power, he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakspeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an illustration, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects―

The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream."49

I shall select a few examples as most obviously manifesting this faculty; but if I should ever be fortunate enough to render my analysis of Imagination, its origin and characters, thoroughly intelligible to the reader, he will scarcely open on a page of this poet's works without recognising, more or less, the presence and the influences of this faculty.

From the poem on the YEW TREES,50 vol. i., page 303, 304.

"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;
Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane ;-a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pinal umbrage tinged 51
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,

for how otherwise can we define her office? But this operation may be carried on, more or less, in subservience to the higher law of poetic creation, as it seems to me to be in The Danish Boy. S. C.]

49 [From Elegiac Stanzas. P. W., v., p. 311. S. C.]

50 [From Yew Trees. P. W., ii., p. 84. S. C.]

51 ["Pining umbrage "in all the editions. I have left my Father's substitution, as a curious instance of a possible different reading. "Piny shade" and "piny verdure" we read of in the poets; but "pinal" I believe is new. Pining, which has quite a different sense, is doubtless still better; but perhaps my Father's ear shrunk from it after the word "sheddings" at the beginning of the line. S. C.]

SILENCE and FORESIGHT; DEATH, the Skeleton,
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 Glazamara's inmost caves."

The effect of the old man's figure in the poem of RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE, vol. ii., page 33.

"While he was talking thus, the lonely place,

The Old Man's shape and speech all troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently."52

S. C.]

p. 186.

"Even as a Dragon's "Earth has not anything

Or the 8th, 9th, 19th, 26th, 31st, and 33d, in the collection of miscellaneous sonnets—the sonnet on the subjugation of Switzerland, page 210,54 or the last ode, from which .I especially 52 [P. W., ii., p. 123. Stanza xix. 53 ["Where lies the Land." Ib., iii., p. 33. Eye," p. 66. "O Mountain Stream !" iv., p. 20. to show more fair," iii., p. 78. "Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne," p. 30. "It is a beauteous Evening-calm and free." (Now"Air sleeps,-from strife or stir the clouds are free.") P. 32. S. C.] 54 ["Two voices are there." Ib. ib., The Sonnet "I heard (alas! 'twas only in a dream)" iii., p. 47, is a beautiful companion to " Methought I saw." I have sometimes amused myself with finding this sort of cognateness or companionable character amongst the sonnets of Mr. Wordsworth; as we play with a wreath of gems, placing them in many different lights and positions for the gratification of the eye, so, playing with these jewels of poetry I have coupled the splendid sonnet, "Fair Star of Evening," p.176,with that composed on Westminster bridge, p. 178;-" Two voices are there," ib., p. 186, with "Once did she hold the gorgeous earth in fee," ib., p. 180;-" The world is too much with us," ib., p. 35, with "I watch and long have watched,” ib., p. 46; and, not to trouble the reader with the whole of my match-making fan "It is not to be thought of," ib., p. 190, or "When I have borne cies in memory," ib., p. 191, with that truly majestic one,

n

-Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood: ib., p. 185,

which begins with such a quiet gravity, and flows on so naturally into the excess of solemn grandeur. My father quoted this noble sonnet in The

select the two following stanzas or paragraphs, page 349 to 350.55

"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 further 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."

And

page

352 to 354 of the same ode.56

"O 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 benedictions: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Friend, when it first appeared, but the Public of 1809 cared little for The Friend and its philosophy, or for the strains of the great philosophic Poet. Mr. Wordsworth's sonnets have been collected and published separately in one vol. by Moxon, 1838. The finest set, in my opinion, is Part I. of those dedicated to Liberty. (P. W., iii., 175–200.) The three sonnets to Sleep, ib., pp. 14, 15, 16, and the four on Personal Talk, ib., pp. 39, 40, 41, 42, are very beautiful and peculiar; not Miltonic, or Shakspearian, or Petrarchian; nor like the productions of any later sonneteers; but entirely Wordsworthian and inimitable. S. C.]

55 [P. W., v., p. 340. S. C.] 56 [Ib. ib., pp. 342-4. S. C.]

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;
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 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 endeavor,
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."

And since it would be unfair to conclude with an extract, which, though highly characteristic, must yet, from the nature of the thoughts and the subject, be interesting, or perhaps intelligible, to but a limited number of readers; I will add, from the poet's last published work, a passage equally Wordsworthian; of the beauty of which, and of the imaginative power displayed therein, there can be but one opinion, and one feeling. See White Doe, page 5.57

57 [P. W., iv., pp. 48-50. There are now two or three slight alterations, S. C.]

"Fast the church-yard fills;-anon
Look again and they all are gone;

The cluster round the porch, and the folk
Who sat in the shade of the Prior's Oak!
And scarcely have they disappeared
Ere the prelusive hymn is heard :—
With one consent the people rejoice,
Filling the church with a lofty voice!
They sing a service which they feel:
For 'tis the sunrise now of zeal;
And faith and hope are in their prime
In great Eliza's golden time.

"A moment ends the fervent din,
And all is hushed, without and within;
For though the priest, more tranquilly,
Recites the holy liturgy,

The only voice which you can hear

Is the river murmuring near.

-When soft!-the dusky trees between,

And down the path through the open green,
Where is no living thing to be seen;
And through yon gateway, where is found,
Beneath the arch with ivy bound,

Free entrance to the churchyard ground-
And right across the verdant sod,
Towards the very house of God;
Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,
Soft and silent as a dream,

A solitary Doe!

White she is as lily of June,

And beauteous as the silver moon

When out of sight the clouds are driven

And she is left alone in heaven!

Or like a ship some gentle day

In sunshine sailing far away

A glittering ship that hath the plain

Of ocean for her own domain.

*

"What harmonious pensive changes
Wait upon her as she ranges
Round and through this Pile of state
Overthrown and desolate !

Now a step or two her way
Is through space of open day,