12

WORDSWORTH: SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.

workman; was never weary of retouching his poems, and spared no labour, that he might lift and chasten them into fair accordance with his own ideas. And, with all his sturdy self-reliance, -a self-reliance that belongs to all genius of a high order, he had a spirit of willing deference to thoughtful and genial criticism on his poems. All this was because in his view the office of poet was invested with religious consecration: he regarded his calling as divine, his art as a sacred thing; and to treat it as a mere plaything, or to use it for any selfends, was to him nothing less than downright profanation. On this point he has left the following markworthy passage: "I can say without vanity, that I have bestowed great pains on my style, full as much as any of my contemporaries have done on theirs. I yield to none in love for my art. I therefore labour at it with reverence, affection, and industry. My main endeavour, as to style, has been that my poems should be written in pure intelligible English." Again, he speaks of the poet's office in the following high strain : "The Sun was personified by the ancients as a charioteer driving four fiery steeds over the vault of heaven; and this solar charioteer was called Phoebus, or Apollo, and was regarded as the god of poetry, of prophecy, and of medicine. Phoebus combined all these characters. And every poet has a similar mission on Earth: he must also be a Phoebus in his own way; he must diffuse health and light; he must prophesy to his generation; he must teach the present age by counselling with the future; he must plead for posterity; and he must imitate Phoebus in guiding and governing all his faculties, fiery steeds though they be, with the most exact precision, lest, instead of being a Phoebus, he prove a Phaeton, and set the world on fire, and be hurled from his car: he must rein-in his fancy, and temper his imagination, with the control and direction of sound reason, and drive on in the right track with a steady hand."

In conclusion: Wordsworth is now generally admitted to take rank as one of the five great chiefs of English song; the others being, of course, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. As for Shakespeare, he stands altogether apart, in the solitude of his own unchallenged superiority, unapproached, and unapproachable; so that no one should think of trying any other poet by his measure. As to the others, it is not yet time to settle Wordsworth's comparative merits. To pronounce him as great a poet as Milton, would probably be rash: but I make bold to affirm that he is more original than Milton; in fact, the most original of all English poets, with the single exception of Shakespeare. And a long experience has fully satisfied me that, next after Shakespeare, he is the best of them all for use as a text-book in school: and this, because, with fair handling, he kindles a purer, deeper, stronger enthusiasm, and penetrates the mind with a more potent and more enduring charm. He makes the world appear a more beautiful and happier place, human life a nobler and diviner thing; and wherever the taste has once been set to him, wherever his power has once made any thing of a lodgment, the person never outgrows the love of him, nor thinks of parting company with him. His poems have now been my inseparable companion for some thirty-five years; and every year has made them dearer to my heart; every year has added to my reverence for their author, and to my gratitude for the unspeakable benediction they have been to If I can do even a little towards diffusing a knowledge and love of this precious inheritance, I shall think I have not lived altogether in vain.

me,

POEMS

BY

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

RUTH.

WHEN Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;,
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone

From battle and from jeopardy,
He 'cross the ocean came.

With hues of genius on his cheek
In finest tones the Youth could speak:
While he was yet a boy,

The Moon, the glory of the Sun,
And streams that murmur as they run,
Had been his dearest joy.

He was a lovely youth! I guess
The panther in the wilderness
Was not so fair as he;

And, when he chose to sport and play,
No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.

Among the Indians he had fought,
And with him many tales he brought

She seem'd to live; her thoughts her own; Of pleasure and of fear;

Herself her own delight;

Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

There came a youth from Georgia's shore;
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees:
The feathers nodded in the breeze,
And made a gallant crest.

From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
But no! he spake the English tongue,
And bore a soldier's name;

And, when America was free

Such tales as told to any maid

By such a youth, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear.

He told of girls,- a happy rout! -
Who quit their fold with dance and shout,
Their pleasant Indian town,

To gather strawberries all day long;
Returning with a choral song
When daylight is gone down.

He spake of plants that hourly change
Their blossoms, thro' a boundless range
Of intermingling hues :

With budding, fading, faded flowers,
They stand the wonder of the bowers
From morn to evening dews.1

1 Referring, perhaps, to the cotton- fect white, and then gradually passing plant; which keeps putting forth new through every variety of shade to a dark flowers through a period of several weeks; brown.

the blossom being at first a pure and per

"How pleasant," then he said, "it were The wind, the tempest roaring high,

2 In this beautiful stanza, the author seemed to him that in the course and proexpresses the enthusiastic gladness with gress of this event all the ancient holdings which he had himself hailed the French of oppression and wrong were to disap Revolution of 1789, which he confidently pear, and a golden age of universal peace regarded as the dawn of a new era of free-to succeed. dom and happiness in the world. It

Disporting round your knees?

Through Moscow's gates, with gold un-You lavish'd on me when a child
Stepp'd One at dead of night, [barr'd,
Whom such high beauty could not guard
From meditated blight;

By stealth she pass'd, and fled as fast
As doth the hunted fawn,

Nor stopp'd, till in the dappling East
Appear'd unwelcome dawn.

Seven days she lurk'd in brake and field,
Seven nights her course renew'd,
Sustain'd by what her scrip might yield,
Or berries of the wood;

At length in darkness travelling on,
When lowly doors were shut,
The haven of her hope she won,
Her Foster-mother's hut.

"To put your love to dangerous proof I come," said she, "from far;

I was your lambkin, and your bird,
Your star, your gem, your flower;
Light words, that were more lightly heard
In many a cloudless hour!

The blossom you so fondly praised
Is come to bitter fruit;

A mighty One upon me gazed;

I spurn'd his lawless suit,

And must be hidden from his wrath:
You, Foster-father dear,
Will guide me in my forward path;
I may not tarry here!

3 Prevented in the old sense of anticipated. The usage is frequent in Shake speare, as also in the Bible and Prayer Book.