Along a scale of light and life, with cares All, while he slept, treading the pendent stairs Of strict obedience, serve1 the Almighty Lord; To speed their errand by 2 the wings they wore. What a fair world were ours for verse to paint, Of the great Vision,—faith in Providence ; 30 35 40 45 To the least particle of sentient dust ;4 But,5 fixing by immutable decrees, Then would be closed the restless oblique eye In the end to every creature born of dust. C. 5 1840. 1835. 50 * The author is indebted, here, to a passage in one of Mr. Digby's valuable works.-W. W. 1835. See his Of Bodies, and of man's Soul.-ED. + Genesis xxviii. 12.-ED. HUMANITY That into breezes sink; impetuous minds 225 As Truth herself, whom they profess to seek. From some high-minded Slave, impelled to spurn His look of pitiable gratitude! Alas for thee, bright Galaxy of Isles, Whose1 day departs in pomp, returns with smiles— 1 Though cold as winter, gloomy as the grave, Stone-walls a prisoner make, but not a slave.* Shall man assume a property in man? 1837. Where * Compare Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison— Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage. Minds innocent and quiet take 1835. 55 бо 65 71 75 VOL. VII That for a hermitage. ED. Q Lay on the moral will a withering ban? 80 85 Shame that our laws at distance still protect 1 Of sleepless Labour, 'mid whose dizzy wheels The Power least prized is that which thinks and feels. Then, for the pastimes of this delicate age, And all the heavy or light vassalage 95 100 C. C. 3 That to a monstrous idol, called 4 The weal of body and soul; so keen a thirst The weal of body, mind, and soul; so keen A thirst urging * Compare Cowper's Task, book ii. 1. 40.-ED. + Compare The Prelude, book xiii. ll. 77, 78— that idol proudly named "The Wealth of Nations." C. ED. THIS LAWN, A CARPET all alive 227 There are to whom the1 garden, grove, and field, 105 The lowliest flower possesses in its place; Which nothing less than Infinite Power could give.* 109 “THIS LAWN, A CARPET ALL ALIVE” Composed 1829.—Published 1835 [This Lawn is the sloping one approaching the kitchengarden, 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 uglyshaped 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 of 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 potato-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 1 1837. There are to whom even eternal laws. 1835. * Compare the closing lines of the Ode, Intimations of Immortality— To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. ED. In 1803, Miss Wordsworth thus records it :-"We passed by one patch of potatoes that a florist might have been proud of; no carnation-bed ever looked more gay than this square plot of ground on the waste common. The flowers were in very large bunches, and of an extraordinary size, and of every conceivable shade of colouring from snow-white to deep purple. It was pleasing in that place, where perhaps was never yet a flower cultivated by man for his own pleasure, to see these blossoms grow more gladly than elsewhere, making a summer garden near the mountain dwellings. (Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803, p. 85).—Ed. 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 reference 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.—-I. F.] One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."-ED. THIS Lawn, a carpet all alive With shadows flung from leaves to strive Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields Of Worldlings revelling in the fields Of strenuous idleness; * Less quick the stir when tide and breeze Forbid a moment's rest; The medley less when boreal Lights To feats of arms addrest! Yet, spite of all this eager strife, * Compare The Prelude, book' iv. l. 378.-ED. 5 IO 15 |