"STAY! PENSIVE, SADLY-PLEASING VISIONS, STAY!

AH NO, AS FADES THE VALE, THEY FADE AWAY."-WORDSWORTH.

484

66 NOW O'ER THE SOOTHED ACCORDANT HEART WE FEEL

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

In 1843, on the death of Southey, Wordsworth received the poet-laureateship. He held it for seven years, dying on the 23rd of April 1850, from the effects of a cold caught about six weeks previously.

Wordsworth was of a goodly stature-five feet ten; robust, capable both of great exertion and endurance, but not well-proportioned. His face was very fine; the forehead not remarkable for height, but for breadth and expansive development. The nose was large and slightly arched, the mouth firmly cut, the eyes filled with a solemn and spiritual light, which seemed to emanate from some ideal world of beauty.

Such was the poet of his poetry it is difficult to speak in the narrow limits to which we are restricted. Its most striking peculiarity is one to which we have already adverted-the intimate knowledge and love of nature that inform every line. He does not merely describe the misty uplands, and the brawling stream, and the shadowy vale, the evening star, the harvest moon, the daisy, and the celandine, but he brings them into immediate contact with the reader's heart and mind, and shows their inner and deeper relations. Then his imagination was singularly compact and elevated, enabling him to see, what so few have so clearly seen,—

"The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the poet's dream."

Add to this, a singular gravity and dignity of thought, an intense depth of
reflection, a capacity for the loftiest and most solemn emotion, a remarkable
union of keen sensibility with subtle perception, an entire independence of
all other poets, and a curiosa felicitas of expression which has only been
surpassed by Shakespeare and Milton,-and you obtain the leading charac-
teristics of Wordsworth's genius. Of him, in fine, it may be said, as he
himself has said of Milton,-

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

"I wish," he re

His own definition of the poet was as a teacher."
marked, "to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing." If we were asked
how far he carried out his definition, and what was the actual value of his
teaching, we should reply in the words of the late George Brimley, that it
lay mainly in the power that was given him of unfolding the glory and
the beauty of the material world, and "in bringing consciously before the
minds of men the high moral function that belonged in the human economy
to the imagination, and in thereby redeeming the faculties of sense from
the comparatively low and servile office of ministering merely to the animal
pleasures, or what Mr. Carlyle has called 'the beaver inventions.' That
beside, and in connection with this, he has shown the possibility of com-
bining a state of vivid enjoyment, even of intense passion, with the activity
of thought, and the repose of contemplation. He has, moreover, done
more than any poet of his age to break down and obliterate the conven-
tional barriers that, in our disordered social state, divide rich and poor
into
two hostile nations; and he has done this, not by bitter and passionate
declamations on the injustice and vices of the rich, and on the wrongs and

A SYMPATHETIC TWILIGHT SLOWLY STEAL."-WORDSWORTH.

"YET STILL THE TENDER, VACANT GLOOM REMAINS; STILL THE COLD CHEEK ITS SHUDDERING TEAR RETAINS."-IBID.

TILL, HIGHER MOUNTED, STRIVES IN VAIN TO CHEER THE WEARY HILLS, IMPERVIOUS, BLACKENING NEAR;-(WORDSWORTH)

66 THUS HOPE, FIRST POURING FROM HER BLESSED HORN

MORS OMNIA VINCIT.

virtues of the poor, but by fixing his imagination on the elemental feelings,
which are the same in all classes, and drawing out the beauty that lies in
all that is truly natural in human life."]

MORS OMNIA VINCIT.

REFLECTIONS IN A CHURCHYARD.

HIS file of infants; some that never breathed,

And the besprinkled Nursling, unrequired
Till he begins to smile upon the breast
That feeds him; and the tott'ring Little One

Taken from air and sunshine, when the rose
Of Infancy first blooms upon his cheek;

The thinking, thoughtless Schoolboy; the bold Youth
Of soul impetuous; and the bashful Maid
Smitten while all the promises of life

Are op'ning round her; those of middle age,
Cast down while confident in strength they stand,
Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,
And more secure, by very weight of all
That, for support, rests on them; the decayed
And burthensome; and, lastly, that poor few
Whose light of reason is with age extinct;
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,
The earliest summoned and the longest spared,
Are here deposited; with tribute paid
Various, but unto each some tribute paid;
As if, amid these peaceful hills and groves,
Society were touched with kind concern,

And gentle "Nature grieved that One should die !"

