The fairy isles fled far away; That with its woods and uplands green, Where shepherd-huts are dimly seen, And songs are heard at close of day; That, too, the deer's wild covert fled, And that, the asylum of the dead: While, as the boat went merrily, Much of Rob Roy the boatman told; His arm that fell below his knee, His cattle ford and mountain hold. Tarbat, thy shore I climbed at last; And, thy shady region passed, Upon another shore I stood, And looked upon another flood;2 Great Ocean's self! ('Tis he who fills That vast and awful depth of hills); Where many an elf was playing round, Who treads unshod his classic ground; And speaks, his native rocks among, As Fingal spoke, and Ossian sung. Night fell, and dark and darker grew All into midnight shadow sweep, Glad sign and sure, for now we hail Oh blest retreat, and sacred too! passin Pæstum. [From. Italy.'] They stand between the mountains and the sea;3 1 Signifying in the Gaelic language an isthmus. 2 Loch Long. 3 The temples of Pæstum are three in number, and have survived, nearly nine centuries, the total destruction of the city. Tradition is silent concerning them, but they must have existed now between two and three thousand years. All silent now, as in the ages past, How many centuries did the sun go round From my youth upward have I longed to tread This classic ground; and am I here at last? Wandering at will through the long porticos, And catching, as through some majestic grove, Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like, Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up, Towns like the living rock from which they grew? A cloudy region, black and desolate, Where once a slave withstood a world in arms. The air is sweet with violets, running wild 'Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals; On as he moved along the level shore, In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk Walls of some capital city first appeared, Go-you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There's such a charm in melancholy, I would not, if I could, be gay. Oh, if you knew the pensive pleasure That fills my bosom when I sigh, You would not rob me of a treasure Monarchs are too poor to buy. 1 They are said to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century. 63 A Wish. Mine be a cot beside the hill; The swallow oft beneath my thatch Around my ivied porch shall spring The village church, among the trees, On a Tear. Oh that the chemist's magic art The little brilliant, ere it fell, Sweet drop of pure and pearly light, Benign restorer of the soul! The sage's and the poet's theme, That very law which moulds a tear, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the greatest of metaphysical poets, is a native of Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, where he was born on the 7th of April 1770. His parents were enabled to bestow upon their children the advantages of a complete education (his father was law-agent to Lord Lonsdale), and the poet and his brother (now Dr Christopher Wordsworth, long master of Trinity college), after being some years at Hawkesworth school, in Lancashire, were sent to the university of Cambridge. William was entered of St John's in 1787. Poetry has been with him the early and almost the sole business of his life. Having finished his academical course, and taken his degree, he travelled for a short time; and marrying an amiable lady, his cousin, settled down among the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland. A gentleman dying in his neighbourhood left him a handsome legacy; other bequests followed; and about 1814, the patronage of the noble family of Lowther procured for the poet the easy and lucrative situation of Distributor of Stamps, which left the greater part of his time at his own disposal. In 1842 he resigned this situation in favour of his son, and government re Wordsworth appeared as a poet in his twenty-third year, 1793. The title of his first work was The Evening Walk, and Descriptive Sketches. The walk is among the mountains of Westmoreland; the sketches refer to a tour made in Switzerland by the poet and his friend, the Rev. R. Jones, fellow of St John's college. The poetry is of the style of Goldsmith; but description predominates over reflection. The enthusiastic dreams of liberty which then buoyed up the young poet, and his associates Coleridge and Southey, appear in such lines as the following : Oh give, great God, to freedom's waves to ride To sweep where pleasure decks her guilty bowers, With all his creatures sink to rise no more! In 1798 was published a collection of Lyrical Ballads, some by Coleridge, but the greater part by Wordsworth, and designed by him as an experiment how far a simpler kind of poetry than that in use would afford permanent interest to readers. The humblest subjects, he contended, were fit for poetry, and the language should be that 'really used by men.' The fine fabric of poetic diction which generations of the tuneful tribe had been laboriously rearing, he proposed to destroy altogether. The language of humble and rustic life, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, he considered to be a more permanent and far more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets. The attempt of Wordsworth was either totally neglected or assailed with ridicule. The transition from the refined and sen diction, to such themes as 'The Idiot Boy,' and a style of composition disfigured by colloquial plainness, and by the mixture of ludicrous images and associations with passages of tenderness and pathos, was too violent to escape ridicule or insure general success. It was often impossible to tell whether the poet meant to be comic or tender, serious or ludicrous; while the choice of his subjects and illustrations, instead of being regarded as genuine simplicity, had an appearance of silliness or affectation. The faults of his worst ballads were so glaring, that they overpowered, at least for a time, the simple natural beauties, the spirit of gentleness and humanity, with which they were accompanied. It was a first experiment, and it was made without timental school of verse, with select and polished | any regard for existing prejudices or feelings, or any on the poetry of his age has thus been as beneficial as extensive. He has turned the public taste from pompous inanity to the study of man and nature; he has banished the false and exaggerated style of character and emotion which even the genius of Byron stooped to imitate; and he has enlisted the sensibilities and sympathies of his intellectual brethren in favour of the most expansive and kindly philanthropy. The pleasures and graces of his muse are all simple, pure, and lasting. In working out the plan of his Excursion,' the poet has not, however, escaped from the errors of his early poems. The incongruity or want of keeping in most of Wordsworth's productions is observable in this work. The principal character is a poor Scotch pedlar, who traverses the mountains in company with the poet, and is made to discourse, with clerklike fluency, wish to conciliate. The poems, however, were read | elevated character. The influence of Wordsworth by some. Two more volumes were added in 1807; and it was seen that, whatever