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This arose out of a flash of moonlight that struck the ground when I was approaching the steps that lead from the garden at Rydal Mount to the front of the house. “From her sunk eye a stagnant tear stole forth” is taken, with some loss, from a discarded poem, “The Convict,” in which occurred, when he was discovered lying in the cell, these lines:–

“But now he upraises the deep-sunken eye, The motion unsettles a tear; The silence of sorrow it seems to supply And asks of me–why I am here.”