And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,

She blushed with love, and virgin shame;
And like the murmur of a dream
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved- she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stept
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,
She fled to me and wept.

She half inclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And, bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

"Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous bride.

Here is another melodious breathing of deeper and more thoughtful tenderness, entitled Sonnet, To a Friend who asked how I felt when the Nurse first presented my Infant to me :

Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first

I scanned that face of feeble infancy :

For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst

All I had been, and all my child might be!

But when I saw it on its mother's arm,

And hanging at her bosom (she the while
Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile),
Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm
Impressed a father's kiss; and, all beguiled

Of dark remembrance and presageful fear,
I seemed to see an angel form appear: -
'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!

So for the mother's sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.

From the loftier poetry of this early date, or a time not much later, all that we can give is a portion of the ode entitled Dejection:

My genial spirits fail;

And what can these avail

To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
O Lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live:

Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!
And, would we aught behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth;-

And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element !

O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy, that ne'er was given
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,

Life and life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,
A new Earth and new Heaven,

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud

Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud :

We in ourselves rejoice

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.

There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness;
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth;
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
But ah! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

Some resemblance may be traced between the thought in a part of this extract and Wordsworth's noble ode entitled Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood, where he exclaims :

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight,

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

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.

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;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

It is almost profanation to mutilate this magnificent hymn; but, having given the above lines, we will add another passage, which can be separated with the least injury from the rest: —

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,