O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

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

For that which is most worthy to be blest;
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;

Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,

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;

Upholds us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake

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.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

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.

No comparison, of course, is to be instituted between this grand declamation and Coleridge's much less elaborate ode. As a remarkable illustration, however, of the difference between the poetical genius of the one and that of the other when exercised in a more light and fanciful manner, we will give an example of the treatment of the same subject by both. The following little poem by Wordsworth is entitled The Complaint :—

There is a change-and I am poor;
Your love hath been, not long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.
What happy moments did I count!
Blest was I then all bliss above;
Now, for that consecrated fount
Of murmuring, sparkling, living love
What have I? shall I dare to tell?
A comfortless and hidden well.

A well of love-it may be deep-
I trust it is, and never dry:

What matter? if the waters sleep

In silence and obscurity?

-Such change, and at the very door

Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.

The following, entitled The Pang more sharp than All, an

Allegory, is Coleridge's :

VOL. II.

He too has flitted from his secret nest,

Hope's last and dearest child without a name!-—
Has flitted from me, like the warmthless flame,
That makes false promise of a place of rest
To the tired pilgrim's still believing mind ;—
Or like some elfin knight in kingly court,
Who, having won all guerdons in his sport,
Glides out of view, and whither none can find.

2 H

Yes! He hath flitted from me-with what aim,
Or why, I know not! 'Twas a home of bliss,
And he was innocent, as the pretty shame

Of babe, that tempts and shuns the menaced kiss,
From its twy-clustered hiding-place of snow!
Pure as the babe, I ween, and all aglow

As the dear hopes that swell the mother's breast-
Her eyes down-gazing o'er her clasped charge ;-
Yet gay as that twice happy father's kiss,
That well might glance aside, yet never miss,
Where the sweet mark embossed so sweet a targe―
Twice wretched he who hath been doubly blest!

Like a loose blossom on a gusty night

He flitted from me-and has left behind

(As if to them his faith he ne'er did plight), Of either sex and answerable mind,

:

Two playmates, twin-births of his foster-dame :-
The one a steady lad (Esteem he hight)
And Kindness is the gentler sister's name;
Dim likeness now, though fair she be and good,
Of that bright boy who hath us all forsook :-
But, in his full-eyed aspect when she stood,
And while her face reflected every look,
And in reflection kindled, she became

So like him, that almost she seemed the same!

Ah! he is gone, and yet will not depart !—
Is with me still, yet I from him exiled!
For still there lives within my secret heart
The magic image of the magic child,
Which there he made up-grow by his strong art,
As in that crystal orb1-Wise Merlin's feat-
The wondrous "World of Glass," wherein inisled
All longed-for things their beings did repeat;—
And there he left it, like a sylph beguiled,
To live and yearn and languish incomplete!

Can wit of man a heavier grief reveal?

Can sharper pang from hate or scorn arise?—

Yes! one more sharp there is-that deeper lies, Which fond esteem but mocks when he would heal.

Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise,

But sad compassion and atoning zeal!

One pang more blighting-keen than hope betrayed!

And this it is my woeful hap to feel,

When, at her brother's hest, the twin-born maid,

1 Faerie Queene, iii. 2, 19.

With face averted and unsteady eyes,
Her truant play mate's faded robe puts on;
And, inly shrinking from her own disguise,
Enacts the faery boy that's lost and gone.

O worse than all! O pang all pangs above
Is Kindness counterfeiting absent Love!

But Wordsworth and Coleridge, each gaining and each losing something, come much nearer to one another in their later poetry that of Wordsworth takes more of the sky, that of Coleridge more of the earth; the former drops a good deal of its excessive realism (to use the word in a somewhat peculiar, but sufficiently intelligible sense), the latter something of its over-idealism. Among those of Coleridge's poems, however, to which an early date is fixed, there are a few, the execution of which is so perfect, that we should be inclined to think they had undergone much revision before they were published, and that, in part at least, they are to be properly considered as really the produce of his later years. His Christabel, for instance, is stated to have been written, the First Part in 1797, the Second Part in 1800; but we cannot help suspecting that the following lines, from what is called the Conclusion to Part First, may have been an addition made not very long before the first publication of the poem in 1816 :

And see! the lady Christabel

Gathers herself from out her trance;
Her limbs relax, her countenance

Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids
Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds--
Large tears that leave the lashes bright!

And oft the while she seems to smile

As infants at a sudden light!

Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep,
Like a youthful hermitess,

Beauteous in a wilderness,

Who, praying always, prays in sleep.

And, if she move unquietly,
Perchance, 'tis but the blood so free,
Comes back and tingles in her feet.
No doubt, she hath a vision sweet.
What if her guardian spirit 'twere?
What if she knew her mother near?
But this she knows, in joys and woes,
That saints will aid if men will call:
For the blue sky bends over all!

The filmy delicacy of this writing is exquisite; every word is light and music. Equally beautiful, and in the same style, is the following little fragment, being the introductory stanzas of a poem on the Wanderings of Cain, in which we are led to understand some progress had been made at an early date, although this stanza, all of the poem that has been preserved, was not published till towards the close of the author's life :Encinctured with a twine of leaves,

That leafy twine his only dress,
A lovely boy was plucking fruits,
By moonlight, in a wilderness.

The moon was bright, the air was free,
And fruits and flowers together grew
On many a shrub and many a tree :
And all put on a gentle hue,
Hanging in the shadowy air
Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,
The night is more beloved than day.
But who that beauteous boy beguiled,
That beauteous boy to linger here?
Alone, by night, a little child,

In place so silent and so wild

Has he no friend, no loving mother near?

In most of Coleridge's latest poetry, however, along with this perfection of execution, in which he was unmatched, we have more body and warmth-more of the inspiration of the heart mingling with that of the fancy. But, before quoting the specimens we intend to give of that, we would introduce a little piece, which seems to us eminently tender and beautiful, although less remarkable for high finish; it is entitled A Day Dream :—

My eyes make pictures when they are shut :

I see a fountain, large and fair,

A willow and a ruined hut,

And thee, and me, and Mary there.

O Mary make thy gentle lap our pillow!

Bend o'er us, like a bower, my beautiful green willow!

A wild-rose roofs the ruined shed,
And that and summer well agree:
And lo! where Mary leans her head,

Two dear names carved upon the tree!

And Mary's tears, they are not tears of sorrow:
Our sister and our friend will both be here to-morrow.