THE LADY AND THE MERLIN.

A PICTURE BY NEWTON.

GRACEFUL" Phantom of Delight!"
Glorious type of beauty bright,

Such as haunts the Poet's vision
When his dreams are all Elysian ;-
When his musing fancy brings
Shadows of all lovely things;
And, famed Zeuxis' art excelling,
He hath formed a second Helen,
Wanting but the powers of speech,
From the glowing traits of each!

But she may not vie with thee!-
There's a sweet simplicity
Flitting 'round thine open brow,
Sporting on thy ripe lips now,
Mantling o'er thy maiden cheek,-
In hues that leave description weak,-
With a brightness all too real

For a poet's Beau Ideal!

Though an Angel's grace is thine;

Though the light is half divine,

That with chastened lustre flashes

From beneath thine eye's dark lashes;
Yet thy thoughtful forehead fair,
And thy sweetly pensive air,
Speak thee but of mortal birth,
An erring, witching child of earth;
In each varied mood revealing
Human hope, and human feeling;
Gladsome now,-now vowed to sorrow,—
Gay to day, if sad to morrow!

Huntress fair, the sport is over, Wherefore chain thy feathered rover ! Rich indeed the prize must be

That may lure him far from thee!

What to him are hood and jesses

Tangled in thy glossy tresses?
Dazzled by thy beauty's light

Can he plume his wings for flight?
Fettered by a smile so bland,

Will he ever leave thy hand?

No; let him on thy beauty feed

And he'll no firmer fetters need!

A. A. W.

THE LIVING POETS OF ENGLAND.-No. II.

WORDSWORTH may almost be termed par excellence the Poet of Nature; not merely from the number, but the perfect truth and beauty, of his descriptions of natural objects. There hangs,' says an accomplished critic now no more,-one of the very few from whom the poet in question has received worthy treatment; there hangs about the finest passages of some of the most able poets of our day, an air of force and artifice, which, however high our admiration of them in the closet may go, excludes them from our recollection when we are in the immediate presence of the sacred power from whence proceeds poetical inspiration: their lustre seems then to go out, like that of the most magnificent chandelier that ever was suspended from the roof of a palace, when exposed to the face of a starry sky. Wordsworth, however, never quits us on these solemn occasions: he is with us as one who has a right to be wherever there is a display of natural sublimity, grandeur, or beauty, He does not disturb the august silence, and secret influence of the spot one moment, by officious interference or overstrained invitations and excitements. His lines connect themselves more permanently and easily with the scenery of nature, and the workings of thought and passion, than those of his contemporaries and rivals. They strike on our minds at the moment of observation, like the light of day, to illustrate and embellish. The passage

Or, like a ship, some gentle day,

In sunshine sailing far away,

A glittering ship, that hath the plain
Of ocean for her vast domain,-

furnishes an instance :-how perfectly, how musically, how gracefully, does it accord with the actual image of the thing represented! and at the same time how true and suitable is the sentiment which it adapts to the image, to give it a moral life, and an influence over the feelings. The sails of the brigantine in the sun, the stateliness of her port, her gentle yet commanding motion, as if master of herself and all about her,—her superiority over the expanse in which she moves, her singleness in it, her fitness for it,—all conspire to give to her the air and character of sovereignty.'

On the poet's habit of connecting the simplest and commonest images with the rarest, and often the most complicated thoughts and feelings, and on the folly of speaking of him as an author aiming at simplicity, the abovementioned writer has so well observed, that we cannot do better than make his remarks our own. 'Wordsworth,' continues he, is fearless in the familiarity of his expressions, because he is conscious of the depth, grandeur, and importance of his sentiments. A flower gives him thoughts too deep for tears in the bright blue eggs of a sparrow's nest he sees a vision of delight,' and the colonade of the Louvre would not probably touch him so sensibly. That people in general do not thus see, we admit; but they do not now laugh at Newton for gazing on soap bubbles in their flight. The very simplicity and apparent triviality of an object, when it falls in the way of a mind full of the order of nature, and of the associated recollections of

* Concluded from page 22 of our last number.

life, will often cause it to excite the sensibility more quickly and powerfully than qualities of a high and rare cast. When nature hath fair works the human soul,' it will not fail to derive from even or the

small celandine,'

Some apprehension;

Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy, wrong or right,
Or stray invention.

linked to her 'the daisy,'

The writer of the foregoing remarks might have gone even further; he might have pronounced Wordsworth, in spite of the seeming triviality of his subjects, and the generally humble stations of his characters, to be in fact highly aristocratical; but then it is in the aristocracy of natures, and not of names, that his Muse delights. With the latter his poems are but sparingly gilded, whilst every page of them is full of the former. not made princes of peasants, but he has shewn that even peasants may have a princely soul: he has never attempted to break down the barriers which divide the ranks of society, but he has laboured effectually to obliterate the vain and futile distinctions which too often are allowed to

He has

divide man from man. With more philosophy, and in statelier language, he has advocated the doctrines which poor Burns throws out in his random but heart-stirring manner, in For A' That and A' That.'