might be the theory of the poet, he possessed a vein of pure and exalted description and meditation which it was impossible not to feel and admire. The influence of nature upon man was his favourite theme; and though sometimes unintelligible from his idealism, he was also, on other occasions, just and profound. His worship of nature was ennobling and impressive. In real simplicity, however, Wordsworth is inferior to Cowper, Goldsmith, and many others. He has triumphed as a poet, in spite of his own theory. As the circle of his admirers was gradually extending, he continued to supply it with fresh materials of a higher order. In 1814 appeared The Excursion, a philosophical poem in blank verse, by far the noblest production of the author, and containing passages of sentiment, description, and pure eloquence, not excelled by any living poet, while its spirit of enlightened humanity and Christian benevolence-extending over all ranks of sentient and animated being-imparts to the poem a peculiarly sacred and Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope. It is thus that the poet violates the conventional rules of poetry and the realities of life; for surely it FROM 1780 is inconsistent with truth and probability, that a profound moralist and dialectician should be found in such a situation. In his travels with the 'Wanderer,' the poet is introduced to a 'Solitary,' who lives secluded from the world, after a life of busy adventures and high hope, ending in disappointment and disgust. They all proceed to the house of the pastor, who (in the style of Crabbe's Parish Register) recounts some of the deaths and mutations that had taken place in his sequestered valley; and with a description of a visit made by the three to a neighbouring lake, the poem concludes. The 'Excursion' is an unfinished work, part of a larger poem, The Recluse, 'having for its principal object the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.' Whether the remainder of the work will ever be given to the world, or completed by the poet, is uncertain. The want of incident would, we fear, be fatal to its success. The narrative part of the 'Excursion' is a mere framework, rude and unskilful, for a series of pictures of mountain scenery and philosophical dissertations, tending to show how the external world is adapted to the mind of man, and good educed out of evil and suffering Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide Book IV. In a still loftier style of moral observation on the changes of life, the 'gray-haired wanderer' ex claims So fails, so languishes, grows dim, and dies, Book VII. quiet and tender beauty characteristic of the author. We subjoin two passages, the first descriptive of a peasant youth, the hero of his native vale : The mountain ash No eye can overlook, when 'mid a grove How she her station doth adorn. The pool Book VII. The peasant youth, with others in the vale, roused To him, thus snatched away, his comrade paid A description of deafness in a peasant would seem The picturesque parts of the 'Excursion' are full of a | tures : 324 Almost at the root Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare Book VII. By viewing man in connection with external nature, the poet blends his metaphysics with pictures of life and scenery. To build up and strengthen the powers of the mind, in contrast to the operations of sense, is ever his object. Like Bacon, Wordsworth would rather believe all the fables in the Talmud and Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind-or that that mind does not, by its external symbols, speak to the human heart. He lives under the 'habitual sway' of nature. To me the meanest flower that blows can give The subsequent works of the poet are numerousThe White Doe of Rylstone, & romantic narrative poem, yet coloured with his peculiar genius; Sonnets on the River Duddon; The Waggoner; Peter Bell; Ecclesiastical Sketches; Yarrow Revisited, &c. Having made repeated tours in Scotland and on the continent, the poet diversified his subjects with descriptions of particular scenes, local manners, legends, and associations. The whole of his works have been arranged by their author according to their respective subjects; as Poems referring to the Period of Childhood; Poems founded on the Affections; Poems of the Fancy; Poems of the Imagination, &c. This classification is often arbitrary and capricious; but it is one of the conceits of Wordsworth, that his poems should be read in a certain continuous order, to give full effect to his system. Thus classified and published, the poet's works form six volumes. A seventh has lately (1842) been added, consisting of poems written very early and very late in life (as is stated), and a tragedy which had long lain past the author. The latter is not happy, for Wordsworth has less dramatic power than any other living poet. In the drama, however, both Scott and Byron failed; and Coleridge, with his fine imagination and pictorial expression, was only a shade more successful. The fame of Wordsworth is daily extending. The few ridiculous or puerile pieces which excited so much sarcasm, parody, and derision, have been quietly forgotten, or are considered as mere idiosyncrasies of the poet that provoke a smile, while his higher attributes command admiration, and have secured a new generation of readers. A tribe of worshippers, in the young poets of the day, have arisen to do him homage, and in some instances have carried the feeling to a sectarian and bigotted excess. Many of his former depreciators have also joined the ranks of his admirers-partly because in his late works he has done himself more justice both in his style and subjects. He is too intellectual, and too little sensuous, to use the phrase of Milton, ever to become generally popular, unless in some of his smaller pieces. His peculiar sensibilities cannot be relished by all. His poetry, however, is of various kinds. Forgetting his own theory as to the proper subjects of poetry, he has ventured on the loftiest themes, and in calm sustained elevation of thought, appropriate imagery, and intense feeling, he often reminds the reader of the sublime strains of Milton. His Laodamia, the Vernal Ode, the Ode to Lycoris and Dion, are pure and richly classic poems in conception and diction. Many of his sonnets have also Many o a chaste and noble simplicity. In these short compositions, his elevation and power as a poet are perhaps more remarkably displayed than in any of his other productions. They possess a winning sweetsimple grandeur, without the most distant approach to antithesis or straining for effect; while that tendency to prolixity and diffuseness which characterise his longer poems, is repressed by the necessity for brief and rapid thought and concise expression, imposed by the nature of the sonnet. It is no exaggeration to say that Milton alone has surpassed-if even he has surpassed some of the noble sonnets of Wordsworth dedicated to liberty and inspired by patriotism. ness or Sonnets. London, 1802. Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; The World is Too Much with Us. The world is too much with us; late and soon, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1803. Earth has not anything to show more fair: |