WORDSWORTH.
[_]
(ON READING THE MEMOIRS BY DR. C. WORDSWORTH.)
I
Too much of ‘Tours,’ productive more or less;
Too much of ‘Nature,’ meaning thereby hills,
Trees, hedges, landscapes rich with woods and rills;
Too little of the dark divine recess
Beneath the white shirt,—nothing of the press
Of our own age so full of glorious cares,
And men that call, new lamps for old! good wares
For potsherds given! in this book I confess.
Yet through it evermore appears in sight
A poet travelling homeward who was still
A poet every day, with common tread
Who walked on common shoes up Life's high hill
Self-center'd, God-directed, till the light
Of this world and the next met round his head.
II
Cumberland was the world to him and art
Was landscape-gardening. Most sententiously
A truism or a common-place could he
Announce, and by his grave large voice impart
Value thereto. Steered by the simplest heart
'Tis said he never doubted, but held on
Bible o'erpowered: in these our days alone
Of all sane men perhaps in learning's mart!
But he of all men planned his life with care:
Fast by the wells of sadness walked he on
O'er fortunate meads with chilly flowers made fair,
Till on his right hand and his left were won
The waving wheatears of a just success;
A man whose praise rejoice we to express!
III
Each medal hath its reverse; every day
Its cloud; each house its skeleton; so here,
Sum up this philosophic poet's year,
And we shall find within his mental way,
Few threads of vital poet-wisdom stray.
Instead; philanthropy with hand withheld,
A caution selfward turned, the muse compell'd
To chew the cud, to sift the sand and clay
Left by chance hill-winds, lest some grains of gold
Without assiduous sieve might there be lost.
A bald soul awkward with his lyre, both cold
And over-anxious, find we to our cost:
And this the moral of the whole; that man
Is great who simply doth the best he can.
