“I Find It Written Of Simonides”

S.T.C. writing to Tom Poole, October 14, 1803, said that Wordsworth wrote to The Morning Post “as W. L. D., and sometimes with no signature.” There is ample evidence that the following sonnet was written by Wordsworth. He had contributed five sonnets to The Morning Post before the month of September 1803; and on the 10th of October in that year the following appeared.--ED.

I find it written of Simonides, That, travelling in strange countries, once he found A corpse that lay expos’d upon the ground, For which, with palms, he caus’d due obsequies To be perform’d, and paid all holy fees. Soon after this man’s ghost unto him came, And told him not to sail, as was his aim, On board a ship then ready for the seas. Simonides, admonish’d by the ghost, Remain’d behind: the ship the following day Set sail, was wreck’d, and all on board were lost. Thus was the tenderest Poet that could be, Who sang in antient Greece his loving lay, Sav’d out of many by his piety.

1804