Call Not The Royal Swede Unfortunate

Composed 1809.--Published 1815

Call not the royal Swede unfortunate, Who never did to Fortune bend the knee; Who slighted fear; rejected steadfastly Temptation; and whose kingly name and state Have "perished by his choice, and not his fate!" Hence lives He, to his inner self endeared; And hence, wherever virtue is revered, He sits a more exalted Potentate, Throned in the hearts of men. Should Heaven ordain That this great Servant of a righteous cause Must still have sad or vexing thoughts to endure, Yet may a sympathizing spirit pause, Admonished by these truths, and quench all pain In thankful joy and gratulation pure.

The royal Swede, "who never did to Fortune bend the knee," was Gustavus IV. He abdicated in 1809, and came to London at the close of the year 1810. Compare the earlier sonnet on the same King of Sweden (vol. ii. p. 338), beginning--

The Voice of song from distant lands shall call.

In the edition of 1827, Wordsworth added the following note:--"In this and a former Sonnet, in honour of the same Sovereign, let me be understood as a Poet availing himself of the situation which the King of Sweden occupied, and of the principles avowed in his manifestos; as laying hold of these advantages for the purpose of embodying moral truths. This remark might, perhaps, as well have been suppressed; for to those who may be in sympathy with the course of these Poems, it will be superfluous; and will, I fear, be thrown away upon that other class, whose besotted admiration of the intoxicated despot here placed in contrast with him, is the most melancholy evidence of degradation in British feeling and intellect which the times have furnished."--ED.