Mock the tired worldling.1 Idle hope
And dire2 remembrance interlope,3

To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
The bubble floats before, the spectre walks behind.4

But me thy gentle hand will lead

At morning through the accustomed mead;
And in the sultry summer's heat

Will build me up a mossy seat;

And when the gust of Autumn crowds,
And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,

Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune,
Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1772-1834.

One of the most imaginative of English poets. He has written enough exquisite poetry to make us lament that he had not sufficient concentration and steadiness of purpose to achieve more. He is best known as the author of The Ancient Mariner.

SLEEP AND POETRY.

WHAT is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing
In a green island, far from all men's knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?
What, but thee, Sleep? Soft closer of our eyes
Low murmurer of tender lullabies!

Light hoverer around our happy pillows!
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!

1 worldling--one who lives for worldly gains and pleasures. 2 dire-gloomy. 3 interlope-intrude, come between.

'the bubble,' viz., 'idle hope:''the spectre,' viz., 'dire remembrance,' i.e., remorse.

Silent entangler of a beauty's tresses!

Most happy listener! when the morning blesses
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes

That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.

But what is higher beyond thought than thee?
Fresher than berries of a mountain tree?

More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal,1
Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen eagle?
What is it? And to what shall I compare it?
It has a glory, and nought else can share it :
The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy,
Chasing away all worldliness and folly:
Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder;
Or the low rumblings earth's regions under ;
And sometimes like a gentle whispering
Of all the secrets of some wondrous thing
That breathes about us in the vacant air;
So that we look around with prying stare,
Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial2 limning;
And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning;
To see the laurel-wreath, on high suspended,
That is to crown our name when life is ended.
Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice,

And from the heart up-springs, rejoice! rejoice!
Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things,
And die away in ardent3 mutterings.

No one who once the glorious sun has seen,
And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean
For his great Maker's presence, but must know
What 'tis I mean, and feel his being glow.

John Keats: 1795-1821.

(See page 47.)

1 regal-royal or kingly.

2 aerial-of air: aerial limning-airy painting.
3 ardent-vehement, passionate.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem

Apparell'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore ;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.1

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

2 dire- poet means that he no longer experiences such rapture 4 the bucht of these beauties, as he remembers to have felt in membrance,' 1.

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

O joy, that in our embers1
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blessed-
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things
Fallings from us, vanishings;2

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised!—
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,

1 our embers-that which remains when youth has burnt out. 2 fallings... vanishings-moods of abstraction, reveries.

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !

Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,-
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy

Which having been, must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering:

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
William Wordsworth: 1770-1850.

Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, and Robert Southey spent the best part of their lives in the English Lake district,—and hence are called "the Lake Poets." Wordsworth is the poet of nature and simplicity. Many of his earlier poems were so homely in language and common-place in subject, that some people wondered if they were meant to be humourous; and others thought them as full of affectation, though of a different kind, as the style of poetical composition against which they were directed. Some of Wordsworth's later poetry is very beautiful, and has much present popularity.