"And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,

We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

"Then come, my sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book, for this one day
We'll give to idleness."

This, with "The Tables Turned,"-already quoted in a preceding page, with which it may be compared in point of thought and expression, are, perhaps, amongst the most characteristic specimens of Wordsworth's familiar style; not but that, as regards poetry, many, even in this style, of far higher merit might easily be selected, did time and space permit. I would, however, just direct attention to one poem belonging to his earliest class of compositions, dated 1804, and placed under the head of "Poems Founded on the Affections," viz., that entitled, "The Afflictions of Margaret," a poem which, for power of simple pathos, could scarcely be rivalled or surpassed. The poem sufficiently explains itself, being, as is evident, the lament of a mother for the loss of her only son, a sorrow that appeals to universal sympathy. It is as follows:

"Where art thou, my beloved son,

66

Where art thou, worse to me than dead?
Oh, find me, prosperous or undone!
Or, if the grave be now thy bed,
Why am I ignorant of the same?-
That I may rest; and neither blame
Nor sorrow may attend thy name.

Seven years, alas! to have received
No tidings of an only child;
To have despaired, and have believed,
And be for evermore beguiled!
Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss,
I catch at them, and then I miss;
Was ever darkness like to this?

"He was among the prime in worth,
An object beauteous to behold;
Well-born, well-bred; I sent him forth
Ingenious, innocent, and bold:
If things ensued that wanted grace,
As hath been said, they were not base;
And never blush was on my face.

"Ah! little doth the young one dream,

When full of play and childish cares,
What power hath e'en his wildest scream,
Heard by his mother unawares!
He knows it not, he cannot guess:
Years to a mother bring distress,
But do not make her love the less.

'Neglect me! no, I suffered long

From that ill thought, and being blind, Said, Pride shall help me in my wrong:

Kind mother have I been, as kind
As ever breathed;' and that is true:
I've wet my path with tears like dew,
Weeping for him when no one knew.

"My son, if thou be humbled, poor,
Hopeless of honour and of gain,
Oh! do not dread thy mother's door;
Think not of me with grief and pain:
I now can see with better eyes;
And worldly grandeur I despise,
And Fortune with her gifts and lies.

"Alas! the fowls of heaven have wings,

And blasts of heaven will aid their flight; They mount, how short a voyage brings The wanderers back to their delight! Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.

66 'Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan,
Maimed, mangled by inhuman men;
Or thou, upon a desert thrown,
Inheritest the lion's den;

Or hast been summoned to the deep,
Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep
An incommunicable sleep.

"I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me: 'tis falsely said
That there was ever intercourse

Betwixt the living and the dead;
For, surely, then I should have sight
Of him I wait for day and night,
With love and longings infinite.

My apprehensions come in crowds;
I dread the rustling of the grass;
The very shadows of the clouds

Have power to shake me as they pass:
I question things, and do not find
One that will answer to my mind;
And all the world appears unkind.

"Beyond participation lie

My troubles, and beyond relief: If any chance to heave a sigh,

They pity me, and not my grief. Then come to me, my son, or send Some tidings that my woes may end; I have no other earthly friend."

