear sir,
This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you,
when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been
thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and
your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not
now have been alive, if in addition to other miseries, I had had
immediate poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so
long. It has not been altogether indolence, or my habit of
procrastination which have kept me from writing, but an eager wish,--I
may truly say, a thirst of spirit, to have something honourable to tell
you of myself.
At present I must be content to tell you something cheerful. My health is
very much better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured by
study, or the act of sitting at my writing desk; but my eyes suffer if at
any time I have been intemperate in the use of candle light. This account
supposes another, namely, that my mind is calm, and more at ease. My dear
sir, when I was last with you at Stowey, my heart was often full, and I
could scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale of my distresses,
but could I add to your depression, when you were low? or how interrupt,
or cast a shade on your good spirits, that were so rare, and so precious
to you?
* * * * *
I found no comfort but in the direct speculations;--in the 'Ode to
Dejection,' which you were pleased with. These lines, in the original,
followed the line 'My shaping spirit of imagination,'--
'For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can,
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man;
This was my sole resource, my only plan
And that which suits a part infests the whole,
And now is almost grown the temple of my soul.'