ajornell Hmucraity Hibtarg JIttfaca. ■Ncm ^ork WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA. N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925 THE ENGLISH POETS T, H. WARD. VOL. IV, THE WIWETEENTH CEM'TUHTj WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON, THE ENGLISH POETS SELECTIONS WITH CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY VARIOUS WRITERS AND A GENERAL INTRODUCTION EY MATTHEW ARNOLD EDITED BY THOMAS HUMPHRY WARD, M.A. Late Felloiv of Brasenose College, Oxford VOL. IV WOKDSWOIITH to TENNYSOISr NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1902 \All rights reserved'^ A- ■■ ' Printed at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1880 Reprinted 1883, 1887, 1891 ; with additions, 1894 ; reprinted 1895, 1897 1898, 1900, 190a The Editor wishes to express his thanks to Hallam Lord Tennyson ; to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. ; and to Mrs. Matthew Arnold, for the permission which they have kindly given him to print extracts from the poems of Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Matthew Arnold. CONTENTS. PAGE WiLLTAM Wordsworth (1770-1850) R.W.ChurcTt,Deanof St Paul's i The Reverie of Poor Susan , . 16 - Expostulation and Reply . . . » . > * . .16 —The Tables Turned 17 _ Lines composed near Tintern Abbey ,,.... 18 ~Lines written in Early Spring 23 A Poet's Epitaph 24 Lucy Gray ; or, Solitude ......... 26 -Lucy 28 The Two April Mornings ......... 30 The Fountain. A Conversation ....... 32 There was a Boy 34 Influence of Natural Objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth 35 The Green Linnet ..,.37 Yew Trees .,..,,38 'To a Highland Girl 39 -The Solitary Reaper ....,...,.41 Yarrow Unvisited ...... ....42 -To the Cuckoo -....,44 At the Grave of Bums ......... 45 Thoughts suggested the day following 48 ■^ ' She was a Phantom' 50 ^' I wandered lonely ' 51 » * Ode to Duty »..52 The Nightingale ..........53 The Mountain Echo ,..,54 Ode. Intimations of Immortality 55 Laodamia 61 To [Miss Blackett] on her first Ascent to the Sunimit of Hel- vellyn ...66 Evening Voluntary • , , 67 Extracts from the Prelude : [Apparition on the Lake] ...... . , 70 [Morning after the Ball] 7a [Defile of Gondo] ....,,,, 73 [Ascent of Snowdon] ......,., 73 Extracts from the Excursion : [Twin Peaks of the Valley] 76 [Mist opening in the hills] j-j [Among the Mountains] ........ 78 [The Moon among Trees] 79 [The Sea Shell] 80 vm CONTENTS, Sonnets : [The Gains of Restraint] 82 [On the Beach at Calais] 82 —Composed upon Westminster Bridge •83 Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland , . 83 Milton , 84 [The World's Ravages] 84 [The Throne of Death] 85 [The Shock of Bereavement] 85 After-Thought 86 Mutability 86 To Lady Fitzgerald 87 On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford to Naples 87 [Past Years of Home] 88 Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) .... Sir Henry Taylor 89 Extract from The Pleasures of Memory 92 „ „ Human Life 93 „ „ Italy 94 Ginevra 95 William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850) .... Austin Dobson 99 Sonnets : Written at Ostend .... ..... 100 Influence of Time on Grief ....... 100 November 1793 loi Bereavement loi Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) . . Walter H. Pater 102 Time, Real and Imaginary 115 • Love 115 Sonnet iiS The Eolian Harp 119 Frost at Midnight 121 Dejection. An Ode 123 Sonnet. Composed on a Journey Homewards .... 127 First Part of Christabel 128 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 136 Robert Southey (1774-1843) .... Sir Henry Taylor 153 Extract from Roderick . 165 „ „ Thalaba .168 ,, ,, Kehama .... .... 170 Ode, written during the Negociations with Buonaparte . . . 172 Funeral OJe on the Death of the Princess Charlotte .... 176 The Holly Tree 180 The Battle of Blenheim 182 Stanzas written in his Library 184 Walter Scott (1771-1836) .... Gold-win Smith 186 The Last Minstrel (from The Lay of the Last Minstrel) . . .194 The Camp (from Marmion) 197 Battle of Bear an Duine (from The Lady of the Lake) . . . 202 CONTENTS. ix PAGE The Buccaneer (from Rokeby) . . . , , . . . 203 Lake Coriskin (from The Lord of the Isles) 209 The Eve of St. John 211 Edmund's Song (from Rokeby) ...,..• 218 County Guy (from Quentin Durward) ....•• 220 The Violet 220 Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) . , , A. Mary F. Robinson 221 The Chough and Crow 223 Fisherman's Song • 223 Song 224 Song 225 James Hogg (1770-1835) , Prof. Minto 227 A Boy's Song 228 Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) .... Sir Henry Taylor 229 Hohenlinden > • • • 233 Ye Mariners of England ...«.•<»• 234 Battle of the Baltic 235 The Oneyda's Death Song • 237 John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) . . , . Austin Dohson 240 Extract from The Monks and the Giants ...... 241 Lord Byron (1788-1824) J- A. Symonds 244 When we two parted ......... 256 And thou art dead, as young and fair 257 Extract from The Bride of Abydos . . . • . . . . 259 Extracts from The Hebrew Melodies : She walks in beauty ..'.•..<.. 259 Oh I snatch'd away in beauty's bloom 260 Extract from Parisina . . . , 261 Stanzas for Music .....,,... 261 Stanzas for Music , 262 Fare Thee Well 263 Stanzas to Augusta 265 Epistle to Augusta 266 The Dream 270 Extracts from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage : Harold the Wanderer 276 Night and Tempest 281 Ocean 284 Prometheus . 286 Sonnet on Chillon 288 Stanzas for Music 288 So we 'U go no more a roving 289 Stanzas written on the road between Florence and Pisa . . . 289 Stanzas .. 290 Extracts from Don Juan : Donna Juha's letter 291 First Love ........... 29a X CONTENTS. PAGE The Isles of Greece ......... 294 Haidee and Juan 297 Invocation to the Spirit of Achilles (from The Deformed Transformed) 300 On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year 302 William Tennant (1786-1848) Prof. Minto 304 Rab the Ranter's Bag-pipe Playing (from Anster Fair) . . . 306 Thomas Moore {1779-1852) .... Edmund W. Gosse 309 Extracts from Lalla Rookh : The Light of the Haram 313 The Fire-Worshippers . .314 "When he, who adores thee . , 315 Believe me, if all those endearing young charms . ■. . . 316 By that lake, whose gloomy shore . ... . .. . . 316 Lesbia hath a beaming eye 317 At the mid hour of night 319 The Young May Moon 310 The time I 've lost in wooing 320 Dear harp of my country 321 Echo ••••........ 321 Oft in the stilly night (from National Airs) 322 Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) .... Edmund IV. Gosse 323 The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna 324 Song 325 Charles Lamb (1775-1834) ...... Prof. D&uuden 326 Hester 323 The Old Familiar Faces 329 The Grandame .....,,,.,. 329 On an Infant dying as soon as born . . . . . , .331 Work ............ 332 Parental Recollections 300 Felicia Hemans (1793-1835) . , . A. Mary F. Robinson 334 A Ballad of Roncesvalles 306 A Dirge 338 Casablanca 003 Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) Prof. Dowden 340 A Garden and Summer House (from The Story of Rimini) , . 343 Rondeau - .^ To the Grasshopper and the Cricket -45 The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit \ \ -.5 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) . . Frederick W. H. Myers 348 Stanzas — April 18 14 Extract from Alastor, or The Spirit of Solittide . . \ '. %z.^ Stanzas written in Dejection near Naples .... Ode to the West Wind ' ' II Extracts from Prometheus Unbound : Semichorus I of Spirits ....... 5-3 CONTENTS. Ki PAGE Semichorus II .,....,,, . 378 Voice in the air, singing 379 Hymn of Pan ... - . 380 The Cloud 381 To a Skylark 383 Extract from Epipsychidion 387 Adonais ; an Elegy on the Death of John Keats . . . .393 To Night 409 To 410 A Lament 411 To 411 Last Chorus of Hellas . 412 Lines 413 To Jane — the Recollection 414 Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) . , . Edmund W. Gosse 417 Extracts from Rhododaphne : The Spell of the Laurel-Rose ....... 420 The Vengeance of Bacchus . . . , . . .421 The War-Song of Dinas-Vawr (from the Misfortunes of Elphin) . 423 The Men of Gotham (from Nightmare Abbey) 424 The Flower of Love (from Melincourt) 425 The Grave of Love 426 Mr. Cypress's Song in Ridicule of Lord Byron (from Nightmare Abbey) 426 John Keats (1795-1821) Matthew Arnold 427 Endymion (from Miscellaneous Poems) 438 Extracts from Endymion ; Beauty 438 Hymn to Pan 439 Bacchus 439 Cynthia's Bridal Evening (from Miscellaneous Poems) . . . 440 Extracts from Hyperion : Saturn 440 Coelus to Hyperion . . , . , . , . . 442 Oceanus 443 Hyperion's Arrival 445 The Flight (from The Eve of St. Agnes) ...... 446 Ode to a Nightingale . .451 Ode on a Grecian Urn . . . . . . . . . 4^54 Ode 455 To Autumn 457 Lines on the Mermaid Tavern . 458 Sonnets : On first looking into Chapman's Homer ..... 459 Written in January 18T7 459 Written in January 1818 ........ 460 Addressed to Haydon , 460 On the Grasshopper and the Cricket 461 The Human Seasons . . .461 xii CONTENTS. PAGE On a Picture of Leander ...••••• 4^^ Keats's Last Sonnet • •• 4^2 The Bard speaks (from The Epistle to my brother George) . . 463 Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864). ^ . Lord Houghton 465 Extracts from Gebir : The Shell , 473 Prayers ..... ^ ..•• • 473 Tamar and the Nymph ........ 474 ToTacasa 47^ Fassulan Idyl 477 Iphigeneia and Agamemnon 479 The Death of Artemidora 4^° Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra (from Pericles and Aspasia) • 481 Cleone to Aspasia 482 The Maid's Lament (from the Examination of Shakespeare) . . 483 * Ye who have toiled uphill '......«• 4^4 ' Twenty years hence '.......v. 484 ' Lately our poets loitered '......>• 4^5 ' When Helen first saw wrinkles *.«...«. 485 * Say ye, that years roll on '...«... . 485 Friends 486 ' You smiled, you spoke * . , 486 * There are who say ' . 486 ' Why, why repine '...., 486 Children playing in a Churchyard .....•• 487 ' Ah 1 what avails the sceptered race 1 ' , , - . . . 487 On Southey's Death , , , . 488 ' An aged man, who loved to doze away ' . „ , . . . 488 For an Epitaph at Fiesole 488 Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874) . . Edmund W. Gosse 489 For Music 491 The Sea 49^ A Bacchanalian Song 492 A Repose 493 Inscription for a Fountain 494 A Petition to Time 494 Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849) ..... Pro/. Dawden 495 An Excursion to the Mountains (from The Village Patriarch) . . 497 Song 498 Battle Song . 499 A Poet's Epitaph 500 The Three Marys at Castle Howard in 1812 and 1837 ... 501 Plaint 501 JOHN Keble (1792-1866) . A. P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster 503 Extracts from The Christian Year : Third Sunday in Lent ^09 Second Sunday after Easter ;...,.. 510 CONTENTS. xiii PAGE Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity «.».«.. 512 All Saints' Day .......... 514 , United States (from Lyra Apostolica) 515 The Waterfall (from Lyra Innocentium) 516 Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) Prof. Dowden 518 Sonnet ... 520 To a Lofty Beauty, from her Poor Kinsman 520 May, 1840 521 To a Deaf and Dumb Little Girl 521 Stanzas 522 Song 523 Summer Rain 523 William Motherwell (1797-1834) .... Prof. Minto 524 True Love's Dirge 525 Jeanie Morrison . » 527 Thomas Hood (1799-1845) ...... Austin Dobson 531 The Bridge of Sighs 534 A Parental Ode to my Son, aged Three Years and Five Months . 537 The Death-Bed 539 Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) The Editor 540 The Battle of Naseby ......... 54i Epitaph on a Jacobite .......•• 543 WiNTHROP Mackworth Praed (1802-1839) . . Austin Dobson 544 A Letter of Advice . . ' 546 The Vicar 549 Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) . . Edmund W. Gosse 552 Dirge for Wolfram (from Death's Jest Book, Act ii) ... 555 Song (from Torrismond, Sc. iii) SH Amala's Bridal Song (from Death's Jest Book, Act iv) . . .55^ Athulf s Song (from Death's Jest Book, Act iv) .... 557 Sailor's Song (from Death's Jest Book, Act i) 558 Hesperus Song (from The Bride's Tragedy, Act i) . . . . SS^ Song of the Stygian Naiades 559 Wolfram's Song (from Death's Jest Book, Act v) . . . , 560 Extract from Dream-Pedlary 56 r Elizabeth Barrett Browning (i8oi-i86i) . ,W.T. Arnold 562 Irreparableness 568 Grief 568 Sonnets from the Portuguese 568 Extract from Casa Guidi Windows ST^ A Musical Instrument 57^ The Forced Recruit. Solferino, 1859 573 Extracts from Aurora Leigh : Aurora's Home 574 The Beauty of England 57^ A Simile 577 xiy CONTENTS. PAGE Marian's Child ..«.••••>• 573 The Journey South . . . , 579 Emily Bronte (1819-1848) Edmund W. Gosse 581 Last Lines 584 Stanzas •• 5^5 Remembrance 5^5 The Old Stoic 586 A Death-Scene 587 Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) .... The Editor 589 Qua Cursum Ventus 593 Qui Laborat, Orat 593 The Hidden Love 594 • With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning ' . . 595 ' Perchfe Pensa ? Pensando s'invecchia' 596 The Shadow 596 Extracts from Dipsychus : Isolation . . ......... 599 In Venice ; Dipsychus speaks 599 The Stream of Life (from Poems on Life and Duty) . , . . 602 Extracts from The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich : The Highland Stream ........ 602 Elspie and Philip ......... 603 Philip to Adam « . . . . 604 Extracts from Songs in Absence : Come Back !...•.«.... 605 Where lies the land ? ........ 607 •Say not the struggle nought availeth' (from Miscellaneous Poems) . 607 Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) W. E. Henley 608 Pallas in Olympus (from Andromeda) , . . . . . . 610 The Last Buccanier .......... 610 The Sands of Dee (from Alton Locke) , , . , , . . 612 A Farewell . ... 612 Dolcino to Margaret 613 Airly Beacon 613 A Boat-Song (from Hypatia) . 613 The Song of Madame Do-as-you-would-berdone-by .... 614 The * Old, old Song ' 614 Sydney Dobell (1824-1874) Prof. Nichol 615 Monk's Song (from The Roman) gj^ Sonnets : America 618 The Common Grave gjn England (from Balder) , 6 jg Chamouni « ,, 620 James Thomson (1834-1882) P. B. Manton 621 The City of Dreadful Night , , . 623 CONTENTS. XV PAGE Arthur 0'Shaughnessy(i844-i88i) . . . Edmund W. Gosse 629 From ' Bisclaveret ' (Epic of Women) . , . . . . 630 Song (from Lays of France) 631 Song (from Music and Moonlight) 632 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) . . . Walter H. Pater 633 Ttie Blessed Damozel 642 Love Enthroned .... 646 Love's Nocturn 646 Love's. Lovers 651 Love-Lily 651 Parted Love 652 The Portrait > ■ . . 653 Sibylla Palmifera 656 Nevirbom Death 656 Soothsay 657 Hope overtaken ........... 660 The Monochord 660 Ave 661 Robert Browning (1812-1889) . . . Margaret L. Woods 665 How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix . . . 673 Pippa's Song 675 The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church . . . 675 The Lost Leader 679 David singing before Saul 680 Home Thoughts, from Abroad 682 Love among the Ruins 682 Incident of the French Camp 685 Two in the Campagna 686 Up at a Villa— Down in the City 688 May and Death .......... 6qi Prospice . . . 693 Rabbi Ben Ezra . 693 Confessions . . 699 Dedication to the Ring and the Book 701 The Householder (Epilogue to Fifine at the Fair) .... 702 Epilogue to Asolando . 703 Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) The Editor 704 Sonnets : To a Friend 710 Shakespeare 710 Requiescat 711 Human Life 711 From 'Resignation' 712 From • Sohrab and Rustum * . 714 The Forsaken Merman . . .721 Austerity of Poetry 725 To Marguerite . 726 The Strayed Reveller 727 XVI CONTENTS. PAGE Callicles' Song (from Empedocles on Etna) 735 Dover Beach - i 737 Palladium 73^ Morality 739 Memorial Verses 740 Rugby Chapel 742 Thyrsis ... 748 Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) .... Prof. Jebb 755 Claribel (a Melody) 765 A Dirge . . 765 The Lady of Shalott . 767 Eleanore ............ 772 Of old sat Freedom on the Heights . . . . . . . 776 Love thou thy Land 777 You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease 780 Morte d' Arthur 781 Ulysses 785 St. Agnes' Eve 787 Break, break, break . . 788 The Splendour falls (from The Princess) 789 Tears, idle Tears ,, ,, 789 Extracts from In Memoriam . . . . . , . , 790 ,, ,, Maud 793 The Brook 796 Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington 797 The Charge of the Light Brigade 805 Northern Farmer (Old Style) . . , 807 Tithonus 810 Milton 812 The Sailor Boy , 812 Arthur's Farewell (from Guinevere) 813 The Revenge: a Ballad of the Fleet .,.,,,. 815 To Virgil 819 Hymn (from Akbar's Dream) 821 God and the Universe 821 Crossing the Bar , . . 82a WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, at Cockermoulh, a town on the edge of the Cumberland highlands. His father was agent to Lord Lowther, and came of an old north country stock. Both father and mother died in his boyhood ; his mother first, his father when he was fourteen. He went to school in the neighbourhood, at Hawkshead, and his school days were days of much liberty, both in playing and reading. In October 1787 he went to St. John's College, Cambridge. But he made no mark at the university, and in January 1791 he took his degree and left Cambridge. Like many of his generation he was filled with' enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and after taking his degree he resided for more than a year in France. The Reign of Terror drove him home again ; he came to London, unsettled in his plans ; he was in Dorsetshire (1795), then at Alfoxden in the Somersetshire Quantocks, where he saw much of S. T. Coleridge. In 1793 he published a volume of poems, and in 1 798 appeared, at Bristol, the first volume of the Lyrical Ballads, intended to be a joint work of Coleridge and Wordsworth, but to which Coleridge only contributed The Ancient Mariner, and two or three other pieces. The two friends went to Germany at the end of 1 798, and Wordsworth, with his sister, spent the winter at Goslar, When he returned to England, he also relumed for good to his own northern moun- tains and lakes. He settled, with his sister, near Grasmere, meaning to give himself to poetical composition as the business of his life, and in 1 800 published the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, and finally fixed his home in the lakes, though it was not till several years afterwards (1813) that he took up his abode in the place henceforth connected with his name, Rydal Mount. During all the early part of the century he was very busy. Besides shorter pieces, suggested by the incidents or feelings of the day, he was at work from 1 799 to 1805 on a poem, The Prelude, describing the history and growth of his own mind, and intended to be an introduction to the greater philosophical poem which he was already meditating. The Recluse— in part, and only in part, realised in The Excursion. The Exct.rsion was published in 18 14. Composition took many shapes in the various collections published by Wordsworth, from the Lyrical Ballads in 1800 down to his death. But especially his poetical efforts took the shape of the sonnet. Large collections VOL. IV. B THE ENGLISH POETS. of sonnets marked the working of his thoughts and feelings on certain groups of subjects, or were the memorials of scenes which had interested him. He once, and early in his career, attempted the drama (The Borderers, 1795-6) but with little success. From the first he took a keen interest in all political and social questions, and he was an impassioned and forcible prose writer. His life was a long one, of steady work and much happiness. He died April 23, "1850, at Rydal Mount] Wordsworth was, first and foremost, a philosophical thinker ; a man whose intention and purpose of life it was to think out for himself, faithfully and seriously, the questions concerning ' Man and Nature and Human Life.' He tried to animate and invest with imaginative light the convictions of religious, practical, homely but high-hearted England, as Goethe thought out in his poetry the speculations and sceptical moods of inquisitive and critical Germany. He was a poet, because the poetical gift and faculty had been so bestowed on him that he could not fail in one way or another to exercise it : but in deliberate purpose and plan he was a poet, because poetry offered him the richest, the most varied, and the completest method of reaching truth in the matters which interested him, and of expressing and recommending its lessons, of 'making them dwellers in the hearts of men.' 