28 MAY 1932, Page 18

"• WEEP NOT, DOROTHY!"

[To the Editor of the SracraTos.] should be grateful if you would permit me to quote. for your readers, the correct text of a passage from the . epilogue to my book on Dorothy Wordsworth, which I see your reviewer has mutilated, in your issue of May 21st, without giving any indication that the passage has been altered at his discretion. - That your reviewer should wish I had blotted a thousand" .words is no concern of mine ; that he should, however, in a passage whose character depends upon its triple- rhythms, actually blot out those words on which the rhythm of the whole depends, and present the passage, thus flawed and dulled, as mine is an offence against prose every word or which has been long pondered, and no syllable of which could be altered without violation to unity, - _ - The correct version is as follows :

" Weep not, Dorothy ! Thou shalt return, thou shalt return in happy Grasmere, and then there shall be no more weeping. Yet not awhile ! The cattle shall oft browse over the children's graves in the early summer mornings ; 'many May-times shall shed their whits blossoms and many autumns their leaves and many Januarios their snows ; Dora shall come here to rest, and Hartley, and William-to lie beside his bright daughter—and to thee shall be appointed a long twilight of the soul, ere thou too shalt find peace."

--I am, Sir, &c., CATHERINE MACDONALD MACLEAN.

27 Lon Isa, Rhiwbina, Cardiff.