The Skylark teaches that love may both aspire and cherish :

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound!
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

The Linnet seems to preach not at all, but has his lesson too-that Nature commands to be glad:

One have I marked, the happiest guest

In all this covert of the blest;

Hail to thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;

And this is thy dominion.

While birds and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,

Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,

Art sole in thy employment;

A Life, a Presence like the Air,

Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair;

Thyself thy own enjoyment."

Fit companion is he in his airy pulpit for the joyous wild flowers that the poet surprised, revelling too, one spring on the shores of Grasmere :

A host, of golden daffodils,

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine,
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance,

The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee ;

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company.

Universal nature, in his creed, was designed to rejoice, and insists on rejoicing; but no investiture with a prophet's mantle is required to qualify lovers of inspired verse to feel the magic, the exulting happiness, of the strains in which the Poet of Nature proclaims his faith and glory in her beauty and tenderness.

Commonly it is possible to be thus sensible of the simple singer, apart from the seer, in Wordsworth-not always. I cannot pretend to press an indiscriminate resort to him for the amusement of an idle hour. He has strains of a grandeur, a beauty of sublimity, which it seems profane to rehearse unless as anthems chanted by worshippers with bare feet before an altar. From how far away seems to echo the soliloquy :

Earth has not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty ;
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, 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! 9

It is a Voice in the wilderness which, not affecting to be able to cure the disease, protests against personal contamination by the prevailing divorce of flesh from spirit, of Earth from Heaven:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn! 10

Listen finally to the two emulous rivals for control of Wordsworth's soul-Thought the profoundest, Imagination at its loveliest-coalescing, as in the mighty Ode, into a long-resounding peal of music, realizing the Miltonic vision of Philosophy, celestially harmonious:

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose;

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

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.

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 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;
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!
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 O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.11

A consecration of music, as in this marvel, to the evolution of abstract thought must in the nature of things be exceptional. Yet the pursuers after melody may find their reward in exploring even the cold, dry places in the Master's philosophy. Grace and fire frequently will reveal themselves in unexpected spots. A bold defiance of the intolerant literary canons of his youth, like Peter Bellthe butt of Byron-blossoms into some transcendent lines: In vain, through every changeful year,

Did Nature lead him as before;

A primrose by a river's brim

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

At noon, when by the forest's edge,
He lay beneath the branches high,
The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart; he never felt

The witchery of the soft blue sky! 12

An aspiring reflection will without warning break into gentle song:

The bees that soar for bloom,

High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.