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The moon rain's out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour,

With music sweet as love which overflows her bower.

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet, those heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphant chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be ;

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety."

I do not like to omit a word of it: but it is taking too much Should we not say from the samples before us that Shel

room.

ley, in melody and exuberance cf fancy, was incalculably superior to Wordsworth? But mark their inferences.

Shelley.

"Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen, then, as I am listening now."

Wordsworth.

"What though my course be rugged and uneven,
To prickly moors and dusty ways confined,
Yet, hearing thee and others of thy kind
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,
I o'er the earth will go plodding on
By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done."

If Wordsworth have superiority then, it consists in greater maturity and dignity of sentiment.

While reading Shelley, we must surrender ourselves without reserve to the magnetic power of genius; we must not expect to be satisfied, but rest content with being stimulated. He alone who can resign his soul in unquestioning simplicity to the descant of the nightingale or the absorption of the sea-side, may hope to receive from the mind of a Shelley the suggestions which, to those who know how to receive, he can so liberally impart.

I cannot leave Shelley without quoting two or three stanzas, in which he speaks of himself, and which are full of his peculiar beauties and peculiar faults.

"A frail form,

A phantom among men, companionless,
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness

Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet, those heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphant chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be ;

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety."

I do not like to omit a word of it: but it is taking too much Should we not say from the samples before us that Shel

room.

ley, in melody and exuberance of fancy, was incalculably superior to Wordsworth? But mark their inferences.

Shelley.

"Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen, then, as I am listening now."

Wordsworth.

"What though my course be rugged and uneven,
To prickly moors and dusty ways confined,
Yet, hearing thee and others of thy kind
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,

I o'er the earth will go plodding on
By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done."

If Wordsworth have superiority then, it consists in greater maturity and dignity of sentiment.

While reading Shelley, we must surrender ourselves without reserve to the magnetic power of genius; we must not expect to be satisfied, but rest content with being stimulated. He alone who can resign his soul in unquestioning simplicity to the descant of the nightingale or the absorption of the sea-side, may hope to receive from the mind of a Shelley the suggestions which, to those who know how to receive, he can so liberally impart.

I cannot leave Shelley without quoting two or three stanzas, in which he speaks of himself, and which are full of his peculiar beauties and peculiar faults.

"A frail form,

A phantom among men, companionless,
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

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