 | Works (1916) |  |
XIII. A CENTO MADE BY WORDSWORTH.
For printing [the following piece] some reason should be given, as not a word of it is original: it is simply a fine stanza of Akenside, connected with a still finer from Beattie, by a couplet from Thomson. This practice, in which the author sometimes indulges, of linking together, in his own mind, favourite passages from different authors, seems in itself unobjectionable: but, as the publishing such compilations might lead to confusion in literature, he should deem himself inexcusable in giving this specimen, were it not from a hope that it might open to others a harmless source of private gratification.
—W. W.
Throned in the Sun's descending car
What Power unseen diffuses far
This tenderness of mind?
What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
What God in whispers from the wood
Bids every thought be kind?
What Power unseen diffuses far
This tenderness of mind?
What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
What God in whispers from the wood
Bids every thought be kind?
O ever pleasing Solitude,
Companion of the wise and good,
Thy shades, thy silence, now be mine,
Thy charms my only theme;
My haunt the hollow cliff whose Pine
Waves o'er the gloomy stream;
Whence the scared Owl on pinions grey
Breaks from the rustling boughs,
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose!
Companion of the wise and good,
Thy shades, thy silence, now be mine,
Thy charms my only theme;
My haunt the hollow cliff whose Pine
Waves o'er the gloomy stream;
Whence the scared Owl on pinions grey
Breaks from the rustling boughs,
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose!
| Works (1916) | |