'Every great poet,' he said, ' is a teacher ; I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing.' Not like poets writing sirhply to please ; not like Lucretius or Pope, casting other men's thought into ingenious or highly-coloured or epigrammatic verse ; not like Homer or Shake- speare or Milton, standing in impersonal distance from their wonderful creations ; not like Shelley, full of philosophic ideas but incapable from his wild nature of philosophic steadiness of thought ; not even like poets who write to give an outlet to their sense of the beauty, the strangeness, the pathetic mystery of the world, to un- burden their misgivings, to invite sympathy with their sorrows or hopes, — Wordsworth, with all his imagination, and in his moments of highest rapture, has a practical sense of a charge committed to him. He is as much in earnest as a prophet, and he holds himself as responsible for obedience to his call and for its fulfilrnent as a prophet. 'To console the afflicted ; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous,' — this is his own account of the purpose of his poetry. (Letter to Lady Beaumont, May, 1807.) He has given the same account in the Preface to The Excursion. WIL LI AM VVOKDS IVOR TH. 'Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder \acancy, scooped out By help of dreams — can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our minds, into the mind of man — My haunt, and the main region of my song. — Beauty — a living presence of the earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal forms Which craft of delicate spirits halh composed From earth's materials — waits upon my steps ; Pitches her tents before me as I move, An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old Sought in the Atlantic main — why should they be A history oidy of departed things, Or a mere fiction of what never was f For the discerning intdlect of man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. — I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation : — and, by tvords Which speak of nothing more than what ive are. Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain To noble raptures ; while my voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual mind (And the progres?ive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external world Is fitted : — and how exquisitely, too — Theme this but little heard of among men — The external world is fitted to the mind ; And the creation (by no lower name Can it be called) which they with blended mi^jht Accomplish : — this is our high argument.' Wordsworth's poetry and his idea of the office of poetry must be traced, like many other remarkable things, to the French Revolution. He very early, even in his boyhood, became aware of that sympathy with external nature, and of that power of dis- criminating insight into the characteristic varieties of its beauty and awfulness, which afterwards so strongly marked his writings. ' 1 recollect distinctly,' he says of a description in one of his early B 2 THE ENGLISH POETS. poems, 'the very spot where this struck me. The moment was important in my poetical history; for I date from it my conscious- ness of the infinite variety of natural appearances which have been unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, and I made a resolution to supply in some measure the deficiency.' We have abundant evidence how he kept his purpose. While Wordsworth was at Cambridge, the French Revolution was beginning. The contagion of the great ideas which it pro- claimed caught him as it also laid hold on so many among the nobler spirits of the young generation. To him at that time, as he tells us himself, • The whole eai th The beauty wore of promise ; that which sets The budding rose above the rose full blown.' The wonder, the sjanpathy, the enthusiasm which swept him and them away like a torrent, though in his case the torrent's course was but a short one, left ineffaceable marks on his character and his writings. He was not at first so easily shocked as others were at the excesses of the revolution. His stern North- country nature could bear and approve much terrible retribution for the old wrongs of the poor and the weak at the hands of nobles and kings. In his Apology for the French Revolution, 1793, he sneered at Bishop Watson for the importance which the Bishop attached to ' the personal sufferings of the late royal martyr,' and for joining in the 'idle cry of modish lamentation which has resounded from the court to the cottage ' : and he boldly accepted the doctrine that in a time of revolution, which cannot be a time of liberty, ' political virtues are developed at the expense of moral ones.' But though the guillotine and the revolutionary tribunal had not daunted him, he recoiled from the military des- potism and the fever of conquest in which they ended. The changes in his fundamental principles, in his thoughts of man and his duties, were not great : the change in his application of them and in his judgment of the men, the parties, the institutions, the measures, by which they were to be guarded and carried out, was great indeed. The hopes and affections which revolutionary France had so deeply disappointed were transferred to what was most ancient, most historic, most strongly rooted by custom and usage, in traditional and unreformed England. With characteristic courage he never cared to apologise for a political change which was as complete and striking as a change to a new religion. He WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. scarcely attempted directly to explain it. He left it to tell its own story in his poetical creations, and in the elaborate pictures of character, his own and others', inserted into his longer works, The Prelude and The Excursion. But he was not a man to change with half a heart. He left behind him for ever all the beliefs and antici- pations and illusions which, like spells, had bound him to Jacobin France. He turned away from it in permanent and strong disgust, and settled down into the sturdy English Tory patriot of the begin- ning of the century. But this unreserved and absorbing interest in the wonderful ideas and events of the French Revolution, transient as it was, had the effect upon him which great interruptions of the common course of things and life have on powerful natures. They were a call and a strain on his intellect and will, first in taking them in, then in judging, sifting, accepting or refusing them, which drew forth to the full all that he had of strength and individual character. But for that, he might have been, and doubtless would have been, the poet of nature, a follower, but with richer gifts, of Thomson, Aken- side, perhaps Cowper. But it was the trial and the struggle which he went through, amid the hopes and overthrows of the French Revo- kition, which annealed his mind to its highest temper, which gave largeness to his sympathies and reality and power to his ideas. Every one knows that Wordsworth's early poetry was received with a shout of derision, such as, except in the case of Keats, has never attended the first appearance of a great poet. Every one know-:,, too, that in a quarter of a century it was succeeded by a growth of profound and enthusiastic admiration, which, though it has been limited by the rise of new forms of deep and powerful poetry, is still far from being spent or even reduced, though it is expressed with more discrimination than of old, in all who have a right to judge of English poetry. This was the inevitable result of the characteristic qualities of Wordsworth's genius, though for a time the quarrel between the poet and his critics was aggravated by accidental and temporary circumstances. Wordsworth is destined, if any poet is, to be im- mortal ; but immortality does not necessarily mean popularity. That in Wordsworth which made one class of readers find in him beauty, grandeur, and truth, which they had never found before, will certainly tell on the same class in future years : — ' What he has loved, Others will love, and he will teach them how.* THE ENGLISH POETS. But mankind is deeply divided in its sympathies and tastes ; and for a large portion of it, not merely of those who read, but of those who create and govern opinion, that which Wordsworth loved and aimed at and sought to represent will always be the object, not only of indifference but of genuine dislike. Add to this that Wordsworth's genius, though great, and noble, and lofty, was in a marked way limited, and that in his own exposition and defence of his view of poetry he was curiously and unfortunately one-sided and in- adequate, and provokingly stiff and dogmatic. This, of course, only affected an extinct controversy. But the controversy marked at once the power and the bold novelty of Wordsworth's attempt to purify and exalt English poetry. Wordsworth was, and felt himself to be, a discoverer, and like other great discoverers, his victory was in seeing by faith things which were not yet seen, but which were obvious, or soon became so, when once shown. He opened a new world of thought and enjoyment to Englishmen ; his work formed an epoch in the intellectual and moral history of the race. But for that very reason he had, as Coleridge said, like all great artists, to create the taste by which he was to be relished, to teach the art by which he was to be seen and judged. And people were so little prepared for the thorough and systematic way in which he searched out what is deepest or highest or subtlest in human feeling under the homeliest realities, that not being able to understand him they laughed at him. Nor was he altogether with- out fault in the misconceptions which occasioned so much ridicule and scorn. How did he win this deep and lasting admiration ? What was it in him which exposed him not merely to the mocks of the scorner but to the dislike of the really able men who condemned him ? That Wordsworth possessed poetical power of the very highest order could be doubted by no one who had read the poem which con- cluded the first volume of the fiercely attacked Lyrical Ballads^ the Lines written above Tintet'n Abbey. That which places a man high among poets, force and originahty of thought, vividness and rich- ness of imagination, command over the instrument of languao-e in its purity, its beauty, and its majesty, could not be, and was never, denied. But this alone does not explain what is distinctive and characteristic in what called forth so much enthusiasm, and such an outcry of disapprobation. What was special in Wordsworth was the penetrating power of his perceptions of poetical elements, and his fearless reliance on WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the simple forces of expression, in contrast to the more ornate ones. He had an eye to see these elements, where — I will not say no one had seen or felt them, but where no one appears to have recognised that they had seen or felt them. He saw that the . familiar scene of human life, — nature, as affecting human life and feeHng, and man, as the fellow creature of nature, but also separate and beyond it in faculties and destiny— had not yet rendered up even to the mightiest of former poets all that they had in them to touch the human heart. And he accepted it as his mission to open the eyes and widen the thoughts of his countrymen, and to teach them to discern in the humblest and most unexpected forms the presence of what was kindred to what they had long recognised as the highest and greatest. Wordsworth's poetry was not only a powerful but a conscious and systematic appeal to that craving for deep truth and reality which had been gathering way ever since the French Revolution so terribly tore asunder the old veils of conventionality and custom. Truth is a necessary element in all good poetry, and there had been good poetry in the century before Wordsworth. But in Wordsworth the moral judgement and purpose of the man were joined to the poet's instinct and art ; and he did, as the most sacred and natural of duties, what he would anyhow have done from taste and for his pleasure. When that inflexible loyalty to truth which was the prime condition of all his writings — not mere literal truth, but the truth which could only be reached by thought and imagination, — when this had been taken in, it was soon seen what an amazing view it opened of the new riches and wonders of the world, a scene of discovery which Wordsworth was far from exhausting. It was a contrast, startling all and baffling many, to the way in wh'ch, since Shakespeare and Milton, poetry had been content to skim the surface of the vast awful tracts of life and nature, dealing with their certainties and riddles, with their beauty and their terror, under the guidance of sentiments put on for the most part like a stage dress, and in language which seemed not to belong to the world which we know. Thomson, Gray, and Burns, Wordsworth's immediate predecessors, had discovered, but only partially, the extent and significance of the faith which Wordsworth accepted and proclaimed in its length and breadth and height and depth, that Truth, in its infinite but ever self-consistent forms, is the first law of poetry. From his time, the eyes of readers, and the eyes of writers, have been opened ; and whatever judgement they may THE ENGLISH POETS. pass on his own poetry or his theories, they have followed both as critics and as composers, in the path which he opened. Hence his selection of subjects. He began with nature, as in the Evening Walk, and the Descriptive Sketches. He had early and well learned his lesson of nature— learned to watch and note in her that to which other eyes were blind of expression and novelty in common sights. A habit was formed of indefatigable observation, like that which was the basis of Turner's power. And to a mind thus trained the scenes through which he passed, and among which his life was spent, furnished never-cloying food. His continental journeys left deep impressions upon him ; these impressions were answered by those of his home. The 'power of hills was on him ' ; the music of waters was in his ears ; light and darkness wove their spells for him. Looking to the same end as Turner, and working in the same spirit, he, with Turner, was a discoverer in the open face of nature : working apart from one another, these two mighty ' Lords of the eye,' seized and grasped what had always been visible yet never seen, and gave their countrymen capacities of perception and delight hardly yet granted to others. But as his mind grew. Nature, great as was her power, 'fell back into a second place,' and became important to him chiefly as the stage of man's action, and allied with his ideas, his passions and affections. And Man was interesting to him only in his essential nature, only as man. History had little value for him, except as it revealed character : and character had no interest unless, besides power or splendour, it had in it what appealed to human sympathies or human indulgence. For a Napoleon, with all his magnificence, he had nothing but loathing. Where he found truth, noble and affecting, — not bare literal fact, but reality informed and aglow with the ideas and forms of the imagination, and so raised by it to the power of an object of our spiritual nature, — he recognised no differences of high and low. In the same way as he saw greatness in the ideal histories of Venice and Switzerland, and in the legends of Rome, even if they were fictions, so he saw greatness, the greatness of human affections and of the primary elements of human character, in the fortunes and the sufferings oi Michael and the Leech gatherer. He was very bold for his time, and took all consequences, which were severe enough, when he insisted that the whole range of the beautiful, the pathetic, the tragic, the heroic, were to be found in common lowly life, as truly as in the epic and the drama, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. or in the grand legends of national history ; when he proclaimed that •Verse may build a princely throne On humble truth.' He claimed for Lucy Gray, for the 'miserable mother by the Thorn,^ for the desolate maniac nursing her infant, the same pity which we give to Lear and Cordelia or to ' the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes.' Not in play but in deepest earnest he dwelt on the awfulness, the wonder, the sacredness of child- hood : it furnished in his hands the subject, not only of touching ballads, but of one of the most magnificent lyrical poems — the ode on Immortality. He was convinced that if people would but think and be fair with themselves, they would not merely be moved by humble tragedies, like Michael and the Brothers, but would feel that there was as much worthy of a poet's serious art in the agonies of the mother of the Idiot Boy, and the terrors of Peter Bell, as in the ' majestic pains ' oi Laodamia and Dion. He has summed up his poetical doctrine with all his earnest solemnity in the thirteenth book of the Prelude : — ' Here might I pause, and bend in reverence To Nature, and the power of human minds, To men as they are men within themselves. How oft high service is performed within, When all the external man is rude in show, — Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold. But a mere mountain chapel, that protects Its simple worshippers from sun and shower. Of these, said I, shall be my song ; of these, If future years mature me for the task, Will I record the praises, making verse Deal boldly with substantial things; in truth And sanctity of passion speak of these, That justice may be done, obeisance paid Where it is due : thus haply shall I teach, Inspire, through unadulterated ears Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope — my theme No other than the very heart of man, As found among the best of those who live, Not unexalted by religious faith, Nor uninformed by books, good books, though few, In Nature's presence : thence may I select ■ Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight; THE ENGLISH POETS. And miserable love, that is not pain To hear of, for the glory that redounds Therefrom to human kind, and what we are. Nature for all conditions wants not powet To consecrate, if we have eyes to see. The outside of her creatures, and to breathe Grandeur upon the very humblest face Of human life. I