1. The date of this experience was not September four that follow. 3, but July 31, 1802. Its occasion was a trip to 2. The girl walking with Wordsworth is Caroline,
France, made possible by a brief truce in the war his daughter by Annette Vallon. For the event
(see Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journals, described see Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere
July 1802, p. 400). Wordsworth's conflicted feel-Journals, July 1802 (p. 400).
ings about this return to France, where he had 3. Where the souls destined for heaven rest after
once supported the Revolution and loved Annette death. Luke 16.22: 'And it came to pass, that the
Vallon, inform a number of personal and political beggar died, and was carried by the angels into
sonnets that he wrote in 1802, among them the Abraham's bosom.'
.
318 / WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
To Toussaint l'Ouverture4
Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!
Whether the rural Milk-maid by her Cow
Sing in thy hearing, or thou liest now
Alone in some deep dungeon's earless den,
5 O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
10 Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and Man's unconquerable mind. 1802 1803
September 1st, 18025
We had a fellow-Passenger who came
From Calais with us, gaudy in array,
A Negro Woman like a Lady gay,
Yet silent as a woman fearing blame;
5 Dejected, meek, yea pitiably tame,
She sat, from notice turning not away,
But on our proffered kindness still did lay
A weight of languid speech, or at the same
Was silent, motionless in eyes and face.
10 She was a Negro Woman driv'n from France,
Rejected like all others of that race,
Not one of whom may now find footing there;
This the poor Out-cast did to us declare,
Nor murmured at the unfeeling Ordinance. 1802 1803
4. First published in the Morning Post, Feb. 2, in prison in April 1803. 1803. Francois Dominique Toussaint, later called 5. First published, with the title 'The Banished
L'Ouverture (ca. 1743?1803), was a self-educated Negroes,' in the Morning Post, Feb. 11, 1803. In
slave who became leader of the slave rebellion in 1827 Wordsworth added an explanatory headnote
Haiti and governor of Santo Domingo. For oppos-beneath the title: 'Among the capricious acts of
ing Napoleon's edict reestablishing slavery (abol-tyranny that disgraced those times, was the chasing
ished in France and its colonial possessions in the of all Negroes from France by decree of the gov
early stages of the Revolution), Toussaint was ernment: we had a Fellow-passenger who was one
arrested and taken to Paris in June 1802. He died of the expelled.'
.
