This arose out of a flash of moonlight that struck the ground 
      when I was approaching the steps that lead from the garden at 
      Rydal Mount to the front of the house. "From her sunk eye a 
      stagnant tear stole forth" is taken, with some loss, from a 
      discarded poem, "The Convict," in which occurred, when he was 
      discovered lying in the cell, these lines:--
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            "But now he upraises the deep-sunken eye,
               The motion unsettles a tear;
             The silence of sorrow it seems to supply
               And asks of me--why I am here."
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