felt that the array Of act and circumstance, and visible form, Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind What passion makes them ; that meanwhile the forms Of Nature have a passion in themselves, That intermingles with those works of man To which she summons him ; although the works Be mean, have nothing lofty of their own ; And that the genius of the Poet hence May boldly take his way among mankind Wherever Nature leads; that he hath stood By Nature's side among the men of old, And so shall stand for ever.' All this doctrine was strange to his age ; it has ceased to be so to ours. In various ways and with varying merit, Thackeray and Dickens and George Eliot, and a crowd of writers, poets and novel- ists, have searched out the motifs oi the highest poetry in the hum- blest lives, and have taught the lesson that the real greatness and littleness of human life are not to be measured by the standards of fashion and pride. What made Wordsworth different from other popular poets, and made him great, was a puzzle and a paradox at first in his own time ; it is but a commonplace in ours. * It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought : the fine balance of truth in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying, the objects observed ; and, above all, the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world, around forms, incidents, and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dewdrops. To find no contradiction in the union of old and new ; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all His works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat ; characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings ■of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine thechild's 1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years have made famihar : — "With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, And man and woman" — this is the character and privilege of genius.' (Coleridge, Bio- graphia Literaria, c. iv.). Thus his range of materials was very large ; his extensive scale of interests gave him great variety : like his own skylark, he soars to the heavens, and drops into a lowly nest ; and as the wing sometimes flags, and the eye is wearied, he was unequal, and there was sometimes want of proportion in his subject and his treatrhent of it. But his principles of treatment, though he was not altogether happy in his exposition of them, were in accordance with his general idea of poetry. ' I have at all times,' he says, * endea- voured to look steadily at my subject.' Where he succeeded — and no man can always in thought and imagination see what he wants to see — there was the fire and energy and life of truth, stamping all his words, governing his music and his movement, his flow or his rush. There is always the aim, the scrupulous, fastidious aim, at direct expression — at beautiful, suggestive, forcible, original expression : but first of all at direct expression. This he called, somewhat oddly, restricting himself to the language of common life, in opposition to so-styled 'poetic diction.' Happily he was inconsistent with his own theory. He showed with Burns how far deep down the pathetic and the tender go in common life, and how its language can be made by cunning artists to minister to their expression : but there are regions in poetry of glory and nobleness and splendour where Burns never came, and there Wordsworth showed that he was master of a richer and subtler wealth of words than common hfe supplies. But in his most fiery moments of inspiration and enthusiasm he never allowed himself to relax his hold on reality and truth : as he would scorn to express in poetry any word or feeling which was not genuine and natural, any sentiment or impulse short of or beyond the actual impression which caused them, so with the most jealous strictness he measured his words. He gave them their full swing if they answered to force and passion ; but he watched them all the same, with tender but manly severity. Hence with his power and richness of imagina- tion, and his full command over all the resources of voice and ear, an austere purity and plainness and nobleness marked all that he wrote, and formed a combination as distinct as it was uncommon. THE ENGLISH POETS. To purity, purity of feeling, pure truthfulness of expression, he is never untrue. In the wild excitement, or the lawless exaggeration, as in the self-indulgence and foulness of passion, he will recognise no subject of true poetic art. Keenly alive to beauty, and deeply reverencing it, he puts purity and the severity of truth above beauty. With his eager instincts of joy, it is only the joy of the pure-hearted that he acknowledges. Wordsworth's great poetical design was carried out, first in collec- tions of short pieces, such as those of his earlier volumes, the Lyrical Ballads, and the Poems of 1807 ; then in a great mass of Sonnets, varying from some of the grandest in the language to some very com- monplace ; but as a whole, considering their number, — there are between four and five hundred of them, — a collection of great noble- ness and wonderful finish : and finally in the long poem of The Ex- cicrsion, itself a fragment of a greater projected whole. The Recluse. The Excursion was published in 18 14, and it gave the key to all his poetical work. From that time to 1845 he published repeatedly new things and old : sonnets on all kinds of subjects, such as those on the River Duddon, the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and those on the Punishment of Death ; — Memorials of his Tours in Scotland and on the Continent ; classical compositions like Laodamia and Dion ; tales in the romantic fashion, like The White Doe of Rylstone, or in the manner of the Lyrical Ballads, like Peter Bell, written in his earliest time, but not pubhshed till 1819. The reception oi Peter Bell marks the change that had come over public opinion. ' It was,' says the biographer, 'more in request than any of the author's previous publications ' : it was published in April, and a new edition was wanted in May. Wordsworth had waited, and the world had begun to come round to him. Ridicule and dislike had not ceased. But in minds which loved nature, which loved nobleness, which loved reality, which loved purity and truth, he had awakened a response of deep and serious sympathy, which placed him, in the judgment of increasing numbers, far above the great poetical rivals round him. It was in vain that The Edinburgh Review received The Excursion with its insolent ' This will never do ' ; it only showed that the Review had mistaken the set of the tide, and had failed to measure the thoughts and demands of the coming time. Wordsworth's reception at Oxford in 1839 was an outwark mark of the change, and of the way in which he had spoken to the hearts of men, and had been at length understood. The enthusiasm which gathered round him was most genuine, and WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 13 it was wholesome and elevating ; it was one of the best influences of our time. But it became undiscriminating. It, not unnaturally, blinded men to defects, and even made them proud of defying the criticism which defects produced. And there were defects. In his earlier days, at the high tide of his genius and strength, amid works matchless for their power and simplicity and noble beauty, Wordsworth's composition was sometimes fairly open to the criticism, — whether meant for him I know not, — conveyed in the following lines by one who fully measured his greatness : — ''Tis a speech That by a language of familiar lowness Enhances what of more heroic vein Is next to follow. But one fault it hath ; It fits too close to life's realities. In truth to Nature missing truth to Art ; For Art commends not counterparts and copies, But from our life a nobler life would shape^ Bodies celestial from terrestrial raise. And teach us not jejunely what we are, But what we may be, when the Parian block Yields to the hand of Phidias.' {A Sicilian Summer; by Henry Taylor). As life went on, he wrote a great deal, and with unequal power and felicity. It may be doubted whether he had the singularly rare capa- city for undertaking, what was the chief aim of his life, a long poem — especially a philosophical poem. Strong as he was, he wanted that astonishing strength which carried Milton without flagging through his tremendous task. Wordsworth's power was in bursts ; and he wanted to go against the grain of his real aptitudes, and prolong into a continuous strain inspiration which was meant for occasions. In T/ie Exxursion and The Prelude there are passages as mag- nificent as perhaps poet ever wrote; but they are not specimens of the context in which they are embedded, and which in spite of them, does not carry along with it the reader's honest enjoyment. We read on because we must. In his more ambitious works, such as The Excursion, Wordsworth seldom wants strength, finish, depth, insight. He not seldom wants the spring, the vividness, of his earlier works. There is always dignity, and often majesty; but there is sometimes pompousness. His solid weight and massive- ness of thought interest us when we are in the humour for serious work ; but it is too easy to find them oppressive, and to com- 14 THE ENGLISH POETS. plain of him as heavy and wearisome : nay, what is in him less excusable, obscure. And so with his various series of sonnets like those— full of beauty as they are — on the River Duddon : he took in too much in his scheme of the series, and there was not always material enough in comparison of the usually fine and careful workmanship. Further, Wordsworth, like other men, had his limitations. That large tracts of human experience and feeling were unvisited by him and were beyond his horizon, is not to be complained of : he deliberately and with high purpose chose to forego all that under the fascination of art might mis- lead or tempt. But of all poets who ever wrote, Wordsworth made himself most avowedly the subject of his own thinking. In one way this gives special interest and value to his work. But the habit of perpetual self-study, though it may conducg to wisdom, does not always conduce to life or freedom of movement. It spreads a tone of individuality and apparent egotism, which though very subtle and undefinable, is yet felt, even in some of his most beautiful compositions. We miss the spirit of ' aloofness' and self-forgetfulness which, whether spontaneous or the result of the highest art, marks the highest types of poetry. Perhaps it is from this that he so rarely abandoned himself to that spirit of playfulness of which he has given us an example in the Kitten and falling leaves. The ideal man with Wordsworth is the hard-headed, frugal, unambitious dalesman of his own hills, with his strong affections, his simple tastes, and his quiet and beautiful home : and this dalesman, built up by communion with nature and by meditation into the poet-philosopher, with his serious faith and his never- failing spring of enjoyment, is himself But nature has many sides, and lies under many lights ; and its measure reaches beyond the measure even of the great seer, with his true and piercing eye, his mighty imagination, and his large and noble heart. Wordsworth had not, though he thought he had, the power of interpreting his own principles of poetic composition. This had to be done for him by a more philosophical critic, his friend Coleridge. Wordsworth, in his onslaught on the falsehood and unreality of what passed for poetic diction, overstated and mistook. He overstated the poetic possibihties of the speech of common life and of the poor. He mistook the fripperies of poetic diction for poetic diction itself. Some effects of these exaggerations and mis- takes are visible in his composition itself, though they offend less when the lines which tempt to severe criticism are read in their WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 15 own place and context ; but he would have done more wisely to have left them to find their own apology than to have given reasons which seemed paradoxes. In the hot controversy which followed, both disputants made false moves : the Edinburgh reviewers were false in their thrusts, Wordsworth was false in his parry. He was right in protesting against thfe doctrine that a ihmg is not poetical because it is not expressed in a certain conven- "fional mintage : he was wrong in denying that there is a mintage of words fit for poetry and unsuitable for ordinary prose. They were utterly wrong in thinking that he was not a most careful and fastidious artist in language ; but they had some reason for their objections, and some excuse for their ridicule, when it was laid down without distinguishing or qualifying that there was no differ- ence between the language of prose and poetry, and that the language of poetry was false and bad unless it was what might be spoken in the intercourse of common hfe. Wordsworth, confident of his side of truth, and stung by the flippancy and ignorant nar- rowness of his censors, was not the person to clear up the dispute. Coleridge, understanding and sympathising with what he really meant, never undertook a worthier task than when he brought his singular powers of criticism to bear on it, and helped men to take a more serious and just measure of his friend's greatness. He pointed out firmly and clearly what was untenable in Wordsworth's positions, his ambiguities, his overstatements. He put into more reasonable and comprehensive terms what he knew to be Words- worth's meaning. He did not shrink from admitting defects, ' characteristic defects,' in his poetry ; — inequality of style, over-care for minute painting of details ; disproportion and incongruity between language and feeling, between matter and decoration ; ' thoughts and images too great for the subject.' But then he showed at what a height, in spite of all, he really stood : — his austere purity and perfection of language, the wideness of his range, the freshness of his thought, the unfailing certainty of his eye ; his unswerving truth, and, above all, his magnificent gift of imagination, 'nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton, yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own.' No more discriminating and no more elevated judgment of Words- worth's genius is to be found than that which Coleridge inserted in the volume which he called his Biographia Literaria. R, W. Church. 1 6 THE ENGLISH POETS. The Reverie of Poor Susan. At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the Bird. 'Tis a note of enchantment ; what ails her ? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail ; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. She looks, and her heart is in heaven ; but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade : The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise. And the colours have all passed away from her eyes. (1797?) Expostulation and Reply. • Why, William, on that old grey stone. Thus for the length of half a day, Why, William, sit you thus alone, And dream your time away.? Where are your books 1 — that light bequeatlied To Beings else forlorn and blind ! Up ! up ! and drink the spirit breathed From dead men to their kind. You look round on your Mother Earth As if she for no purpose bore you • As if you were her first-born birth And none had lived before you ! » WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 17 One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake, When life was sweet, I knew not why, To me my good friend Matthew spake, And thus I made reply. * The eye — it cannot choose but see : We cannot bid the ear be still ; Our bodies feel, where'er they be, Against or with our will. Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress ; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things for ever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking 1 — Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old grey stone, And dream my time away.' (1798.) Thk Tables Turned. (An Evening Scene on the same Subject.) Up ! up ! my Friend, and quit your books ; Or surely you'll grow double : Up ! up ! my Friend, and clear your looks ; Why all this toil and trouble? The sun, above the mountain's head, A freshening lustre mellow Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife : Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music ! on my life, There 's more of wisdom in it. VOL. IV. ^ 1 8 THE ENGLISH POETS. And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! He, too, is no mean preacher : Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless — Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good. Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things ; — We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art ; Close up those barren leaves ; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. (1798.) Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on REVISITING the BaNKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUK. July 13, 1798. Five years have past ; five summers, with the length Of five long winters ! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. — Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion ; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 19 Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild : these pastoral farms, Green to the very door ; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees ! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods. Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye : But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration : — feelings too Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, — Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul : While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. C 2 THE ENGLISH POETS. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft— In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless dayhght ; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart — How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee ! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again : While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first 1 came among these hills ; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams. Wherever nature led : more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all. — I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock. The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite ; a feeling and a love. That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. — That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more. And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts Have followed i for such loss, I would believe, WILLI A M WORDS WO J? TIL Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am 1 still A lover of the meadows and the woods. And mountains ; and of all that we behold From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear, — both what they half create, And what perceive ; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense. The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. Nor perchance. If I were not thus taught, should 1 the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay : For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river ; thou my dearest Friend, My dsar dear Friend ; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh ! