Mock the tired worldling.1 Idle hope To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: But me thy gentle hand will lead At morning through the accustomed mead; Will build me up a mossy seat; And when the gust of Autumn crowds, Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune, 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? Light hoverer around our happy pillows! 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 That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise. But what is higher beyond thought than thee? More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal,1 And from the heart up-springs, rejoice! rejoice! No one who once the glorious sun has seen, John Keats: 1795-1821. (See page 47.) 1 regal-royal or kingly. 2 aerial-of air: aerial limning-airy painting. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 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: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 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, Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; The homely nurse doth all she can And that imperial palace whence he came. O joy, that in our embers1 The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blessed- 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; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being 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 all that is at enmity with joy, Hence in a season of calm weather, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither,- 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; Strength in what remains behind, Which having been, must ever be; In the faith that looks through death, Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 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. |