The elder yet its circling tufts put forth;

The sparrow tenants still the eaves-built nest, Where we should see our martin's snowy breast Oft darting out; the blasts from the bleak north, And from the keener blast, still frequent blow. Sweet Spring! thou lingerest; and it should be so : Late let the fields and gardens blossom out! Like man when most with smiles thy face is dressed, 'Tis to deceive; and he who knows ye best, When most ye promise, ever most must doubt.

V.

As thus I stand beside the murmuring stream,
And watch its current, memory here portrays
Scenes faintly formed of half-forgotten days,
Like far-off woodlands by the moon's bright beam
Dimly descried, but lonely. I have worn

Amid these haunts the heavy hours away
When childhood idled through the Sabbath day;
Risen to my tasks at winter's earliest morn ;
And, when the summer twilight darkened here,
Thinking of home, and all of heart forlorn,

Have sighed, and shed in secret many a tear. Dreamlike and indistinct those days appear, As the faint sounds of this low brooklet borne Upon the breeze, reach fitfully the ear.

SONNET TO THE EVENING RAINBOW.
MILD arch of promise! on the evening sky
Thou shinest fair with many a lovely ray,
Each in the other melting. Much mine eye
Delights to linger on thee; for the day,
Changeful and many-weathered, seemed to smile
Flashing brief splendour through its clouds awhile,
Which deepened dark anon, and fell in rain :

But pleasant it is now to pause, and view
Thy various tints of frail and watery hue,
And think the storm shall not return again.

Such is the smile that piety bestows

On the good man's pale cheek, when he, in peace Departing gently from a world of woes,

Anticipates the realm where sorrows cease.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770. Made Laureate in 1843. Died at Rydal Mount in 1850.

(Reign of Victoria.)

IT is quite easy to point out, as many critics are fond of doing, the limitations of Wordsworth's genius. He was often trammelled by his theories; his mind was somewhat rigid and inflexible; he had no humour; he wrote often without inspiration, hence is prolix and tedious; his subject-matter is sometimes trivial or of such a philosophical nature as to lie outside of the domain of true poetry, and when he wrote in this manner his diction, too, differs little from that of prose. He is therefore one of the most unequal of poets. But judging Wordsworth by his best, his most characteristic work, it must be conceded that he is the greatest poet of modern England-with the single exception of Goethe, the greatest poet of the modern world.

A high claim--but it is made because Wordsworth not only deals in so transcendently beautiful and original a manner with the beauty and the glory of the outward world; or treats with such power certain primitive characteristics of humanity and vindicates the dramatic interest which belongs to the personality of man apart from all social or political conditions; but because he furnishes so much for the human spirit to rest on; he points to such deep springs of joy; he appeals not only to the heart and its affections, or to the imagination and the artistic sense, but he has a direct influence upon the human will; having himself lived from a "great depth of being," he creates high thinking, he stimulates the noblest impulses and ministers with irresistible power to the health of the soul.

Wordsworth from the first believed in the sacredness of his message to the world, that his mission was to reveal a “glory very near but sealed to the many "; and because he had this new revelation of spiritual truth, his poetry has become a priceless heritage for all future poets, and by its formative influences has widened the range of poetry forever.

The supremacy of Wordsworth's poetry is assured because it has that surest safeguard against oblivion: his teaching has, as Lowell said, become a part of the air we breathe. His poetry is as immortal as the heart of man!

The common idea of Wordsworth is that he is the high priest of nature-that having spent his life among hills and lakes he has seized every phase of their scenery and painted it in detail. But Wordsworth's distinctive originality does not consist in his descriptive powers. Before him there had been poets who loved nature and described with charm and power the varied objects that make up her loveliness. Wordsworth had an intense consciousness of the loveliness or the grandeur of nature; it came to him with the force, the magic, the splendour of a new discovery. Vivid delight came to him not only at the moment of perception, but long afterwards, for he speaks of the dear remembrances of outward scenes, of the tranquil restoration in those remembrances.

Wordsworth is indeed a minute observer of nature's manifold and changing forms, and a describer of her individual beauties. But he is more than this. He looks at a scene as a whole, seeks the source of its mystery, of its charm or its grandeur; his impassioned and meditative imagination penetrates to the very life, the soul of things. By this process he not only gets a deeper sense of beauty, a perception of the spiritual reality which lies back of all natural manifestations, but, at the same time, the heart and mind of man are more profoundly understood. Every beautiful appearance of the sky or of the earth, possessing, as it does, a sentiment of its own, which is not a creation of the observer's mood, but an emanation from its own separate life, has a distinct influence upon the mind of man. Wordsworth deals with this influence. It is this treatment of nature and man in union which, more than anything else, constitutes Wordsworth's claim to being the prophet of a new revelation. He perceived an exquisite adaptation of nature to the mind of man, and the mind of man to the outward world. The joy which finds such frequent mention in his verse comes from the "living presence" of nature, which has an active power of her own distinct from man coming in contact with the soul of man, which has the power to perceive and feel. This reciprocal action is therefore the haunt and main region of Wordsworth's song.

Then he gives not only a sublime explanation of man's intellect in its subtle relations to external things, but of man's moral and spiritual affinities to the Soul of the world. Το treat nature and man as Wordsworth treats them, is, as De Vere beautifully says, to see the Invisible. Without God the beneficent ministry of nature would be but mockery; indeed, without him nature could not be the "quickener of the finest impulses of the soul." God and Immortality, as well as man and nature, are the subjects of Wordsworth's impassioned and majestic verse. He had a most glorious vision of spiritual