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear dear Sister ! and this prayer I make Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy : for she can so inform 22 THE ENGLISH POETS. The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men. Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee : and, in after years. When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies ; oh ! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations ! Nor, perchance — If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence — wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together ; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service : rather say With warmer love — oh ! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake t WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 23 Lines written in Early Spring. I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sat reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran ; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man. Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths ; And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure ; — But the least motion which they made, It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air ; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan. Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man ? (179S.) 24 THE ENGLISH POETS. A Poet's Epitaph. Art thou a Statist in the van Of public conflicts trained and bred ? —First learn to love one living man ; Then may'st thou think upon the dead. A Lawyer art thou ? — draw not nigh I Go, carry to some fitter place The keenness of that practised eye, The hardness of that sallow face. Art thou a Man of purple cheer ? A rosy Man, right plump to see ? Approach ; yet, Doctor, not too near, This grave no cushion is for thee. Or art thou one of gallant pride, A Soldier and no man of chaff? Welcome ! — but lay thy sword aside, And lean upon a peasant's staff. Physician art thou ? one all eyes, Philosopher! a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave ? Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece, O turn aside, — and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace. Thy ever-dwindling soul, away ! A Moralist perchance appears ; Led, Heaven knows how ! to this poor sod ; And he has neither eyes nor ears \ Himself his world, and his own God ; One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling Nor form, nor feeling, great or small ; A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All-in-all ! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 25 Shut close the door; press down the latch; Sleep in thy intellectual crust ; Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch Near this unprofitable dust. But who is. He, with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown ? He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own. He is retired as noontide dew. Or fountain in a noon-day grove ; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. The outward shows of sky and earth. Of hill and valley, he has viewed ; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude. In common things that round us lie Some random truths he can impart, — The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart. But he is weak ; both Man and Boy, Hath been an idler in the land ; Contented if he might enjoy The things which others understand. —Come hither in thy hour of strength ; Come, weak as is a breaking wave ! Here stretch thy body at full length ; Or build thy house upon this grave. (I799-) 2 6 THE ENGLISH POETS. Lucy Gray ; or, Solitude. Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray : And, when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child. No mate, no comrade Lucy knew ; She dwelt on a wide moor, — The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the fawn at play, The hare upon the green ; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. * To-night will be a stormy night — You to the town must go ; And take a lantern, Child, to light Your mother through the snow.' •That, Father! will I gladly do: 'Tis scarcely afternoon — The minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the moon!' At this the Father raised his hook, And snapped a faggot-band ; He plied his work ; — and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe : With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powdery snow, That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time : She wandered up and down ; And many a hill did Lucy climb, But never reached the town. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 27 The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide ; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At day-break on a hill they stood That overlooked the moor ; And thence they saw the bridge of wood, A furlong from their door. They wept — and, turning homeward, cried, *In heaven we all shall meet !' — "When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downwards from the steep hill's edje They tracked the footmarks small ; And through the broken hawthorn hedge, And by the long stone-wall : And then an open field they crossed ; The marks were still the same ; They tracked them on, nor ever lost ; And to the bridge they came. They followed from the snowy bank Those footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank ; And further there were none ! — Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child ; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind ; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the. wind. (1 799-) THE ENGLISH POETS. Lucy. She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love : A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye ! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be ; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me ! (I799-) Three years she grew in sun and shower. Then Nature said, 'A loveher flower On earth was never sown ; This Child I to myself will take. She shall be mine, and 1 will make A Lady of my own. Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse : and with me The Girl, in rock and plain. In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs ; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And h«rs the silence and the calm Of mute insensate things. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 29 The floating clouds their state shall lend To her ; for her the willow bend ; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the Storm Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form By silent sympathy. The stars of midnight shall be dear To her ; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round. And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height, Her virgin bosom swell ; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give While she and I together live Here in this happy delL' Thus Nature spake — The work was done — How soon my Lucy's race was run I She died, and left to me This heath, this calm, and quiet scene ; The memory of what has been. And never more will be. (1 799-) A slumber did my spirit seal ; I had no human fears : She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force ; She neither hears nor sees ; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, , With rocks, and stones, and trees. (I799-) 30 THE ENGLISH POETS. The Two April Mornings. We walked along, while bright and red Uprose the morning sun ; And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said, • The will of God be done ! ' A village schoolmaster was he, With hair of glittering grey ; As blithe a man as you could see On a spring holiday. And on that morning, through the grass, And by the steaming rills. We travelled merrily, to pass A day among the hills, ' Our work,' said I, * was well begun ; Then, from thy breast what thought, Beneath so beautiful a sun. So sad a sigh has brought?' A second time did Matthew stop, And fixing still his eye Upon the eastern mountain-top, To me he made reply : 'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft Brings fresh into my mind A day like this which I have left Full thirty years behind. And just above yon slope of corn Such colours, and no other. Were in the sky, that April mom, Of this the very brother. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 31 With rod and line I sued the sport Which that sweet season gave, And, to the churchi-yard come, stopped short Beside my daughter's grave. Nine summers had she scarcely seen, The pride of all the vale ; And then she sang; — she would have been A very nightingale. Six feet in earth my Emma lay ; And yet I loved her more. For so it seemed, than till that day I e'er had loved before. And, turning from her grave, I met, Beside the churchyard yew, A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet With points of morning dew. A basket on her head she bare ; Her brow was smooth and white : To see a child so very fair, It was a pure delight ! No fountain from its rocky cave E'er tripped with foot so free ; She seemed as happy as a wave That dances on the sea. There came from me a sigh of pain Which I could ill confine ; I looked at her, and looked again : And did not wish her mine !' Matthew is in his grave, yet now, Methinks, I see him stand, As at that moment, with a bough Of wilding in his hand. (I799-) 3 J , THE ENGLISH POETS. The Fountain. A Conversation. We talked with open heart, and tongue Affectionate and true, A pair of friends, though I was young, And Matthew seventy-two. We lay beneath a spreading oak, Beside a mossy seat ; And from the turf a fountain broke, And gurgled at our feet. ' Now, Matthew ! ' said T, ' let us match This water's pleasant tune With some old border-song, or catch That suits a summer's noon ; Or of the church- clock and the chimes Sing here beneath the shade, That half-mad thing of witty rhymes Which you last April made ! ' In silence Matthew lay, and eyed The spring beneath the tree ; And thus the dear old Man replied, The grey-haired man of glee : * No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears How merrily it goes ! Twill murmur on a thousand years, And flow as now it flows. And here, on this delightful day, I cannot choose but think How oft, a vigorous man, I lay Beside this fountain's brink. My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred. For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard. 1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 33 Thus fares it still in our decay : And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind. The blackbird amid leafy trees, The lark above the hill, Let loose their carols when they please, Are quiet when they will. With Nature never do they wage A foolish strife ; they see A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free : But we are pressed by heavy laws ; And often, glad no more, -We wear a face of joy, because We have been glad of yore. If there be one who need bemoan His kindred laid in earth, The household hearts that were his own, It is the man of mirth. My days, my Friend, are almost gone. My life has been approved. And many love me ; but by none Am I enough beloved.' • Now both himself and me he wrongs. The man who thus complains ! I live and sing my idle songs Upon these happy plains ; And, Matthew, for thy children dead I '11 be a son to thee ! ' At this he grasped my hand, and said, • Alas ! that cannot be.' We rose up from the fountain-side ; And down the smooth descent Of the green sheep-track did we glide ; And through the wood we went; VOL. IV. ^ 34 THE ENGLISH POETS. And, ere we came to Leonard's rock, He sang those witty rhymes About the crazy old church-clock, And the bewildered chimes. (1799) There was a Boy. There was a Boy ; ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander ! — many a time, At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone, Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake ; And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as through an instrument. Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him. — And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call, — with quivering peals, And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled ; concourse wild Of jocund din ! And, when there came a pause Of silence such as baffled his best skill : Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain-torrents ; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his min.d With all its solemn imagery, its rocks. Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received Into the bosom of the steady lake. This boy was taken from his mates, and died In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale Where he was bom and bred : the church-yard hangs Upon a slope above the village-school ; WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 35 And, through that church-yard when my way has led On summer-evenings, I believe, that there A long half-hour together I have stood Mute — looking at the grave in which he lies ! (I799-) Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth. \_Prehide /.] Wisdom and Spirit of the universe ! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought, And givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul ; Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, But with high objects, with enduring things — With life and nature — purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying, by such discipline, Both pain and fear, until we recognise A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapours rolling down the valley made A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods. At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights, When, by the margin of the trembling lake. Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went In solitude, such intercourse was mine : Mine was it in the fields both day and night, And by the waters, all the summer long. And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and visible for many a mile The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom, D 3 ^6 THE ENGLISH POETS. I heeded not their summons : happy time It was indeed for all of us — for me It was a time of rapture ! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six, — I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home. All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn. The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle ; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron ; while far distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away. Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the reflex of a star That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain ; and oftentimes. When we had given our bodies to the wind. And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels Stopped short ; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me— even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round ! Behind me did they stretch in solemn train Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep. (I799-) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. a"} The Green Linnet. Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat ! And birds and flowers once more to greet, My last year's friends together. One have I marked, the happiest guest In all this covert of the blest : Hail to Thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion ! Thou, Linnet ! in thy green array, Presiding Spirit here to-day, Dost lead the revels of the May, And this is thy dominion. While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, Make all one band of paramours. Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, Art sole in thy employment ; A Life, a Presence like the Air, Scattering thy gladness without care, Too blest with any one to pair ; Thyself thy own enjoyment. Amid yon tuft of hazel trees. That twinkle in the gusty breeze. Behold him perched in ecstasies. Yet seeming still to hover ; There ! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him all over. 38 THE ENGLISH POETS. My dazzled sight he oft deceives, A Brother of the dancing leaves ; Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves Pours forth his song in gushes ; As if by that exulting strain He mocked and treated with disdain The voiceless Form he chose to feign, While fluttering in the bushes, (1803.) Yew Trees. There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore : Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched To Scotland's heaths ; or those that crossed the sea And drew their sounding bows at Azincour, Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers. Of vast circumference and gloom profound This solitary Tree ! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay ; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed. But worthier still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove ; Huge trunks ! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved ; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane ; — a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perennially — beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries —ghostly Shapes May meet at noontide ; Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight ; Death the Skeleton WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 39 And Time the Shadow ; — there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship ; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves. (1803.) To A Highland Girl. (At Iiiveisneyde, upon Loch Lomond.) Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower Of beauty is thy earthly dower ! Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head : And these grey rocks ; that household lawn ; Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn ; This fall of water that doth make A murmur near the silent lake ; This little bay; a quiet road That holds in shelter thy Abode — In truth together do ye seem Like something fashioned in a dream ; Such Forms as from their covert peep When earthly cares are laid asleep ! But, O fair Creature ! in the light Of common day, so heavenly bright, I bless Thee, Vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart ; God shield thee to thy latest years ! Thee, neither know I, nor thy peers ; And yet my eyes are fill'd with tears. With earnest feeling I shall pray For thee when I am far away : For never saw I mien, or face. In which more plainly I could trace 4© THE ENGLISH POETS. Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening, in perfect innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, thou dost not need The embarrassed look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacedness : Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a Mountaineer : A face with gladness overspread ! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred ! And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays ; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech : - A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife That gives thy gestures grace and life ! So have I, not unmoved in mind, Seen birds of tempest-loving kind — Thus beating up against the wind. What hand but would a garland cull For thee who art so beautiful ? O happy pleasure ! here to dwell Beside thee in some heathy dell ; Adopt your homely ways and dress, A Shepherd, thou a Shepherdess ! But I could frame a wish for thee More like a grave reality : Thou art to me but as a wave Of the wild sea ; and I would have Some claim upon thee, if I could. Though but of common neighbourhood. What joy to hear thee, and to see ! Thy elder Brother I would be, Thy Father — anything to thee ! Now thanks to Heaven ! that of its grace Hath led me to this lonely place. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 41 Joy have I had ; and going hence I bear away my recompence. In spots like these it is we prize Our Memory, feel that she hath eyes ; Then, why should I be loth to stir ? I feel this place was made for her ; To give new pleasure like the past, Continued long as life shall last. Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, Sweet Highland Girl ! from thee to part ; For I, methinks, till I grow old, As fair before me shall behold, As I do now, the cabin small. The lake, the bay, the waterfall ; And Thee, the Spirit of them all ! (1803.) The Solitary Reaper. Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass ! Reaping and singing by herself ; Stop here, or gently pass ! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain ; O listen ! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt Among Arabian sands : A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from a Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. 42 THE ENGLISH POETS. Will no one tell me what she sings? — Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago : Or is it some more humble lay, • Familiar matter of to-day ? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again ? Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending ; I saw her singing at her work. And o'er the sickle bending ; — I listened, motionless and still ; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. (1803.} Yarrow Unvisited. 1803. [See the various poems the scene of which is laid upon the banks of the Yarrow; in particular, the exquisite ballad of Hamilton, beginning — 'Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny Bride, Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome Marrow 1'] From Stirling's castle we had seen The mazy Forth unravelled ; Had trod the banks of Clyde, and Tay, And with the Tweed had travelled ; And when we came to Clovenford, Then said my ' winsome Marrow^ 'Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside, And see the Braes of Yarrow.' ' Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town, Who have been buying, selling. Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own ; Each maiden to her dwelling ! I WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 4.3 On Yarrow's banks let herons feed, Hares couch, and rabbits burrow ! But we will downwards with the Tweed, Nor turn aside to Yarrow. * There 's Galla Water, Leader Haughs, Both lying right before us ; And Dryborough, where with chiming Tweed The lintwhites sing in chorus ; There's pleasant Tiviot-dale, a land Made blithe with plough and harrow: Why throw away a needful day ' To go in search of Yarrow ? * What 's Yarrow but a river bare, That glides the dark hills under? There are a thousand such elsewhere As worthy of your wonder.' — Strange words they seemed of slight and scorn ; My True-love sighed for sorrow ; And looked me in the face, to think I thus could speak of Yarrow ! 'Oh! green,' said I, 'are Yarrow's holms, And sweet is Yarrow flowing ! Fair hangs the apple frae the rock ', But we will leave it growing. O'er hilly path, and open strath, We '11 wander Scotland thorough ; But, though so near, we will not turn Into the dale of Yarrow. * Let beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow ; The swan on still Saint Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow ! We will not see them f will not go To-day, nor yet to-morrow ; Enough if in our hearts we know There's such a place as Yarrow. ' See Hamilton's ballad, as above. 44 THE ENGLISH POETS. ' Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown ! It must, or we shall rue it ; We have a vision of our own ; Ah ! why should we undo it ? The treasured dreams of times long past, We '11 keep them, winsome Marrow ! For when we 're there, although 'tis fair, Twill be another Yarrow ! *If Care with freezing years should come, And wandering seem but folly, — Should we be loath to stir from home, And yet be melancholy ; Should life be dull, and spirits low, Twill soothe us in our sorrow. That earth has something yet to show, The bonny holms of Yarrow.' To THE CucKoa blithe New-comer ! I have heard, 1 hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice ? While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear. From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near. Though babbling only to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery ; WILLIAM WORDSWOHTH. 45 The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to ; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green ; And thou wert still a hope, a love ; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet ; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place : That is fit home for Thee I (1804.) At the Grave of BuRNSif 1803. (Seven Years after his Death.) I shiver. Spirit fierce and bold, At thought of what I now behold ; As vapours breathed from dungeons cold Strike pleasure dead, So sadness comes from out the mould Where Burns is laid. And have I then thy bones so near. And thou forbidden to appear? As if it were thyself that 's here I shrink with pain ; And both my wishes and my fear Alike are vain. 46 THE ENGLISH POETS. Off weight — nor press on weight ! — away Dark thoughts ! — they came, but not to stay ; With chastened feeUngs would I pay The tribute due To him, and aught that hides his clay From mortal view. Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth He sang, his genius 'glinted' forth. Rose like a star that touching earth, For so it seems, Doth glorify its humble birth With matchless beams. The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow, The struggling heart, where be they now? — Full soon the Aspirant of the plough, The prompt, the brave. Slept, with the obscurest, in the low And silent grave. I mourned with thousands, but as one More deeply grieved, for He was gone Whose light I hailed when first it shone, And showed my youth How Verse may build a princely throne On humble truth. Alas ! where'er the current tends. Regret pursues and with it blends, — Huge Criffel's hoary top ascends By Skiddaw seen, — Neighbours we were, and loving friends We might have been : True friends though diversely inclined ; But heart with heart and mind with mind,, Where the main fibres are entwined, Through Nature's skill, May even by contraries be joined More closely stilL WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 47 The tear will start, and let it flow ; Thou ' poor Inhabitant below,' At this dread moment — 'even so — Might we together Have sate and talked where gowans blow, Or on wild heather. What treasures would have then been placed Within my reach ; of knowledge graced By fancy what a rich repast 1 But why go on ? — Oh ! spare to sweep, thou mournful blast, His grave grass-grown. There, too, a Son, his joy and pride, (Not three weeks past the Stripling diedj Lies gathered to his Father's side, Soul-moving sight ! Yet one to which is not denied Some sad delight. For he is safe, a quiet bed Hath early found among the dead, Harboured where none can be misled, Wronged, or distrest ; And surely here it may be said That such are blest. And oh for Thee, by pitying grace Checked oft-times in a devious race, May He who halloweth the place Where Man is laid Receive thy Spirit in the embrace For which it prayed ! Sighing I turned away; but ere Night fell I heard, or seemed to hear, Music that sorrow comes not near, A ritual hymn, Chaunted in love that casts out fear By Seraphirru 48 THE ENGLISH POETS. Thoughts suggested the day following, on the Banks OF NiTH, NEAR THE POET'S RESIDENCE. Too frail to keep the lofty vow That must have followed when his brow Was wreathed — * The Vision ' tells us how— With holly spray, He faltered, drifted to and fro. And passed away. Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng Our minds when, lingering all too long, Over the grave of Burns we hung In social grief — Indulged as if it were a wrong To seek relief. But, leaving each unquiet theme Where gentlest judgments may misdeem, And prompt to welcome every gleam Of good and fair. Let us beside this limpid Stream Breathe hopeful air. Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight ; Think rather of those moments bright When to the consciousness of right His course was true. When Wisdom prospered in his sight And virtue grew. Yes, freely let our hearts expand, Freely as in youth's season bland, When side by side, his Book in band, We wont to stray, Our pleasure varying at command Of each sweet Lay. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 49 How oft inspired must he have trode These pathways, yon far- stretching road ! There lurks his home ; in that Abode, With mirth elate, Or in his nobly-pensive mood, The Rustic sate. Proud thoughts that Image overawes, Before it humbly let us pause, And ask of Nature, from what cause And by what rules She trained her Burns to win applause That shames the Schools. Through busiest street and loneliest glen Are felt the flashes of his pen : He rules mid winter snows, and when Bees fill their hives : Deep in the general heart of men His power survives. What need of fields in some far clime Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime, And all that fetched the flowing rhyme From genuine springs, Shall dwell together till old Time Folds up his wings.? Sweet Mercy ! to the gates of Heaven This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven ; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced for ever. But why to Him confine the prayer. When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear On the frail heart the purest share With all that live? — The best of what we do and are, Just God, forgive ! VOT,. IV. E 50 THE ENGLISH POETS. 1 ' She was a Phantom.' She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight ; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament ; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair, Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair ; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn ; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too ! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-liberty ; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet ; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food ; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine ; A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death ; The reason firm, the temperate will. Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned. To warn, to comfort, and command ; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. (1804.) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 51 ' I WANDERED LONELY.' I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils ; Beside the lake, beneath the trees. Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance. Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced ; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee : A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed — and gazed — but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude ; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils, (1804.) E2 52 THE ENGLISH POETS. Ode to Duty. Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove ; Thou, who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe ; From vain temptations dost set free ; And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them ; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth : Glad Hearts I without reproach or blot ; Who do thy work, and know it not : Oh I if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power ! around them cast. Serene will be our days and bright, And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Even now, who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed ; Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need. I, loving freedom, and untried ; No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust : And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother walks to stray ; But thee I now would serve more strictly if I may. WILLIAM WORDSWORTU. 53 Through no disturbance of my soul, Or strong cortipunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control ; But in the quietness of thought : Me this unchartered freedom tires ; I feel the weight of chance-desires : My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same. Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we any thing so fair As is the smile upon thy face : Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads ; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. To humbler functions, awful Power ! I call thee : I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour ; Oh, let my weakness have an end ! Give unto me, made lowly wise. The spirit of self-sacrifice ; The confidence of reason give ; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live ! (1805.) The Nightingale. O Nightingale ! thou surely art A creature of a ' fiery heart ' : — These notes of thine — they pierce and pierce ; Tumultuous harmony and fierce ! Thou sing'st as if the God of wine Had helped thee to a Valentine ; A song in mockery and despite Of shades, and dews, and silent night ; And steady bliss, and all the loves Now sleeping in these peaceful groves. 54 THE ENGLISH POETS. I heard a Stock-dove sing or say His homely tale, this very day ; His voice was buried among trees, Yet to be come-at by the breeze : He did not cease ; but cooed — and cooed ; And somewhat pensively he wooed : He sang of love, with quiet blending, Slow to begin, and never ending ; Of serious faith, and inward glee ; That was the song — the song for me ! (1806.) The Mountain Ecna Yes, it was the mountain Echo,, Solitary, clear, profound, Answering to the shouting Cuckoo, Giving to her sound for sound 1 Unsolicited reply To a babbling wanderer sent ; Like her ordinary cry, Like — but oh, how different \ Hears not also mortal Life? Hear not we, unthinking Creatures ! Slaves of folly, love, or strife — Voices of two different natures ? Have not ive too ? — yes, we have Answers, and we know not whence ; Echoes from beyond the grave, Recognised intelligence ! Such rebounds our inward ear Catches sometimes from afar — Listen, ponder, hold them dear; For of God.— of God they are. (1806.) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 55 ODE. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety, There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light. The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 2. The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair ; The sunshine is a glorious birth ; But yet I know, where'er I go. That there hath past away a glory from the earth. 3- Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong : 56 THE ENGLISH POETS. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ; 1 hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay ; Land and Sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday ; — Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy ! Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make ; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; My heart is at your festival. My head hath its coronal. The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it alL Oh evil day ! if I were suHen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling On every side. In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm^ And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm : — I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! — But there 's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone : The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat ; Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 57 5- Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The Soul that rises with us, our Hfe's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar : Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home : Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy ; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended ; At length the Man perceives it die away. And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And even with something of a Mother's mind. And no unworthy aim. The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known. And that imperial palace whence he came. 7- Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size 1 See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 58 THE ENGLISH POETS. With light upon him from his father's eyes 1 See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral ; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song; Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife : But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part ; Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage ; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. 8. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind. That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, — Mighty Prophet 1 Seer blest ! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find. In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 59 Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life 1 9- ; O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth Hve, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive ! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction : not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest ; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest. With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : — Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise j But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings ; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised. High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake. To perish never ; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy. Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy ! fio THE ENGLISH POETS. Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. lo. Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound ! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play. Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind ; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. II. And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves ! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks, which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they: The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet ; 1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 6i The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. (1803-1806.) Laodamia. 