Poems, 1799

A collection of verse opens with a three-part visionary narrative in which a Maid, during a dreamlike nocturnal voyage, traverses ruined churches and burial vaults, encounters a spectre of Despair, witnesses the decay of human bodies, and confronts temptations toward self-destruction. The remainder gathers shorter poems—ballads, metrical letters, eclogues, and domestic sketches—that move between rural scenes, moral and religious reflection, complaints on poverty, and elegiac meditations on loss and mortality, combining narrative drama and lyric observation in a reflective Romantic register.