The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.

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;
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.

*

Oh joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,

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 flattering in his breast

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our moral nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised;

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Ne'er did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, 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.”

A fit tribute to Milton was this sonnet from Wordsworth:
"Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee; she's 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.
O! raise us up, return to us again,

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;

Thou had'st a voice, whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.

So did'st thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart,
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."

Many of his short songs have the same purity and grandeur as these sonnets. And the simplest subjects—a flower, a bird, an incident of humble life—no one else has treated such with the sympathy Wordsworth shows.

And what shall I say of the Ode, Intimations of Immor tality, which is enough for any one poet to have written. This, in my mind, both in form and matter, is to be set far above that Ode of Dryden's which he called the best in the language:

"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 freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it has been of yore,-
Turn whereso'er I may

By night or day

The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.

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.

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 flattering in his breast

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our moral 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 punish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Not man nor boy

Not 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 ever more."

A recent English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, says that in a period of great depression he tried poetry as a resource, and found most of all a balm and healing in Wordsworth. He afterwards says he believes Wordsworth to be the true poet of unpoetic natures, for those of quiet, thoughtful tastes, without much cultivation of the imagination or the emotions. I am not sure that this is so.

Matthew Arnold, a modern critic and poet too, exalts Wordsworth much higher than Mill did. I am, myself, inclined to think that Wordsworth is not the poet for youth. One grows to love him. The ardor and fiery imagination of youth is rarely satisfied with him; he chimes in with the thoughts and aspirations of a maturer age.

Robert Southey, who is generally classed as the third in this trio of poets, hardly followed the theory of the Lake School in his choice of subjects, for they do not, as a rule, keep within the common interests of human life. His subjects are largely supernatural. His poem of Roderick is an old Gothic legend; Madoc was taken from British history; Thalaba is an Arabian tale; and Kehama is Hindoo in origin. Even his shorter poems, many of them tales told in verse,

have a weird element which is more in keeping with the Ancient Mariner than anything Wordsworth wrote. I quote one short story in verse from Southey, for the touch of humor in it, which gives variety to my talk. It is not specially in illustration of Southey's style, those you must study in his long poems, Thalaba, or Roderick. This is a simple ballad, called

66

THE WELL OF ST. KEYNE.

A well there is in the west country,
And a clearer one never was seen,
There is not a wife in the west country

But has heard of the well of St. Keyne.

"An oak and an elm tree stand beside,

And behind does an oak tree grow,
And a willow from the bank above,
Drops to the water below.

"A traveler came to the well of St. Keyne,
Pleasant it was to his eye;

For from cock-crow he had been traveling,
And there was not a cloud in the sky.

"He drank of the water so cool and clear,

For thirsty and hot was he,

And he sat down upon the bank,

Under the willow tree.

"There came a man from the neighboring town,

At the well to fill his pail,

On the well-side he rested it,

666

And bade the stranger hail.

'Now, art thou a bachelor, stranger?' quoth he,
'For an if thou hast a wife,

The happiest draught thou hast drank this day,
That ever thou didst in thy life.'

666

Or has your good woman, if one you have,
In Cornwall ever been?

For an if she have, I'll venture my life,

She has drank of the well of St. Keyne.'

'I have left a good woman who never was here;'

The stranger he made reply;