[From "The Excursion."-" These general reflections on the indiscriminating rapacity of Death, though by no means original in themselves, and expressed with too bold a rivalry of the Seven Ages of Shakespeare, have yet a character of vigour and truth about them that entitles them to notice." -LORD JEFFREY.]

HER DAWN, FAR LOVELIER THAN THE MOON'S OWN MORN,

485

YET DOES SHE STILL, UNDAUNTED, THROW THE WHILE ON DARLING SPOTS REMOTE HER TEMPTING SMILE."-WORDSWORTH.

"I HAVE LEARNED TO LOOK ON NATURE, NOT AS IN THE HOUR OF THOUGHTLESS YOUTH,

486

PEACE SETTLES WHERE THE INTELLECT IS MEEK, (WORDSWORTH)

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THE SHADOW IN THE STREAM.

HEN having reached a bridge, that overarched
The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A twofold image.

On a grassy bank

A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood
Another and the same! Most beautiful,
On the green turf, with his imperial front
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,
The breathing creature stood! as beautiful
Beneath him showed his shadowy counterpart.
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,
And each seemed centre of his own fair world!
Antipodes, unconscious of each other,

Yet in partition, with their several spheres,
Blended in perfect stillness to our sight!

[From "The Excursion."-This "elaborate and fantastic picture" ex-
hibits the master's finest touches; it is painted, to use the language of art-
jargon, in his best style.]

BUT HEARING OFTENTIMES THE STILL, SAD MUSIC OF HUMANITY."-w. WORDSWORTH.

A SELECTION FROM WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS.

I. IN MEMORY OF MILTON.

MILTON! thou shouldst 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.

AND LOVE IS DUTIFUL IN THOUGHT AND Deed.". -WORDSWORTH

WE POETS IN OUR YOUTH BEGIN IN GLADNESS,- WORDSWORTH)

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.

[From the Sonnets. -Wordsworth's protests against worldliness of spirit and superstitious idolatry of wealth are even more necessary now than in his own time. But in making these protests he did a great, and high, and holy work, whose value must not be calculated or measured by his success-alas! how would the work of any man appear, if judged by such a standard?--but by its truth. "The work Wordsworth did," says F. W. Robertson," and I say it in all reverence, was the work which the Baptist did when he came to the pleasure-laden citizens of Jerusalem to work a reformation; it was the work which Milton tried to do, when he raised that clear, calm voice of his to call back his countrymen to simpler manners and to simpler laws. That was what Wordsworth did, or tried to do; and the language in which he has described Milton might with great truth be applied to Wordsworth himself."-REV. F. W. ROBERTSON, Lectures and Addresses, p. 236.]

"I HAVE FELT A PRESENCE THAT DISTURBS ME WITH THE JOY OF ELEVATED THOUGHTS,

A SENSE SUBLIME OF SOMETHING FAR MORE DEEPLY INTERFUSED."-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

II. THE ARTIST'S CONFIDENCE IN HIS ART.

HIGH is our calling, friend! Creative art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned-to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,

BUT THEREOF COME DESPONDENCY AND MADNESS."-WORDSWORTH.

"THEREFORE AM I STILL A LOVER OF THE MEADOWS, AND THE WOODS, AND MOUNTAINS, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH)

488

'NEVER TO BLEND OUR PLEASURE OR OUR PRIDE-(WORDSWORTH)

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness:

Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!

[This Sonnet was addressed to the painter, B. R. Haydon. The ninth and tenth lines were almost prophetic.]

III.-ENGLAND'S GLORY.

IT is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, with " pomp of waters unwithstood,"
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands

Should perish! and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible Knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spoke; the faith and morals hold

Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

[The reader should be reminded that this noble Sonnet was written in 1803, when Napoleon was threatening our shores with invasion. It is the just expression of the enthusiasm which then stirred the heart of every Englishman; which filled him with a longing to fight for his altar and his hearth, and for the grand inheritance of glory handed down by his an

cestors.]

IV.-ENGLAND AND FRANCE CONTRASTED.

GREAT men have been among us; hands that penned
And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none;
The later Sydney, Marvel, Harrington,

Young Vane and others who called Milton friend.

WITH SORROW OF THE MEANEST THING THAT FEELS."-WORDSWORTH.

AND OF ALL THAT WE BEHOLD FROM THIS GREEN EARTH; OF ALL THE MIGHTY WORLD OF EYE AND EAR."-WORDSWORTH.