"A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain,
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light

Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height:
Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain
For kindred Power departing from their sight;
While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain,
Saddens his voice again, and yet again.

Lift up your hearts, ye mourners! for the might

Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes;

Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue

Than sceptered king or laurelled conqueror knows,
Follow this wondrous Potentate! Be true,

Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea,

Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope!'

On Thursday morning Sir Walter and I had a serious conversation, tête-à-tête, when he spoke with gratitude of the happy life, which, upon the whole, he had led. He had written in my daughter's album, before he came into the breakfast-room that morning, a few stanzas addressed to her; and while putting the book into her hand, in his own study, standing by his desk, he said to her, in my presence, 'I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father's sake; they are probably the last verses I shall ever write.' They showed how much his mind was impaired, not by the strain of thought, but by the execution, some of the lines being imperfect, and one stanza wanting corresponding rhymes." At noon on the same day the poets parted, and on Wordsworth expressing a hope that Sir Walter's health would be benefited by the climate of the country to which he was going, and by the interest he would take in the classic remembrances of Italy, he, with a flash of fitting recollection, but in a tone of deepest sadness, made answer in Wordsworth's own words—a quotation from "Yarrow Unvisited "- -"When I am there, although 'tis fair, 'twill be another Yarrow."

This visit, and another, which he paid to Scotland in 1833, accompanied by his son, and Henry Crabb Robinson, Esq., furnished materials for a volume which he published in 1835, entitled, “Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems.”

A five months' tour in Italy in the spring and summer of 1837 suggested several pieces, which appeared in 1842, in a volume entitled "Poems Chiefly of Early and Late Years." This was the last volume published during his lifetime.

About this time public feeling and critical opinion began to change, and the mists of prejudice, which had so long lowered over his greatness, and concealed or obscured it, gradually vanished. Henceforth, year by year, the fame of the Poet of the Lakes grew wider and wider; and long before his death he was acknowledged to be the greatest English poet of his age, and regarded with reverence as one of the purest and most blameless of English writers. Honours now flowed fast upon him, and the remaining years of his life were passed in the midst of that which should accompany old age--" as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends.” In the summer of 1839, amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the students, the University of Oxford honoured him with the degree of D.C.L. In 1842 he resigned the Government appointment he held in favour of his son, who had for some time acted as his deputy. A few months afterwards, he received, through Sir Robert Peel, a grant from the Crown of £300 a year. In 1843, on the death of his friend

Southey, he was offered, in flattering terms, the vacant Laureateship, which, after some hesitation, on account of his age, he accepted, on the assurance that it was to be entirely nominal and honorary. In 1844, Lord Jeffrey, perhaps the severest of his literary censors, in republishing his contributions to the Edinburgh Review, took occasion, in graceful and fitting terms, to acknowledge the poet's many and great merits.

In 1846, his brother, Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., died; and in the following year he sustained a still greater grief in the death of his accomplished and darling daughter, Dora (Mrs. Quillinan).

Two years afterwards, at Rydal Mount, on the 23rd of April, 1850, the poet himself passed peacefully away in the eightieth year of his age. His remains were laid near those of his children, in Grasmere Churchyard.

"His own prophecy," says his nephew," in the lines to the daisy

"Sweet flower! belike one day to have

A place upon thy poet's grave,

I welcome thee once more,'

is now fulfilled. He reposes, according to his own wish, beneath the green turf, among the dalesmen of Grasmere, under the sycamores and yews of a country churchyard, by the side of a beautiful stream, amid the mountains which he loved; and a solemn voice seems to breathe from his grave, which blends its tones in sweet and holy harmony with the accents of his poetry, speaking the language of humility and love, of adoration and faith, and preparing the soul, by a religious exercise of the kindly affections, and by a devout contemplation of natural beauty, for a translation to a purer, and nobler, and more glorious state of existence, and for a fruition of heavenly felicity."

In this brief and necessarily imperfect sketch, it would be impossible to enter at any length into the merits of Wordsworth's poetry. But a very fair estimate may be formed of the poet's artistic power, and of the pervading spirit of his poetry from the two following brief extracts. The first few justly-dis

criminating and happily-expressed sentences, descriptive of the higher characteristics of his poetry, are from the able and admirably drawn literary and poetical character of the poet by his friend Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria. The second series, equally able, and quite as felicitously expressed, are from the pen of William Ellery Channing, and describe those simpler, but, for the popular mind, more attractive, characteristics which so touchingly and so powerfully appeal to the instincts and feelings of our common humanity.

Wordsworth's poetry is marked by-"First, An austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. Secondly, A correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments won, not from books, but from the poet's own meditations. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. Even throughout his smaller poems, there is not one which is not rendered valuable by some just and original

reflection. Thirdly, The sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs, the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction. Fourthly, The perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives a physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Fifthly, A meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility: a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy, indeed, of a contemplator rather than a fellow. sufferer and co-mate (spectator, haud particeps), but of a contemplator from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, or toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of fancy, Words. worth, to my feelings, is always graceful, and sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous presentation. Indeed, his fancy seldom displays itself as mere and unmodified fancy. in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakspeare and Milton, and yet in a mind perfectly unborrowed, and his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an illustration, he does indeed, to all thoughts and to all objects

'Add the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the poet's dream.""

But

"The great poet of our times, Wordsworth—one of the few who are to livehas gone to common life, to the feelings of our universal nature, to the obscure and neglected portions of society, for beautiful and touching themes. Genius is not a creator, in the sense of fancying or feigning what does not exist. Its distinction is to discern more of truth than common minds. It sees under disguises and humble forms everlasting beauty. This it is the prerogative of Wordsworth to discern and reveal in the ordinary walks of life, in the common human heart. He has revealed the loveliness of the primitive feelings, of the universal affections of the human soul. The grand truth which pervades his poetry, is that the beautiful is not confined to the rare, the new, the distant-to scenery and modes of life open only to the few, but that it is poured forth profusely on the common earth and sky, that it gleams from the loneliest flower, that it lights up the humblest sphere, that the sweetest affections lodge in lowliest hearts, that there is sacredness, dignity, and loveliness in lives which few eyes rest on-that, even in the absence of all in. tellectual culture, the domestic relations can quietly nourish that disinterestedness which is the element of all greatness, and without which intellectual power is a splendid deformity. Wordsworth is the poet of humanity; he teaches reverence for our universal nature; he breaks down the factitious barriers between human hearts."

POEMS

BY

WORDSWORTH.

Juvenile Poems.