Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/113

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MODERN BRITISH POETS.
97

Foes might hang upon their path, snakes rustle near,
But nothing from their inward selves had they to fear.
 
“Thought infirm ne’er came between them,
 Whether printing desert sands
With accordant steps, or gathering
 Forest fruit with social hands;
Or whispering like two reeds that in the cold moonbeam
Bend with the breeze their heads beside a crystal stream.”

The Evening Voluntaries are very beautiful in manner, and full of suggestions. The second is worth extracting as a forcible exhibition of one of Wordsworth’s leading opinions.

“Not in the lucid intervals of life
That come but as a curse to party strife;
Not in some hour when pleasure with a sigh
Of languor, puts his rosy garland by;
Not in the breathing times of that poor slave
Who daily piles up wealth in Mammon’s cave,
Is nature felt, or can be; nor do words
Which practised talent readily affords
Prove that her hands have touched responsive chords.
Nor has her gentle beauty power to move
With genuine rapture and with fervent love
The soul of genius, if he dares to take
Life’s rule from passion craved for passion’s sake;
Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent
Of all the truly great and all the innocent;
But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! we are thine,
Through good and evil thine, or just degree
Of rational and manly sympathy,
To all that earth from pensive hearts is stealing,
And heaven is now to gladdened eyes revealing,
Add every charm the universe can show
Through every change its aspects undergo,
Care may be respited, but not repealed;
No perfect cure grows on that bounded field,