'With sacrifice before the rising morn Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired : And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required : Celestial pity I again implore ; — Restore him to my sight — great Jove, restore ! ' So speaking, and by fervent love endowed With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands ; While, like the sun emerging from a cloud. Her countenance brightens — and her eye expands ; Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows ; And she expects the issue in repose. O terror ! what hath she perceived ? — O joy ! What doth she look on ? — whom doth she behold ? Her Hero slain upon the beach of Troy? His vital presence 1 his corporeal mould t It is — if sense deceive her not — 'tis he 1 And a god leads him — winged Mercury! Mild Hermes spake — and touched her with his wand That calms all fear : * Such grace hath crowned thy prayer, Laodamia ! that at Jove's command Thy Husband walks the paths of upper air : He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space ; Accept the gift, behold him face to face 1' 62 THE ENGLISH POETS. Forth sprang the impassioned Queen her Lord to clasp Again that consummation she essayed : But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp As often as that eager grasp was made. The Phantom parts — but parts to reunite, And reassume his place before her sight. * Protesilaus, lo ! thy guide is gone ! Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice : This is our palace, — yonder is thy throne ; Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will rejoice. Not to appal me have the gods bestowed This precious boon ; an'd blest a sad abode.' ' Great Jove, Laodamia ! doth not leave His gifts imperfect : — Spectre though I be, I am not sent to scare thee or deceive ; But in reward of thy fidelity. And something also did my worth obtain ; For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain. Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand Should die ; but me the threat could not withhold : A generous cause a victim did demand ; And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain ; A self-devoted chief — by Hector slairu' ' Supreme of Heroes — bravest, noblest, best ! Thy matchless courage I bewail no more, Which then, when tens of thousands were deprest By doubt, propelled thee; to the fatal shore ; Thou found'st — and I forgive thee — here thou art — A nobler counsellor than my poor heart. But thou, though capable of sternest deed, Wert kind as resolute, and good as brave ; And he, whose power restores thee, hath decreed Thou should'st elude the malice of the grave ; Redundant are thy locks, thy lips as fair As when their breath enriched Thessalian air. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 63 No Spectre greets me, — no vain Shadow this : Come, blooming Hero, place thee by my side ! Give, on this well-known couch, one nuptial kiss To me, this day, a second time thy bride ! ' -Jove frowned in heaven : the conscious Parcae threw Upon those roseate lips a Stygian hue. * This visage tells thee that my doom is past : Nor should the change be mourned even if the joys Of sense were able to return as fast And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys Those raptures duly — Erebus disdains : Calm pleasures there abide — majestic pains. Be taught, O faithful Consort, to control Rebellious passion ; for the Gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul ; A fervent, not ungovernable, love. Thy transports moderate ; and meekly mourn When I depart, for brief is my sojourn '' *Ah, wherefore?— Did not Hercules by force Wrest from the guardian Monster of the tomb Alcestis, a reanimated corse, Given back to dwell on earth in vernal bloom ? Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years, And ^son stood a youth 'mid youthful peers. The Gods to us are merciful — and they Yet further may relent : for mightier far Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway Of magic potent over sun and star, Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast But if thou goest, I follow ' ' Peace ! ' he said, — She looked upon him and was calmed and cheered ; The ghastly colour from his lips had fled ; In his deportment, shape, and mien, appeared Elysian beauty — melancholy grace — Brought from a pensive though a happy place. 64 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; No fears to beat away — no strife to heal — The past unsigh'd for, and the future sure ; Spake of heroic hearts in graver mood Revived, with finer harmony pursued ; Of all that is most beauteous — imaged there In happier beauty ; more pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner air. And fields invested with purpureal gleams ; Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey. Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath earned That privilege by virtue. — ' 111,' said he, ' The end of man's existence I discerned, Who from ignoble games and revelry Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight, While tears were thy best pastime, day and night . ' And while my youthful peers before my eyes (Each hero following his peculiar bent) Prepared themselves for glorious enterprise By martial sports,— or, seated in the tent, Chieftains and kings in council were detained ; What time the fleet at Aulis lay enchained. * The wish'd-for wind was given : — I then revolved The oracle, upon the silent sea ; And, if no worthier led the way, resolved That, of a thousand vessels, mine should be The foremost prow in pressing to the strand, — Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand. 'Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang When of thy loss I thought, beloved Wife ! On thee too fondly did my memory hang, And on the joys we shared in mortal life, — The paths which we had trod— these fountains, flowers ; My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers. WILLIAM WOUnsiVORTH. 65 'But should suspense permit the Foe to cry, " Behold, they tremble ! — haughty their array, Yet of their number no one dares to die"? In soul I swept the indignity away : Old frailties then recurred : — but lofty thought In act embodied, my deliverance wrought. 'And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak In reason, in self-government too slow ; I counsel thee by fortitude to seek Our blest re-union in the shades below. The invisible world with thee hath sympathised : Be thy affections raised and solemnised. * Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend — Seeking a higher object. Love was given, Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end ; For this the passion to excess was driven — That self might be annulled ; her bondage prove The fetters of a dream, opposed to love.' — Aloud she shrieked ! for Hermes reappears ! Round the dear Shade she would have clung — 'tis vain. The hours are past— too brief had they been years ; And him no mortal effort can detain : Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day, He through the portal takes his silent way. And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse she lay. By no weak pity might the Gods be moved ; She who thus perished, not without the crime Of lovers that in reason's spite have loved. Was doomed to wear out her appointed time, Apart from happy Ghosts — that gather flowers Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. — Yet tears to human suffering are due ; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone, As fondly he believes.— Upon the side VOL. IV. F 66 THE ENGLISH POETS. 1 Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) A knot of spiry trees for ages grew From out the tomb of him for whom she died ; And ever, when such stature they had gained That Ilium's walls were subject to their view, The trees' tall summits withered at the sight ; A constant interchange of growth and blight ! (1814.) To [Miss Blackett], on her First Ascent to THE Summit of Helvellyn. Inmate of a mountain-dwelling, Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed From the watch-towers of Helvellyn ; Awed, delighted, and amazed ! Potent was the spell that bound thee Not unwilling to obey : For blue Ether's arms, flung round thee, Stilled the pantings of dismay. Lo ! the dwindled woods and meadows j What a vast abyss is there ! Lo ! the clouds, the solemn shadows, And the glistenings — heavenly fair! And a record of commotion Which a thousand ridges yield ; Ridge, and gulf, and distant oceao Gleaming like a silver shield ! Maiden ! now take flight ;— inherit Alps or Andes— they are thine! With the morning's roseate Spirit, Sweep their length of snowy line ; WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. '^1 Or survey their bright dominions In the gorgeous colours drest Flung from off the purple pinions, Evening spreads throughout the west ! Thine are all the coral fountains Warbling in each sparry vault Of the untrodden lunar mountains ; Listen to their songs ! — or halt, To Niphates' top invited, Whither spiteful Satan steered ; Or descend where the ark alighted, When the green earth re-appeared ; For the power of hills is on thee, As was witnessed through thine eye Then when old Helvellyn won thee To confess their majesty! (1816.) Evening Voluntary. [Composed upon an Evening of extraordinary Splendour and Beauty] Had this effulgence disappeared With flying haste, I might have sent. Among the speechless clouds, a look Of blank astonishment ; But 'tis endued with power to stay. And sanctify one closing day, That frail Mortality may see — What is ? — ah no, but what can be ! Time was when field and watery cove With modulated echoes rang, While choirs of fervent Angels sang Their vespers in the grove ; F 2 68 THE ENGLISH POETS. Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height, Warbled, for heaven above and earth below, Strains suitable to both.— Such holy rite, Methinks, if audibly repeated now From hill or valley, could not move Sublimer transport, purer love, Than doth this silent spectacle — the gleam — The shadow — and the peace supreme 1 No sound is uttered, — but a deep And solemn harmony pervades The hollow vale from steep to steep, And penetrates the glades. Far-distant images draw nigh, Called forth by wondrous potency Of beamy radiance, that imbues Whate'er it strikes with gem-like hues ! In vision exquisitely clear, Herds range along the mountain side ; And glistening antlers are descried ; And gilded flocks appear. Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve ! But long as god-like wish, or hope divine. Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe That this magnificence is wholly thine ! — From worlds not quickened by the sun A portion of the gift is won ; An intermingling of Heaven's pomp is spread On ground which British shepherds tread 1 3- And, if there be whom broken ties Afflict, or injuries assail. Yon hazy ridges to their eyes Present a glorious scale. Climbing suffused with sunny air. To stop — no record hath told where ! I WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 6g And tempting Fancy to ascend, And with immortal Spirits blend ! — Wings at my shoulders seem to play ; But, rooted here, I stand and gaze On those bright steps that heaven-ward raise Their practicable way. Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad. And see to what fair countries ye are bound ! And if some traveller, weary of his road, Hath slept since noon-tide on the grassy ground, Ye Genii ! to his covert speed ; And wake him with such gentle heed As may attune his soul to meet the dower Bestowed on this transcendent hour 1 Such hues from their celestial Urn Were wont to stream before mine eye, Where'er it wandered in the morn Of blissful infancy. This glimpse of glory, why renewed ? Nay, rather speak with gratitude ; For, if a vestige of those gleams Survived, 'twas only in my dreams. Dread Power ! whom peace and calmness serve No less than Nature's threatening voice, If aught unworthy be my choice, From Thee if I would swerve ; Oh, let thy grace remind me of the light Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored ; Which, at this moment, on my waking sight Appears to shine, by miracle restored ; My soul, though yet confined to earth, Rejoices in a second birth ! — 'Tis past, the visionary splendour fades ; And night approaches with her shades. (1818.) 70 THE ENGLISH POETS. [From the Prelude. 1 799-1 805.] [Apparition on the Lake.] Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music ; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society. How strange that all The terrors, pains, and early miseries, Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part, And that a needful part, in making up The calm existence that is mine when I Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end! Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ ; Whether her fearless visitings, or those That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light Opening the peaceful clouds ; or she may use Severer interventions, ministry More palpable, as best might suit her aim. One summer evening (led by her) I found A little boat tied to a willow tree Within a rocky cave, its usual home. Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on ; Leaving behind her still, on either side, Small circles glittering idly in the moon, Until they melted all into one track Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows, Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point With an unswerving line, I fixed my view WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 51 Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, The horizon's utmost boundary ; far above Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky. She was an elfin pinnace ; lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat "Went heaving through the water like a swan ; When, from behind that craggy steep till then The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge, As if with voluntary power instinct Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, And growing still in stature the grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned, And through the silent water stole my way Back to the covert of the willow tree ; There in her mooring-place I left my bark, — And through the meadows homeward went, in grave And serious mood ; but after I had seen That spectacle, for many days, my brain Worked with a dim and undetermined sense Of unknown modes of being ; o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes ■ Remained, no pleasant images of trees. Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields ; But huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. >Ji THE ENGLISH POETS. [Morning after the Ball.] And yet, for chastisement of these regrets, The memory of one particular hour Doth here rise up against me. 'Mid a throng Of maids and youths, old men, and matrons staid, A medley of all tempers, I had passed The night in dancing, gaiety, and mirth, With din of instruments and shuffling feet, And glancing" forms, and tapers glittering, And unaimed prattle flying up and down ; Spirits upon the stretch, and here and there Slight shocks of young love-liking interspersed, Whose transient pleasure mounted to the head. And tingled through the veins. Ere we retired, The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse And open field, through which the pathway wound, And homeward led my steps. Magnificent The morning rose, in memorable pomp, Glorious as ere I had beheld — in front. The sea lay laughing at a distance ; near, The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light ; And in the meadows and the lower grounds Was all the sweetness of a common dawn — Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds. And labourers going forth to till the fields. Ah ! need I say, dear Friend ! that to the brim My heart was full ; I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me ; bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated Spirit. On I walked In thankful blessedness, which yet survives. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 73 [Defile of Gondo.] The brook and road Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait, And with them did we journey several hours At a slow pace. The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls. And in the narrow rent at every turn Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn. The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky. The rocks that muttered close upon our ears. Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light — • Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree j Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. [Ascent of Snowdon.] It was a close, warm, breezeless summer night. Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky ; But, undiscouraged, we began to climb The mountain-side. The mist soon girt us round, And, after ordinary travellers' talk With our conductor, pensively we sank Each into commerce with his private thoughts : Thus did we breast the ascent, and by myself Was nothing either seen or heard that checked Those musings or diverted, save that once The shepherd's lurcher, who, among the crags Had to his joy unearthed a hedgehog, teased 74 THE ENGLISH POETS. His coiled-up prey with barkings turbulent. This small adventure, for even such it seemed In that wild place and at the dead of night, Being over and forgotten, on we wound In silence as before. With forehead bent Earthward, as if in opposition set Against an enemy, I panted up With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts. Thus might we wear a midnight hour away, Ascending at loose distance each from each, And I, as chanced, the foremost of the band ; When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten, And with a step or two seemed blighter still ; Nor was time given to ask or learn the cause, For instantly a light upon the turf Fell like a flash, and lo ! as I looked up, The Moon hung naked in a firmament Of azure without cloud, and at my feet Rested a silent sea of hoary mist. A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved All over this still ocean ; and beyond. Far, far beyond, the solid vapours stretched, In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes. Into the main Atlantic, that appeared To dwindle, and give up his majesty, Usurped upon far as the sight could reach. Not so the ethereal vault ; encroachment none Was there, nor loss ; only the inferior stars Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light In the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon, Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay All meek and silent, save that through a rift- Not distant from the shore whereon we stood, A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place — Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams Innumerable, roaring with one voice ! Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour, For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens. WILLIAM WORDS WOR TH. When into air had partially dissolved That vision, given to spirits of the night And three chance human wanderers, in calm thought Reflected, it appeared to me the type Of a majestic intellect, its acts And its possessions, what it has and craves, What in itself it is, and would become. There I beheld the emblem of a mind That feeds upon infinity, that broods Over the dark abyss, intent to hear Its voices issuing forth to silent light In one continuous stream ; a mind sustained By recognitions of transcendent power, In sense conducting to ideal form. In soul of more than mortal privilege. One function, above all, of such a mind Had Nature shadowed there, by putting forth, 'Mid circumstances awful and sublime. That mutual domination which she loves To exert upon the face of outward things, So moulded, joined, abstracted, so endowed With interchangeable supremacy, That men, least sensitive, see, hear, perceive. And cannot choose but feel. The power, which all Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus To bodily sense exhibits, is the express Resemblance of that glorious faculty That higher minds bear with them as their own. This is the very spirit in which they deal With the whole compass of the universe : They from their native selves can send abroad Kindred mutations ; for themselves create A like existence ; and, whene'er it dawns Created for them, catch it, or are caught By its inevitable mastery, Like angels stopped upon the wing by sound Of harmony from Heaven's remotest spheres. Them the enduring and the transient both Serve to exalt ; they build up greatest things 7 6 THE ENGLISH POETS. From least suggestions ; ever on the watch, Willing to work and to be wrought upon, They need not extraordinary calls To rouse them ; in a world of life they live, By sensible impressions not enthralled, But by their quickening impulse made more prompt To hold fit converse with the spiritual world, And with the generations of mankind Spread over time, past, present, and to come. Age after age, till Time shall be no more. [From the £»c«rs/o«, 1^95-1813.] [Twin Peaks of the Valley.] In genial mood, While at our pastoral banquet thus we sate, I could not, ever and anon, forbear To glance an upward look on two huge Peaks, That from some other vale peered into this. * Those lusty twins,' exclaimed our host, ' if here It were your lot to dwell, would soon become Your prized companions. — Many are the notes Which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores ; And well those lofty brethren bear their part In the wild concert — chiefly when the storm Rides high ; then all the upper air they fill With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow, Like smoke, along the level of the blast. In mighty current ; theirs, too, is the song Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails ; And, in the grim and breathless hour of noon, Methinks that I have heard them echo back The thunder's greeting. Nor have nature's laws Left them ungifted with a power to yield Music of finer tone ; a harmony. So do I call it, though it be the hand Of silence, though there be no voice j— the clouds, I WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. >j>j The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns, Motions of moonlight, all come thither — touch, And have an answer — thither come, and shape A language not unwelcome to sick hearts And idle spirits : — there the sun himself, At the calm close of summer's longest day, Rests his substantial orb ; — between those heights And on the top of either pinnacle. More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault, Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud. Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man Than the mute agents stirring there : — alone Here do I sit and watch.' [Mist Opening in the Hills.] So was he lifted gently from the ground. And with their freight homeward the shepherds moved Through the dull mist, I following.— when a step, A single step, that freed me from the skirts Of the blind vapour, opened to my view Glory beyond all glory ever seen By waking sense or by the dreaming soul ! The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city — boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth Far sinking into splendour— without end ! Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted ; here, serene pavihons bright, In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars — illumination of all gems ! By earthly nature had the eftect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified : on them, and on the coves And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded, taking there Their station under a cerulean sky. Oh, 'twas an unimaginable sight ! Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf, Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed, Molten together, and composing thus. Each lost in each, that marvellous array Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge Fantastic pomp of structure without name, In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapped. Right in the midst, where interspace appeared Of open court, an object like a throne Under a shining canopy of state Stood fixed ; and fixed resemblances were seen To implements of ordinary use. But vast in size, in substance glorified ; Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld In vision — forms uncouth of mightiest power For admiration and mysterious awe. This little Vale, a dwelling-place of Man, Lay low beneath my feet ; 'twas visible — I saw not, but I felt that it was there. That which I saw was the revealed abode Of Spirits in beatitude. [Among the Mountains.] (Greek Divinities.) Once more to distant ages of the world Let us revert, and place before our thoughts The face which rural solitude might wear To the unenlightened swains of pagan Greece. —In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched On the soft grass through half a summer's day, With music lulled his indolent repose: And, in some fit of weariness, if he When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear I WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 79 A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched, Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, A beardless Youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. The nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye Up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed That timely light, to share his joyous sport : And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs, Across the lawn and through the darksome grove, Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes By echo multiplied from rock or cave, Swept in the storm of chase ; as moon and stars Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven. When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills GHding apace, with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly. The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings, Lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque, Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth In the low vale, or on steep mountain side ; And, sometimes, intermixed with stirring horns Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard,— These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood Of gamesome Deities ; or Pan himself, The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring God J [The Moon among Trees.] Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide And darken, so can deal that they become Contingencies of pomp ; and serve to exalt 8o THE ENGLISH POETS. Her native brightness. As the ample moon, In the deep stillness of a summer even Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light, In the green trees ; and, kindling on all sides Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil Into a substance glorious as her own, Yea, with her own incorporated, by power Capacious and serene : — Like power abides In man's celestial spirit ; virtue thus Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire, From the encumbrances of mortal life. From error, disappointment — nay, from guilt ; And sometimes, so relenting justice wills, From palpable oppressions of despair.' [The Sea Shell.] I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things ; Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ; And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. Here you stand. Adore, and worship, when you know it not ; Pious beyond the intention of your thought ; Devout above the meaning of your will. —Yes, you have felt, and may not cease to feel. I . WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 81 The estate of man would be indeed forlorn If false conclusions of the reasoning power Made the eye blind, and closed the passages Through which the ear converses with the heart. Has not the soul, the being of your life, Received a shock of awful consciousness, In some calm season, when these lofty rocks At night's approach bring down the unclouded sky, To rest upon their circumambient walls j A temple framing of dimensions vast, And yet not too enormous for the sound Of human anthems, — choral song, or burst Sublime of instrumental harmony, To glorify the Eternal ! What if these Did never break the stillness that prevails Here, — if the solemn nightingale be mute, And the soft woodlark here did never chant Her vespers, — Nature fails not to provide Impulse and utterance. The whispering air Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights, And blind recesses of the caverned rocks ; The little rills, and waters numberless, Inaudible by daylight, blend their notes With the loud streams : and often, at the hour When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard, Within the circuit of this fabric huge, One voice — the solitary raven, flying Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome. Unseen, perchance above all power of sight — An iron knell ! with echoes from afar Faint — and still fainter — as the cry, with which The wanderer accompanies her flight Thfough the calm region, fades upon the ear, Diminishing by distance till it seemed To expire ; yet from the abyss is caught again, And yet again recovered 1 VOL. IV. 82 THE ENGLISH POETS. SONNETS. [The Gains of Restraint.] Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room ; And hermits are contented with their cells ; And students with their pensive citadels ; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy ; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells : In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is : and henCe for me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground ; Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty. Should find brief solace there, as I have found. [On the Beach at Calais.] It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea : Listen ! the mighty Being is awake. And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly. Dear Child ! dear Girl ! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine : Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not. (1802.) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 8 5. Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 [? 1803]. Earth has not any thing to show more fair : Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty : This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky ; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill \ Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! The river glideth at his own sweet will : Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; And all that mighty heart is lying still 1 Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland. Two Voices are there ; one is of the sea, One of the mountains ; each a mighty Voice : In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee Thftu fought'st against him ; but hast vainly striven : Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven, Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft : Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left ; For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be That Mountain floods should thunder as before. And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore. And neither awful Voice be heard by thee ! (1802 or 1803?) G 2 84 THE ENGLISH POETS. Milton, Written in London, September 1802, Milton ! thou should'st be living at this hour : England hath need of thee : she is a fen Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen. Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. [The World's Ravages.] The world is too much with us : late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The winds that will be howling at all hours, * And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn : So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn j Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. (1806?) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 85 [The Throne of Death.] Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne Which mists and vapours from mine eyes did shroud- Nor view of who might sit thereon allowed ; But all the steps and ground about were strown With sights the ruefullest that flesh and bone Ever put on ; a miserable crowd, Sick, hale, old, young, who cried before that cloud, *Thou art our king, O Death! to thee we groan.' Those steps I clomb ; the mists before me gave Smooth way: and I beheld the face of one Sleeping alone within a mossy cave, With her face up to heaven ; that seemed to have Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone ; A lovely Beauty in a summer grave I (1806?) [The Shock of Bereavement.] Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport — Oh ! with whom But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find.? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind — But how could I forget thee .? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss ? — That thought's return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore. Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more ; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. (1806?) After-Thought [Concluding sonnet of the series ' To the River Duddon,' 1820.] I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide, As being past away. — Vain sympathies ! For, backward, Duddon ! as I cast my eyes, I see what was, and is, and will abide ; Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide ; The Form remains, the Function never dies ; While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish ; — be it so ! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go. Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know. Mutability. From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail ; A musical but melancholy chime. Which they can hear who meddle not with crime, Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. Truth fails not ; but her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more ; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air. Or the unimaginable touch of Time. (1822.) To Lady Fitzgerald, in her Seventieth Year. Such age how beautiful ! O Lady bright, Whose mortal lineaments seem all refined By favouring Nature and a saintly Mind To something purer and more exquisite Than flesh and blood ; whene'er thou meet'st my sight, When I behold thy blanched unwithered cheek, Thy temples fringed with locks of gleaming white. And head that droops because the soul is meek. Thee with the welcome Snowdrop I compare ; That child of winter, prompting thoughts that climb From desolation toward the genial prime ; Or with the Moon conquering earth's misty air, And filling more and more with crystal Hght As pensive Evening deepens into night. (1827.) On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples. [1831.] A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height: Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain For kindred Power departing from their sight ; While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, Saddens his voice again, and yet again. Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes ; Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true. Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea. Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope; 88 THE ENGLISH POETS. [Past Years of Home.] Wansfell ! ^ this Household has a favoured lot, Living with liberty on thee to gaze, To watch while Morn first crowns thee with her ray Or when along thy breast serenely float Evening's angelic clouds. Yet ne'er a note Hath sounded (shame upon the Bard !) thy praise For all that thou, as if from heaven, hast brought Of glory lavished on our quiet days. Bountiful Son of Earth ! when we are gone From every object dear to mortal sight, As soon we shall be, may these v/ords attest How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone Thy visionary majesties of light, How in thy pensive glooms our hearts found rest. (Dec. 24, 1842.) ' The Hill that rises to the south-east, above Amblesid& SAMUEL ROGERS. [Samuel Rogers was bom at Stoke Newington in 1763 and died in 1855. The dates of his principal poems are — Pleasures of Memory 1793, Epistle to a Friend 1798, Human Life 18 19, Italy (complete edition) 1834.] When a poet has become a poet of the past and in the natural course of things his poetry has ceased to be talked about, it is not easy to ascertain how far it may or may not have ceased to be read. Has it ceased to be bought ? The answer to that question might be accepted in most cases as answering the other. But in the case of Rogers an element of ambiguity was introduced long since. When a well-known firm some fifty years ago expressed a doubt whether the public would provide a market for a volume he wished them to publish, Rogers, in a tone half serious, half comic, said — ' I will maie them buy it ;' and being a rich man and a great lover of art, he sent for Turner and Stothard, and a volume appeared with such adornments as have never been equalled before or since. It was called by a sarcastic friend of mine 'Turner illustrated.' TAe Pleasures of Memory is an excellent specimen of what Wordsworth calls 'the accomplishment of verse'; and it was well worthy to attract attention and admiration at the time when it appeared ; for at that time poetry, with few exceptions, was to be distinguished from prose by versification and little else. The Pleasures of Memory is an essay in verse, not wanting in tender sentiment and just reflection, expressed, gracefully no doubt, but with a formal and elaborate grace, and in studiously pointed and carefully poised diction, such as the heroic couplet had been trained to assume since the days of Pope. In 1793 very different days were approaching — days in which poetry was to break its chains, and formality to be thrown to the winds. The didactic dullness of the eighteenth century was presently to be supplanted by the romantic 90 THE ENGLISH POETS. spirit and easy animation of Scott, the amorous appeals of Moore, and the passion of Byron ; whilst mere tenderness, thoughtfulness and grace were to share its fate, and be trampled in the dust. An author's name will generally continue long to be associated with that of the work which has first made him known to the world, whether or not it be his best. The Pleasures of Memory is pro- bably to this day the best known by name of the author's principal poems. They were seven in number— an Ode to Superstition^ The Pleasures of Memory^ An Epistle to a Friend, Columbus^ Jacqueline, Human Life, and Italy ; and they were written, the earliest at twenty-two years of age, the latest at seventy-one. Hutnan Life is a poem of the same type as The Pleasures of Memory, and in the same verse. The fault of such poems is that they are about nothing in particular. Their range and scope is so wide that one theme is almost as apposite as another. The poet sets himself to work to think thoughts and devise episodes, and to give them what coherency he can ; the result being, that some are forced and others commonplace. But if such poems are to be written by a poet who is not a