cannot really love Wordsworth; nor can to them “the simplest flower” bring “thoughts that lie too deep for tears.” Happy his pupils; they are gentle, they are calm, and they must always be progressing in our knowledge; for, to a mind which can sympathize with his, no hour, no scene can possibly be barren.
The contents of the lately published little volume[1] accord perfectly, in essentials, with those of the preceding four. The sonnets are like those he has previously written—equally unfinished as sonnets, equally full of meaning as poems. If it be the case with all his poems, that scarcely one forms a perfect whole by itself, but is valuable as a leaf out of his mind, it is peculiarly so with his sonnets. I presume he only makes use of this difficult mode of writing because it is a concise one for the expression of a single thought or a single mood. I know not that one of his sonnets is polished and wrought to a point, as this most artistical of all poems should be; but neither do I know one which does not contain something we would not willingly lose. As the beautiful sonnet which I shall give presently, whose import is so wide and yet so easily understood, contains in the motto, what Messer Petrarca would have said in the two concluding lines.
| “ (Miss not the occasion; by the forelock take |
| “That subtle power, the never-halting time, |
| “ Lest a mere moment’s putting off should make |
| “Mischance almost as heavy as a crime)— |
| “Wait, prithee, wait! this answer Lesbia threw |
| “ Forth to her dove, and took no further heed; |
| “Her eyes were busy, while her fingers flew |
| “ Across the harp, with soul-engrossing speed; |
| “But from that bondage when her thoughts were freed, |
| “She rose, and toward the shut casement drew, |
| “Whence the poor, unregarded favourite, true |
| “To old affections, had been heard to plead |
| “With flapping wing for entrance—What a shriek |
- ↑ Yarrow Revisited, and other poems.