The king can make a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith he mauna fa' that!

For a' that and a' that,

Their dignities, and a' that,

The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,

That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,

May bear the gree, and a' that.

For a' that, and a' that,

Its comin yet for a' that,

That man to man the wide warld o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

Wordsworth regards man simply as man, distinct from the adventitious separations imposed by birth and fortune, and therefore he delights to point out how completely the principles, and powers, and passions, which sway the human mind in the highest ranks of life, influence it also in the lower. Exchange, says he

The Shepherd's frock of native gray
For robes with regal purple tinged; convert
The crook into a sceptre ;-give the pomp
Of circumstance, and here the tragic Muse
Shall find apt subject for her highest art.

It may not be impertinent or idle here to remark the very different use which Wordsworth and Lord Byron have made of the same principle-admiration of Nature. It is nothing less than astonishing to read The Excursion' and 'Childe Harold' alternately, and observe, how systematically the two poets draw directly contrary inferences from the same position. The former never either describes or expresses his love for the various works of creation, without thence deriving a motive for ' peace and good will" towards his

fellow-men. Lord Byron, on the contrary, never eulogises external Nature without taking, or rather making occasion, to deride and degrade humanity. His lordship's Muse makes hating the world a necessary consequence of loving the green earth, with all its magnificent array of grandeur and beauty. It would occupy a very long paper to point out even a few of the passages in which the two poets have on this single subject brought forward their two leading principles-Love and Scorn. One, however, must suffice, and we would remind the reader that the writers are speaking in their own persons:

Is it not better then to be alone,

And love Earth only for its earthly_sake?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;-
Is it not better thus our lives to wear,

Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me ; and to me
High mountains are a feeling: I can see
Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be

A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain

Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:

I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife,
Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,
To act and suffer.

I cannot paint

What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in 'the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh, nor grating, though of ampler power
To chasten and subdue.

LORD BYRON.

WORDSWORTH.

Admitting that the most valuable part of Wordsworth's poetry will not be that which will meet with the greatest number of admirers, there is a vast portion which, for strength, precision, and melody,-exquisite grace, whether of feeling or expression, must be admired by all that have ears to hear, and hearts to feel. Whatever difference of opinion may exist concerning The Idiot Boy,— Peter Bell,'- The Waggoner,' and others of the same cast, which after all make up but a small portion of the volumes,

we could fill half a page with merely the names of poems, which require no argument to prove either their merit or their beauty. Much of Wordsworth's poetry is certainly peculiar, but how much more of it is general,calculated for general perusal and general admiration. His Sonnets, upwards of two hundred in number, would, for the most part, delight even inveterate anti-Wordsworthians if put forth by any other writer; and the Episodes in The Excursion;' She was a Phantom;' The Highland Girl, ;' 'The Solitary Reaper;'The Remembrance of Collins ;' Lines written in a Boat;'Hartleap Well;' the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle;' 'Vaudracour and Julia;' would interest those who may be unable to appreciate his strains of a higher mood. Let us now make a few random selections;

What aspect bore the man who roved or fled,
First of his tribe, to this dark dell,-who first
In this pellucid current slaked his thirst?

What hopes came with him? what designs were spread
Along his path? His unprotected bed

What dreams encompassed? Was the intruder nursed
In hideous usages, and rites accursed,

That thinned the living and disturbed the dead?
No voice replies ;-the earth, the air is mute;

And thou blue streamlet, murmuring yield'st no more
Than a soft record that whatever fruit

Of ignorance thou might'st witness heretofore,

Thy function was to heal and to restore,

To soothe and cleanse, not madden and pollute!

Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?
Festively she puts forth in trim array;
And vigorous as a lark at break of day:

Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow?

What boots the inquiry ?-Neither friend nor foe
She cares for; let her travel where she may,
She finds familiar names, a beaten way

Ever before her, and a wind to blow.

Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?

And almost as it was when ships were rare,

(From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there
Crossing the waters) doubt, and something dark,
Of the old sea some reverential fear,

Is with me at thy farewell, joyous bark!

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE.

Earth has not any thing to shew more fair :
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty :

This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will :
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Fair is the swan, whose majesty, prevailing
O'er breezeless water, on Locarno's lake,