philosopher, they could not well be executed by any one with more care and skill than by Rogers. The subject oi Italy was better chosen. The poet travels from Geneva to Naples ; and his itinerary brings picturesque features, alternately with romantic traditions and memorable facts in history, into a natural sequence of poetic themes. They are described and related always in a way to please, often with striking effect ; and any one who travels the same road and desires to see with the eyes of a poet what is best worth seeing, and to be reminded of what is best worth remembering, can have no better companion. The heroic couplet, moreover, is left behind. For before the first of the fifteen years occupied in the composition oi Italy (1819-34) Spenserian stanzas, ottava rima, octosyllabic verse, blank verse, any verse, had found itself to be more in harmony with the poetic spirit of the time. Italy is the longest of the author's poems ; and for a poem of such length, blank verse is best. It is a form of verse which, since the Elizabethans, no poet except Milton had hitherto used with what could be called signal success ; and the abrupt contrasts and startling significance of which it was capable in their hands, will always find a place more naturally in dramatic than in narrative poetry. But the blank verse written by Rogers, though not very expressive, flows with an easy and gentle melody, suffi- ciently varied, and almost free from faults. SAMUEL ROGERS. Of the other poems, the Epistle to a Friend will perhaps be read with the most pleasure. It is short, familiar, and graceful. The subject is entirely within his powers, though wholly remote from his experience. ' Every reader,' he says in the preface, ' turns with pleasure to those passages of Horace, Pope, and Boileau, which describe how they lived and where they dwelt ; and which, being interspersed among their satirical writings, derive a secret and irresistible grace from the contrast, and are admirable examples of what in painting is termed repose ;' and he proceeds to de- scribe a sort of Sabine Farm in which he supposes himself to pass his days in studious seclusion and absolute repose. His real life was the reverse of all this. His house in St. James's Place did indeed exemplify the classic ideal described in his poem ; it was adorned with exquisite works of art, and with these only ; rejecting as inconsistent with purity of taste all ornaments which are ornaments and nothing more ; and in its interior it might be said to be a work of art in itself But his life was a life of society ; and in the circles which he frequented, including all who were eminent in literature as well as celebrities in every other walk of life, he was more conspicuous by his conversation and by his wit, than admired as a poet. He had kindness of heart, benevolence, and tender emotions : but his wit was a bitter wit ; and it found its way into verse only in the shape of epigrams, too personal and pungent for publication. It may be matter of regret that he did not adopt the converse of the examples he quotes, of Horace, Pope, and Boileau, and intersperse some satirical writings amongst his other works. His poetic gifts were surpassed by half a dozen or more of his contemporaries ; his gift of wit equalled by only one or two. His deliberate and quiet manner of speaking made it the more effective. I remember one occasion on which he threw a satire into a sentence : — ' They tell me I say ill-natured things. I have a very weak voice : if I did not say ill-natured things, no one would hear what I said.' If it is true that he said ill-natured things, it is equally so that he did kind and charitable and generous things, and that he did them in large measure, though, to his credit, with less notoriety. Henry Taylor. 92 THE ENGLISH POETS. From 'The Pleasures of Memory.* Oft may the spirits of the dead descend To watch the silent slumbers of a friend ; To hover round his evening-walk unseen, And hold sweet converse on the dusky green ; To hail the spot where first their friendship grew, And heaven and nature opened to their view ! Oft, when he trims his cheerful hearth, and sees A smiling circle emulous to please ; There may these gentle guests delight to dwell, And bless the scene they loved in hfe so well ! Oh thou! with whom my heart was wont to share From Reason's dawn each pleasure and each care ; With whom, alas ! I fondly hoped to know The humble walks of happiness below ; If thy blest nature now unites above An angel's pity with a brother's love, Still o'er my life preserve thy mild controul, Correct my views, and elevate my soul ; Grant me thy peace and purity of mind, Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned ; Grant me, like thee, whose heart knew no disguise. Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise. To meet the changes Time and Chance present With modest dignity and calm content. When thy last breath, ere Nature sunk to rest, Thy meek submission to thy God expressed, When thy last look, ere thought and feeling fled, A mingled gleam of hope and triumph shed, What to thy soul its glad assurance gave, Its hope in death, its triumph o'er the grave ? The sweet Remembrance of unblemished youth, The still inspiring voice of Innocence and Truth ! Hail, Memory, hail ! in thy exhaustless mine From age to age unnumbered treasures shine I Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, And Place and Time are subject to thy sway I I SAMUEL ROGERS. 93 Thy pleasures most we feel, when most alone ; The only pleasures we can call our own. Lighter than air, Hope's summer-visions die, If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky ; If but a beam of sober Reason play, Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away ! But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power, Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour ? These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight, Pour round her path a stream of living light, And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest "Where Virtue triumphs and her sons are blest I From 'Human Life.' When by a good man's grave I muse alone, Methinks an Angel sits upon the stone. Like those of old, on that thrice-hallowed night. Who sate and watched in raiment heavenly bright. And, with a voice inspiring joy not fear, Says, pointing upward, ' Know, He is not here ; He is risen ! ' But the day is almost spent ; And stars are kindling in the firmament, To us how silent — though like ours perchance Busy and full of life and circumstance ; Where some the paths of Wealth and Power pursue, Of Pleasure some, of Happiness a few ; And, as the sun goes round — a sun not ours — While from her lap another Nature showers Gifts of her own, some from the crowd retire, Think on themselves, within, without inquire ; At distance dwell on all that passes there, All that their world reveals of good and fair ; And, as they wander, picturing things, like me, Not as they are but as they ought to be. Trace out the journey through their little day, And fondly dream an idle hour away. 94 THE ENGLISH POETS. From 'Italy.' But who comes, Brushing the floor with what was once, methinks, A hat of ceremony? On he ghdes. Slip-shod, ungartered ; his long suit of black Dingy, thread-bare, tho', patch by patch, renewed Till it has almost ceased to be the same. At length arrived, and with a shrug that pleads ' 'Tis my necessity ! ' he stops and speaks, Screwing a smile into his dinnerless face. ' Blame not a Poet, Signor, for his zeal — When all are on the wing, who would be last ? The splendour of thy name has gone before thee ; And Italy from sea to sea exults, As well indeed she may! But I transgress. He, who has known the weight of praise himself. Should spare another.' Saying so, he laid His sonnet, an impromptu, at my feet, (If his, then Petrarch must have stolen it from him) And bowed and left me ; in his hollow hand Receiving my small tribute, a zecchine, Unconsciously, as doctors do their fees. My omelet, and a flagon of hill-wine. Pure as the virgin-spring, had happily Fled from all eyes ; or, in a waking dream, I might have sat as many a great man has, And many a small, like him of Santillane, Bartering my bread and salt for empty praise. Am I in Italy .? Is this the Mincius ? Are those the distant turrets of Verona ? And shall I sup where Juliet at the Masque Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him? Such questions hourly do I ask myself; And not a stone, in a cross-way, inscribed ' To Mantua ' — ' To Ferrara ' — but excites Surprise, and doubt, and self-congratulation. 1 SAMUEL ROGERS. 95 O Italy, how beautiful thou art ! Yet I could weep — for thou art lying, alas, Low in the dust ; and we admire thee now As we admire the beautiful in death. Thine was a dangerous gift, when thou wast born, The gift of Beauty. Would thou hadst it not ; Or wert as once, awing the caitiffs vile That now beset thee, making thee their slave ! Would they had loved thee less, or feared thee more ! But why despair? Twice hast thou lived already; Twice shone among the nations of the world, As the sun shines among the lesser Hghts Of heaven ; and shalt again. The hour shall come, When they who think to bind the ethereal spirit, Who, like the eagle cowering o'er his prey, Watch with quick eye, and strike and strike again If but a sinew vibrate, shall confess Their wisdom folly. Even now the flame Bursts forth where once it burnt so gloriously, And, dying, left a splend-^ur like the day, That like the day diffused itself, and still Blesses the earth — the light of genius, virtue, Greatness in thought and act, contempt of death, God-like example. Echoes that have slept Since Athens, Lacedaemon, were Themselves, Since men invoked 'By Those in Marathon!' Awake along the yEgean ; and the dead. They of that sacred shore, have heard the call, And thro' the ranks, from wing to wing, are seen Moving as once they were — instead of rage Breathing deliberate valour. GiNEVRA. [From the same.] If thou shouldst ever come by choice or chance To Modena, where still religiously Among her ancient trophies is preserved Bologna's bucket (in its chain it hangs Within that reverend tower, the Guirlandine) 96 THE ENGLISH POETS. Stop at a Palace near the Reggio-gate, Dwelt in of old by one of the Orsini. Its noble gardens, terrace above terrace, And rich in fountains, statues, cypresses, Will long detain thee ; thro' their arched walks. Dim at noon-day, discovering many a glimpse Of knights and dames, such as in old romance, And lovers, such as in heroic song, Perhaps the two, for groves were their delight, That in the spring-time, as alone they sat. Venturing together on a tale of love, Read only part that day. ^A summer-sun Sets ere one half is seen ; but, ere thou go, Enter the house — prythee, forget it not — And look awhile upon a picture there. 'Tis of a Lady in her earliest youth, The very last of that illustrious race, Done by Zampieri— but I care not whonu He, who observes it — ere he passes on. Gazes his fill, and comes and comes again, That he may call it up, when far away. She sits, inclining forward as to speak. Her lips half-open, and her finger up. As tho' she said 'Beware!' her vest of gold Broidered with flowers, and clasped from head to foot, An emerald-stone in every golden clasp ; And on her brow, fairer than alabaster, A coronet of pearls. But then her face, So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth, The overflowings of an innocent heart — It haunts me still, tho' many a year has fled, Like some wild melody ! Alone it hangs Over a mouldering heir-loom, its companion, An oaken-chest, half-eaten by the worm, But richly carved by Anthony of Trent With scripture-stories from the Life of Christ; A chest that came from Venice, and had held The ducal robes of some old Ancestor. SAMUEL ROGERS. ' 97 That by the way — it may be true or false — But don't forget the picture ; and thou wilt not, When thou hast heard the tale they told me there. She was an only child ; from infancy The joy, the pride of an indulgent Sire. Her Mother dying of the gift she gave, That precious gift, what else remained to him ? The young Ginevra was his all in life. Still as she grew, for ever in his sight ; And in her fifteenth year became a bride, Marrying an only son, Francesco Doria, Her playmate from her birth, and her first love. Just as she looks there in her bridal dress, She was all gentleness, all gaiety ; Her pranks the favourite theme of every tongue. But now the day was come, the day, the hour ; Now, frowning, smiling, for the hundredth time, The nurse, that ancient lady, preached decorum ; And, in the lustre of her youth, she gave Her hand, with her heart in it, to Francesco. Great was the joy; but at the Bridal feast, When all sat down, the Bride was wanting there. Nor was she to be found ! Her Father cried ' 'Tis but to make a trial of our love ! ' And filled his glass to all ; but his hand shook, And soon from guest to guest the panic spread. 'Twas but that instant she had left Francesco, Laughing and looking back and flying still, Her ivory tooth imprinted on his finger. But now, alas, she was not to be found ; Nor from that hour could anything be guessed, But that she was not 1 Weary of his life, Francesco flew to Venice, and forthwith Flung it away in battle with the Turk. Orsini lived ; and long might'st thou have seen An old man wandering as in quest of something, Something he could not find— he knew not what. When he was gone, the house remained awhile VOL. IV. H 98 THE ENGLISH POETS. Silent and tenantless — then went to strangers. Full fifty years were past, and all forgot, When on an idle day, a day of search Mid the old lumber in the Gallery, That mouldering chest was noticed ; and 'twas said By one as young, as thoughtless as Ginevra, 'Why not remove it from its lurking place!' 'Twas done as soon as said ; but on the way It burst, it fell ; and lo, a skeleton, With here and there a pearl, an emerald-stone, A golden clasp, clasping a shred of gold. All else had perished — save a nuptial ring, And a small seal, her mother's legacy, Engraven with a name, the name of both, ' Ginevra/ WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. [The Rev. William Lisle Bowles was born at King's Sutton in 1762. His chief work is his Sonnets, first published in 1789. He died at Salisbury in 1850.] It was the candle of Bowles that lit the fire of Coleridge. We have it on record in the Biographia Literaria that to the author of The Ancient Mariner, bewildered at seventeen between meta- physics and theological controversy, and utterly out of sympathy with the artificialities of the Popesque school, the early sonnets of Bowles came almost in the light of a revelation. In a copy pre- served at South Kensington he writes of them later as ' having done his heart more good than all the other books he ever read excepting his Bible.' Those who to-day turn to the much-praised verses will scarcely find in their pensive amenity that enduring charm which they presented to the hungry and restless soul of Coleridge, seeking its fitting food in unpropitious places. They exhibit a grace of expression, a delicate sensibility, and above all a 'musical sweet melancholy' that is especially grateful in certain moods of mind ; but with lapse of time and change of fashion they have grown a little thin and faint and colourless. Of Bowles's remaining works it is not necessary to speak. He was over- matched in his controversy with Byron as to Pope, and the blunt 'Stick to thy sonnets, Bowles, — at least they pay* of the former must be accepted as the final word upon the poetical efiforts of the cultivated and amiable Canon of Salisbury. Austin Dobson. H 2 lOO THE ENGLISH POETS. 1 Written at Ostend. How sweet the tuneful bells responsive peal ! As when at opening morn, the fragrant breeze Breathes on the trembling sense of pale disease, So piercing to my heart their force I feel ! And hark ! with lessening cadence now they fall ! And now along the white and level tide, They fling their melancholy music wide ; Bidding me many a tender thought recall Of summer-days, and those delightful years When from an ancient tower in life's fair prime, The mournful magic of their mingling chime First waked my wondering childhood into tears ! But seeming now, when all those days are o'er, The sounds of joy once heard and heard no more. Influence of Time on Grief. Time ! who know'st a lenient hand to lay Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence, Lulling to sad repose the weary sense. The faint pang stealest unperceived away; On thee I rest my only hope at last. And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, 1 may look back on every sorrow past, And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile ;— As some lone bird, at day's departing hour. Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while ;— Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure, Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. November, 1793. There is strange music in the stirring wind, "When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone, Whose ancient trees on the rough slope reclined Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sere. If in such shades, beneath their murmuring, Thou late hast passed the happier hours of spring, With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year ; Chiefly if one, with whom such sweets at morn Or evening thou hast shared, far off shall stray. O Spring, return ! return, auspicious May ! But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn. If she return not with thy cheering ray. Who from these shades is gone, gone far away. Bereavement. Whose was that gentle voice, that, whispering sweet. Promised methought long days of bliss sincere ! Soothing it stole on my deluded ear, Most like soft music, that might sometimes cheat Thoughts dark and drooping ! 'Twas the voice of Hope. Of love, and social scenes, it seemed to speak. Of truth, of friendship, of affection meek ; That oh ! poor friend, might to life's downward slope Lead us in peace, and bless our latest hours. Ah me ! the prospect saddened as she sung ; Loud on my startled ear the death-bell rung ; Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers, Whilst Horror pointing to yon breathless clay, •No peace be thine,' exclaimed, 'away, away!' SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. [Samuel Taylor Coleridge w as born at Ottery Saint Mary in the year 1772, was educated at Christ's Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge, and died in 1 834, at Highgate, in the house of Mr. Gillman, under whose friendly care he had passed the last eighteen years of his life, during which years he wrote but little. His first volume of poems was published at Bristol in 1796, and in 1798, Wordsworth's famous volume of Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, together with some other pieces, Chrislabel, after lying long in manuscript, was printed in 1 8 16, three editions of it appearing in one year; and in the next year Coleridge published a collection of his chief poems, under the title of Sibylline Leaves, 'in allusion,' as he says, 'to the fragmentary and wildly- scattered state in which they had been long suffered to remain.' A desultory writer both in prose and verse, he published the first really collective edition of his Poetical and Dramatic Worl