And not unhallowed was the page Love listening while the Lesbian Maid O ye, who patiently explore That were, indeed, a genuine birth What Horace gloried to behold, What Maro loved, shall we enfold? Can haughty Time be just! XXIX. MEMORY. A PEN-to register; a key- 1819. As aptly, also, might be given That, softening objects, sometimes even That smoothes foregone distress, the lines Yet, like a tool of Fancy, works Those Spectres to dilate That startle Conscience, as she lurks Within her lonely seat. O! that our lives, which flee so fast, In purity were such, That not an image of the past Should fear that pencil's touch! Retirement then might hourly look Age steal to his allotted nook With heart as calm as lakes that sleep, ΧΧΧ. [THIS Lawn is the sloping one approaching the kitchen-garden, and was made out of it. Hundreds of times have I watched the dancing of shadows amid a press of sunshine, and other beautiful appearances of light and shade, flowers and shrubs. What a contrast between this and the cabbages and onions and carrots that used to grow there on a piece of ugly-shaped unsightly ground! No reflection however either upon cabbages or onions; the latter we know were worshipped, by the Egyptians, and he must have a poor eye for beauty who has not observed how much cf it there is in the form and colour which cabbages and plants of that genus exhibit through the various stages of their growth and decay. A richer display of colour in vegetable nature can scarcely be conceived than Coleridge, my Sister, and I saw in a bed of potatoe-plants in blossom near a hut upon the moor between Inversneyd and Loch Katrine. These blossoms were of such extraordinary beauty and richness that no one could have passed them without notice. But the sense must be cultivated through the mind before we can perceive these inexhaustible treasures of Nature, for such they really are, without the least necessary refereuce to the utility of her productions, or even to the laws whereupon, as we learn by research, they are dependent. Some are of opinion that the habit of analysing, decomposing, and anatomising is inevitably unfavourable to the perception of beauty. People are led into this mistake by overlooking the fact that such processes being to a certain extent within the reach of a limited intellect, we are apt to ascribe to them that insensibility of which they are in truth the effect and not the cause. Admiration and love, to which all knowledge truly vital must tend, are felt by men of real genius in proportion as their discoveries in natural Philosophy are enlarged; and the beauty in form of a plant or an animal is not made less but more apparent as a whole by more accurate insight into its constituent properties and powers. A Savant who is not also a poet in soul and a religionist in heart is a feeble and unhappy creature.] THIS Lawn, a carpet all alive With shadows flung from leaves-to strive In dance, amid a press Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields Less quick the stir when tide and breeze Forbid a moment's rest; The medley less when boreal Lights Yet, spite of all this eager strife, 1829. XXXI. HUMANITY. [THESE verses and those entitled "Liberty" were composed as one piece which Mrs. Wordsworth complained of as unwieldy and ill-proportioned; and accordingly it was divided into two on her judicious recommendation.] The Rocking-stones, alluded to in the beginning of the following verses, are supposed to have been used, by our British ancestors, both for judicial and religious purposes. Such stones are not uncommonly found, at this day, both in Great Britain and in Ireland. WHAT though the Accused, upon his own appeal Or at a doubting Judge's stern command, And functions dwell in beast and bird that Like those good Angels whom a dream of night |