Upon this poem Professor Craik makes the following just and pertinent remarks :- "This piece is, perhaps, one of the most favourable examples that could be produced in support of such a theory of poetry as Wordsworth appears to have set out with, and is supposed, in the common notion, to have adhered to in nearly all that he has written. The language is, for the most part, direct and simple, not very much distinguished, except by the rhyme, from what might be poured out, in the circumstances supposed, on the mere impulse of natural passion; and yet the lines are full of poetic power. Undoubtedly passion, or strong feeling, even in the rudest natures, has always something in it of poetry, something of the transforming and idealizing energy which gives both to conception and expression their poetical character; still it is not true, either that poetry is nothing more than vivid sensation, or that the real language of men, however much excited, is usually, to any considerable extent, poetry. Even in this poem, unadorned as it is for the greater part, there will be found to be a good deal besides metre added to the natural language of passion; and the selection, too, must be understood as a selection of person as well as of language, for assuredly the affliction of Margaret,' even though it might have been as deeply felt, would not have supplied to one man or woman in a thousand or a million anything like either the diction or the train of reflection to which it has given birth in her, or rather, in the great poet of whose imagination she, with all she feels and utters, is the creation. For this, after all, is the great fact, that there never has been and never can be poetry without a poet; upon whatever principle or system of operation he may proceed, whether by the selection and metrical arrangement of the real language of passion, or in any other way, it is the poet that makes the poetry, and without him it cannot have birth or being; he is the bee, without whom there can be no honey-the artist or true creator, from whom the thing produced, whatever be its materials, takes shape, and beauty, and a living soul."* Such are the comments of Professor Craik. By way of appendix to these, I would, for my part, advert to the exquisite felicity of expression which pervades the poem, simple and unadorned as it is. Each word, like the stones of a well-compacted edifice, in the right place-nothing that one could wish to mend or take away. This happy combination of a few simple touches will often in poetry, as in music, produce an impression which more elaborate strains fail to do. Of Wordsworth's felicity of expression, as well as his perfect mastery of the sentimental and pathetic, not to say the passionate—an element of the poetic character in which, upon the whole, he seems to have been decidedly deficient,-but of the calmly sentimental and pathetic, let me give one example more in illustration, an example from the singular little poem of the affections, entitled "Louisa," whose intrinsic beauty may well plead excuse for its insertion :

* Craik's "Sketches," &c., vol. vi, p. 125.

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways,
Beside the springs of Dove;

A inaid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

"A violet by a mossy stone,

Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

"She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave; and oh

The difference to me!"

We must now proceed to touch upon Wordsworth's later and more elevated productions. Foremost in this class we would unhesitatingly place his magnificent ode or hymn, entitled, "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," an ode perhaps the finest in the English language, if indeed it were not Milton's celebrated " Ode on the Nativity," with which, in point of sublimity at least, it might well bear comparison, and that were no small praise. This (Wordsworth's) grand ode is a poetic exposition of a characteristic doctrine of the Platonic philosophy-the doctrine, namely, of the soul's pre-existence in some higher and nobler sphere ere coming into the body, which was looked upon as a place of exile and a prison-house; that all our knowledge of abstract truths (as of the mathematical sciences, &c.), all our conceptions of abstract goodness, greatness, beauty, &c., are but realizations, reminiscences more or less distinct, of what the soul had learned while in that its state of pre-existence. Such is the doctrine upon which Plato founds his main argument in support of the soul's immortality, in his famous dialogue, entitled, Phædo," where, as well as in several passages in "Phædrus "and in "Timæus," the said doctrine is elaborately set forth and propounded.* Upon the belief, then, or assumption of this (the Platonic) doctrine, Wordsworth proceeds in the ode now before us, probably also having had a view to the gospel declaration touching little children, "For of such is the kingdom of heaven" Matt. xix. 13, 14; Mark x. 13; Luke xviii. 15. To illustrate the poet's meaning by a passage or two from the ode itself, the doctrine of pre-existence is distinctly enunciated in the following lofty strain :

V.

:

66

"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;

*The thoughtful reader will find some excellent observations on this subjectin which, too, this ode is quoted-in Rev. William Archer Butler's "Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy," Vol. II., Series iii., lecture 4, pp. 241-264. This is a work of singular elegance, thoughtfulness, and value.

In the same grand strain the ode continues and ends. That Wordsworth actually believed in this Platonic theory it would be, perhaps, too much to assert; but it certainly seems to have had a strong fascination for him, traces of it being found not only here, but elsewhere throughout his poetry. Fanciful as the theory may be, it has nevertheless a certain vague grandeur and sublimity, very attractive to the excursive imagination.

To enter into anything like a detailed criticism of Wordsworth's numerous works would far exceed the limits of such an essay as this; but amongst his other poems of a higher order we would specially notice the beautiful "Lines on Tintern Abbey," lines full of a deep and spiritual beauty; and, though in a different style, the noble classic poem of "Laodamia," from which the following pas sage, illustrative of the ancient pagan notion of a state of future happiness, may be here transcribed:

"He spake of love, such love as spirits feel,

In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsighed for, and the future sure;
Spake as a witness of a second birth
For all that is most perfect upon earth:

The body.

† Vide, e. g.," Excursion," Book IV.