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quent energy and vivacity of its imagery, and its unceasing heavenward enthusiasm, are qualities that stamp it with the seal of one of the noblest of imaginations. Many of Mr Wordsworth's smaller poems are "flowers fresh with childhood ;" and among those of a more extended aim, what, in grace of delineation, or delicacy of fancy, can equal “Ruth ;" in affecting simplicity of circumstantial lineament of things in themselves morally and poetically beautiful, than "Michael," or the "Cumberland Beggar?" and in "Tintern Abbey," the whole sympathies of the poet's nature, in reference to the relation of man to the external world, are poured forth in exemplification of one of the prominent characteristics of Cowper's genius. If Cowper has taught the new generation to renew the habit of looking "at nature," the telescopic power of Wordsworth's poetry has vastly extended our sphere of vision,-has brought the minutest and the nearest, as well as the most distant, the vastest and most undefined objects, within the sphere of our sympathies,-has widened the glance of faith, and hope, and charity,-and has given to the "humblest daisy on the mountain-side." not merely "a voice to bid the doubting sons of men be still," the cold tongue of dogmatic theology might do this, but a voice with the power of the Mosaic rod, to draw from the flinty and unfeeling heart the gushing waters of all that is holy in piety, pure in affection, and hopeful and consoling amidst the obduracy of sorrowhardened humanity. In Wordsworth's poetry the soul of man animates nature, as, in the Platonic philosophy, the Deity was the innate spirit of the universe. Nature inhabits him, and he inhabits nature, with a reciprocity of life-giving influence.

"The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion.

.

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite, a feeling, and a love."

Byron and Burns are beings apart from Nature, to whose enjoyment she holds the cup, accepted by the one with haughty disdain, or drained with the sullen gratification of selfish passion,-by the other with hearty and benevolent relish of the enjoyment, but with the eagerness that deadens and kills while it gratifies. But Wordsworth shares her "boon-ness" with herself, as if the very flowers were conscious of his verse; "using," Christian-like, “as not abusing."

In estimating the spirit and tendency of Mr Wordsworth's poetry, we have looked on its better side, and have disregarded the adhering vitiations that clung to his style, from the original peculiarity of his poetical theory. Coleridge, who almost worshipped Wordsworth, has left, in his " Biographia Literaria," a philosophical and critical estimate of the poet; and, from the extent to which the cast of Mr Wordsworth's style of expression and mode of thought have penetrated our subsequent poetical literature, we may reasonably predict that posterity will approve the criticism of his friend.

Mr Wordsworth has classified his collected works-which he is fond of viewing as parts of an architectural whole, and would wish to be judged as such-into, I. Poems referring to Childhood; II. Poems founded on the Affections; III. Poems of the Fanoy; IV. Poems of the Imagination; V. Sonnets, Inscriptions, &c. ; all forming, as it were," the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses" of the "Gothic Church" to be reared in "The Recluse."

1 See Virg. Æn. vi. 724.

AN OLD MAN'S REFLECTIONS.

Down to the vale this water steers,
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 the 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.

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 in the summer trees,
The Lark upon 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 with heavy laws,
And often glad no more;
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.

SONNETS.-PART FIRST.

XXXI.

"Weak is the will of man, his judgment blind, Remembrance persecutes, and hope betrays; Heavy is woe, and joy for human kind A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!" Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days, Who wants the glorious faculty assigned, To elevate the more than reasoning mind, And colour life's dark cloud with orient rays.

Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined;

'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower

Of Faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.1

ODE.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD.

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!

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 passed away a glory from the earth.

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 sullen,
While the earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the children are pulling,

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.

1 Compare with Lord Brooke, p. 69, supra.

2 Comp. Coleridge's Ode," Dejection." Stanza iii.

The birds, the shepherd boy, &c., whose vernal happiness the poet describes in the omitted stanza.

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?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life'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:1
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 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.

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benedictions: 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 songs of thanks and praise;

1 This is a splendid shape of the Pythagorean doctrine; see Virg. Æn. vi. 748-751. "Heaven lies," &c. ; comp. the poet Campbell's pretty remark, Life by Dr Beattie, vol. ii. p. 120- Children have so recently come out of the hands of their Creator, that they have not had time to lose the impress of their divine origin."

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:

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.

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 thy 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.

And oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Think not of any severing of your loves!

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