And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, Nor, perchance, For thou art with me here upon the banks 7 This is rather mystical, perhaps, and may be thought by some to savour of Pan. theism. But Wordsworth was fond of contemplating all Nature, material and immaterial, as being pervaded by a living, quickening, intelligent Soul, a conscious beauty-making Power; which, after all, may be only another term for the Divine Omnipresence. TINTERN ABBEY. The mind that is within us, so impress Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb And let the misty mountain-winds be free For all sweet sounds and harmonies; O, then, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,- Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams [1798. This is decidedly one of Wordsworth's most characteristic strains. It was given world in his first volume of Lyrical Ballads, 1798, and may be not unjustly said e inaugurated a new era in English Poetry. Perhaps a more original vein was struck by any uninspired hand: certainly England had not produced any thing aching it in originality since the days of Milton. The enthusiastic worship of e here displayed may seem excessive to some; though this very excess, if such constitutes, in part, the unique and peculiar charm of the poem. To the poet's love of Nature, as kindled and fed by the lakes and streams and mountains of tive region, there had succeeded a course of brain-tugging speculations: the h Revolution had, for a time, quite unsphered his mind, and whirled him far his proper orbit into a region where his more genial faculties could not breathe; I lost his better self, and almost broken his heart among the problems started e events of the time. While in this state of exile from his true intellectual he was restored to the society of his sister, whose influence won him back to st love; and in this poem we have, preeminently, his first transports of returnalth, -his fullest outpourings of rapture on regaining his heart's home. In his lictated at the age of seventy-three, we have the following: "No poem of mine cecent abon thon this LAODAMIA. "WITH sacrifice before the rising morn Restore him to my sight,- great Jove, restore!" So speaking, and by fervent love endow'd With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands; Her countenance brightens, and her eye expands; O terror! what hath she perceived? - O joy! His vital presence? his corporeal mould? It is, if sense deceive her not,— 'tis He! And a God leads him, wingèd Mercury! Mild Hermes spake, and touch'd her with his wand Thy Husband walks the paths of upper air: He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space; Forth sprang th' impassion'd Queen her Lord to clasp; began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days, with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bris tol." 9 In this piece, as also in Dion, the author worked, and with most happy success, a vein which he had not before touched. Both of the poems are as classical in the style and manner as they are in the subjects. Though the poet carries to them his own mode of thought, as he needs must do, still there is nothing of his personality in them: he transports himself as completely into the old mythological point of view as any Greek or Roman poet could have done. About the time he was writing them, he was attending a good deal to the education of his son John, and helping to prepare him for the University; and this put him upon reperusing the principal Latin poets. Lamb, in one of his letters to Wordsworth, has the following: "Laodamia is a very original poem; I mean original with reference to your own manner. You have nothing like it. I should have seen it in a strange place, and greatly admired it, but not suspected its derivation." LAODAMIA. "Protesiláus, lo, thy guide is gone! "Great Jove, Laodamía! doth not leave And something also did my worth obtain; Thou know'st, the Delphic oracle foretold "Supreme of Heroes,- bravest, noblest, best! Which then, when tens of thousands were deprest Thou found'st- and I forgive thee - here thou art - But thou, though capable of sternest deed, No Spectre greets me,-no vain Shadow this; Jove frown'd in Heaven: the conscious Parca threw "This visage tells thee that my doom is past: Nor should the change be mourn'd, even if the joys And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys Those raptures duly,- Erebus disdains: Calm pleasures there abide, maiestic pains. 97 Be taught, O faithful Consort, to control Thy transports moderate; and meekly mourn 66 Ah, wherefore?- Did not Hercules by force Given back to dwell on Earth in vernal bloom? The Gods to us are merciful, and they Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast. But if thou go'st, I follow She look'd upon him and was calm'd and cheer'd; The ghastly colour from his lips had fled; In his deportment, shape, and mien, appear'd Brought from a pensive though a happy place. He spake of Love, such love as Spirits feel Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there And fields invested with purpureal gleams; Climes which the Sun, who sheds the brightest day Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath earn'd Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight, |