High-climbing rock, low sunless dale,
Sea, desert, what do these avail?

Oh take her anguish and her fears
Into a deep recess of years!

She acts out her part; she suffers, and is strong and worthy of the grace of God; and so, even in life, is sainted, raised by the force of sorrow itself beyond the reach of any further disturbance of the soul:

The mighty sorrow hath been borne,
And she is thoroughly forlorn:
Her soul doth in itself stand fast,
Sustained by memory of the past
And strength of Reason; held above
The infirmities of mortal love;
Undaunted, lofty, calm, and stable,
And awfully impenetrable.

There is no lack here of the sense of Fate. That the poet should thus address himself calmly to scale these dizzy cliffs of anguish, where the mortal senses reel, might almost seem too presumptuous an attempt for the powers of the human imagination. Wordsworth would never have dared it had not his own feelings on the death of his brother John given him guidance in the ascent. And the White Doe, which wanders through the poem, a gracious presence, is the embodiment of the comfort that he found in the continued gentle breathings of Nature and in the deep well-springs of his own soul.

The Character of the Happy Warrior owes something to the same inspiration, and is of a like temper. The warrior, by his profession, is brought into daily contact with the grimmest of facts and laws; it is his duty to make them subservient to the law for which he stands. He is one

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable-because occasions rise

So often that demand such sacrifice;

More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

It was a strange fortune, some think, that made Wordsworth the best Laureate of the warrior. So fixed is the misconception of his character and of his poetry that the very existence of this, his great tribute to the noblest of professions, is held to require explanation. But, in truth, had he followed his early leanings and taken the Army for his calling, he would have been an incomparable soldier. The White Doe is a warrior poem;

greater, perhaps, than the poem explicitly devoted to the ideal soldier, as the virtues that it enshrines are rarer and more difficult. The Happy Warrior is not compelled throughout the whole of a long life to "stand and wait"; the crisis of action brings him the consummation of his happiness. He is a gentle and generous spirit,

Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,

A constant influence, a peculiar grace;

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,

Is happy as a Lover; and attired

With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And through the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.

The two poems have much in common; the virtue of the soldier, as of the lady, lies not in opposing ruthless necessity, but in accepting it, and aiming at a victory that may be won when “ prayers for this cause or for that" have been abandoned. And in both poems the happiness of clear vision, which enables man to be still the giver, not the stunned victim of a theft, is set high among human privileges.

The Ode to Duty, written earlier than these two poems, is in some sort an induction to them. It is in eternal law that humanity finds consolation

and support, and life and joy. From early childhood Wordsworth, as he tells in the Prelude, had chiefly esteemed that love and that beauty which have in them an element of severity and terror. He returned to them, after a holiday of genial impulse, to find them greater and more commanding than before. The beauty that he reveals, more fully than other poets, is the beauty of the rocks; on this unshaken ground all graces that are not illusion must build. Flowers, and laughter, and fragrance-all that plays on the surface and fades in the air-are the offspring of the same unalterable law which disciplines the stars in their squadrons, and which, in human hearts, is the law of sanity and order, of faith and of peace.

CHAPTER VI

ILLUMINATION

NATURE and human life, then, together make up a book of wonder and power, composed in a strange language, unlike the speech that men use for the business of life, and written in unknown characters. The book has never been read, but glimpses of its meaning are obtainable by those who pore over it lovingly and long, and who do not despise small aids and chance suggestions towards its interpretation. The poet makes it the business of his life to read at least some part of it; and we have seen him at work, trying this way and that, gazing at the pages so fixedly that he stamps them, down to the minutest detail, on his memory, testing likely theories of the cipher, listening with rapt attention to the casual comments of those innocent and idle spirits who, seeking no hidden meaning, find no difficulty in the book, but turn over its pages for pure delight, and notice, from time to time, features of the script that have escaped the eye of