Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Even in the cannon's mouth: And then the justice, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 9 With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; Is second childishness and mere oblivion ; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. Duke. Welcome: set down your venerable burden, Orl. I thank you most for him. Adam. So had you need : I scarce can speak to thank you for myself. SHAKESPEARE. WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. MR WORDSWORTH appeared in good time, with a marked, original mind, an imagination filled with forms of beauty and grandeur, and with a profound spiritual philosophy, so universally pervasive, 7 Pard is leopard. The usage was common. 8 Saws are sayings; often so used. Modern is trite, common, familiar. Men may still be seen overflowing with stale, threadbare proverbs and phrases, and imagining themselves wondrous wise. • The pantaloon was a stereotyped character in the old Italian farces: it represented a thin, emaciated old man, in slippers. 1 His for its, the latter not being then in use. WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 371 so predominant, and partaking so much of system and form, that he may be said to have presented poetry under a new phasis. Yet he has such an air of thoughtful truth in his stories and characters, and the sentiments put into the mouths of his people, though so elevated, have such a simplicity of expression, and so distinct are his descriptions and so like to what we see around us, that we do not stop to consider we are taken out of the world and daily reality into the regions of imagination and poetry. It may at first seem strange that the poetical interest should be so deep, where there is so slight a departure from plain experience in the circumstances. But it is the silent change wrought in ourselves, through the great depth of the sentiment and the utter and beautiful simplicity of the language, that awakens it in us. L Mr. Wordsworth stirs up right thoughts and pure wishes within our minds and hearts, clears our dim imaginations, and the poetry of our being becomes its truth. In a certain sense, he may be said to have given birth to another creation. The mountains and valleys, the rivers and plains, it is true, are the same, and so are the trees and smaller plants, and the bright passing clouds, to our mere eye, they are the same as seen yesterday. But a new sense is opened in our hearts, and from out this new and delightful reflections are springing up, and running abroad over the Earth, and twisting themselves about every little thing upon it that has life, and uniting its being with our being with a higher meaning do they now live to us, for they have received a higher life from us. A moral sense is given to things; and the materials of Earth, which had hitherto seemed made only for homely uses, become teachers to our minds, and ministers of good to our spirits. Here the love of beauty is thoughtful, and touched with a moral hue; and what we had esteemed as little better than an indulgence in idle imaginations is found to have even profounder and more serious purposes than the staid affairs of life. The world of Nature is full of magnificence and beauty, and all in it is made to more than a single end. The fruit we feed on is pleasant to the eye too, that we may find in it a second and a better delight. Purifying and lasting pleasures are awakened within us, and happy thoughts and images take life. In the luxury of this higher existence we find a moral strength, and from the riot of the imagination comes a holier calm. It is true that other poets have given this twofold existence to creation, imbuing with a moral and intellectual being the material world; but most of them have done it by rapid and short hints only, and with other purposes in view. But in Mr. Wordsworth - it is a principle that pervades his whole mental structure, and modifies all its workings. He carries us carefully along through all its windings; and, touching the strings of our hearts, their vibrations make us feel that they run upon and connect themselves with every thing in Nature.2 RICHARD HENRY DANA: 1787 The Same Subject. PERHAPS I cannot better sum up the whole matter than by adopting the words of a correspondent. He observes, first, That while Wordsworth spiritualizes the outward world more than any other poet has done, "his feeling for it is essentially manly. Nature, he always insists, gives gladness to the glad, comfort and support to the sorrowful. Secondly, There is the wondrous depth of his feeling for the domestic affections, and more especially for the constancy of them. Thirdly, He must be considered a leader in that greatest movement of modern times, care for our humbler brethren; his part being, not to help them in their sufferings, but to make us reverence them for what they are, - what they have in common with us, or in greater measure than ourselves." These are the tendencies breathed in every line he wrote. He took the commonest sights of Earth, and the homeliest household affections, and made you feel that these, which men commonly take to be the lowest things, are indeed the highest. If he seldom ventures within the inner sanctuary, he everywhere leads to its outer court, lifting our thoughts into a region "neighbouring to Heaven, and that no foreign land." If he was not universal in the sense in which Shakespeare was, and Goethe aimed to be, it was because he was smitten with too deep an enthusiasm for those truths by which he was possessed. His eye was too intense, 2 This is from an article in the North American Review for 1819. At that time the subject of it was little known save as a theme of general disparagement and reproach. Thus early was the venerable patriarch of our American letters to feel and own the power of Wordsworth's genius. I think no juster recognition or happier expression of the surpassing virtue of his poetry has since appeared; subsequent criticism having done little more than amplify and enforce the views put forth by Mr. Dana. YARROW UNVISITED. 373 too prophetic, to admit of his looking at life dramatically. In fact, no poet of modern times has had in him so much of the prophet. In the world of Nature, to be the revealer of things hidden, the sanctifier of things common, the interpreter of new and unsuspected relations, the opener of another sense in men; in the moral world, to be the teacher of truths hitherto neglected or unobserved, the awakener of men's hearts to the solemnities that encompass them, deepening their reverence for the essential soul, apart from accident and circumstance, making us feel more truly, more tenderly, more profoundly, lifting the thoughts upward through the shows of time to that which is permanent and eternal, and bringing down on the transitory things of eye and ear some shadow of the eternal, till this is the office which he will not cease to fulfil as long as the English lasts. What Earth's far-off lonely mountains do for the plains and the cities, that Wordsworth has done and will do for literature, and through literature for society; sending down great rivers of higher truth, fresh, purifying winds of feeling, to those who least dream from what quarter they come. The more thoughtful of each generation will draw nearer and nearer and observe him more closely, will ascend his imaginative heights, and sit under the shadow of his profound meditations, and, in proportion as they do so, will become more noble and pure in heart. J. C. SHAIRP: 1868. 8 Winsome marrow is pleasant companion; a phrase much used in the old ballad poetry of Scotland. In this case, the "winsome marrow" was the poet's sister. 2 "Let Yarrow folk, from Selkirk town, Go back to Yarrow, 't is their own; But we will downward with the Tweed, 3 There's Galla Water, Leader Haughs, And Dryburgh, where with chiming Tweed There's pleasant Tiviot-dale, a land 4 What's Yarrow but a river bare, As worthy of your wonder."- Strange words they seem'd of slight and scorn; My true-love sigh'd for sorrow; And look'd me in the face, to think I thus could speak of Yarrow! 5 "O, green," said I, "are Yarrow's holms," And sweet is Yarrow flowing! Fair hangs the apple from the rock, 4 Lintwhite is but another form of linnet. 5 Holm is meadow, or a low, flat tract of rich land on the banks of a river. 6 Strath is much the same as holm; low, alluvial land. Through and thorough are, properly, but different forms of the same word, and the two were formerly used indiscriminately. Of course the old usage is here admitted for the rhyme. |