"I travelled among unknown men"

Composed 1799.-Published 1807

One of the "Poems founded on the Affections."—Ed.

The Poem

text variant footnote line number

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

Contents

A

5

10

15

Variant 1:

The gladness of desire;

MS.

Variant 2:

1836

And thine is, too, the last green field
Which ...

1807

That ...

1815

Footnote A:

Compare Sara Coleridge's comment on this poem in the Biographia Literaria (1847), vol. ii. chap. ix. p. 173. Also Mrs. Oliphant's remarks in her Literary History of the Nineteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 306-9.—Ed.

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