ADDRESS TO HIS NATIVE VALE.

On thy calm joys with what delight I dream Thou dear green valley of my native stream! Fancy o'er thee still waves the enchanting wand, And every nook of thine is fairy land, And ever will be, though the axe should smite In gain's rude service, and in pity's spite, Thy clustering alders, and at length invade The last, last poplars that compose thy shade: Thy stream shall then in native freedom stray, And undermine the willows in its way; These, nearly worthless, may survive this storm, This scythe of desolation, call'd "Reform." No army pass'd that way! yet are they fled, The boughs that, when a schoolboy, screen'd my

head:

I hate the murderous axe; estranging more
The winding vale from what it was of yore,
Than e'en mortality in all its rage,
And all the change of faces in an age.
"Warmth," will they term it, that I speak so free?
They strip thy shades, thy shades so dear to me!

HARVEST-HOME.

Now, ere sweet summer bids its long adieu, And winds blow keen where late the blossom grew, The bustling day and jovial night must come, The long-accustom'd feast of harvest-home. No blood-stain'd victory, in story bright, Can give the philosophic mind delight; No triumph please while rage and death destroy; Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy. And where the joy, if rightly understood, Like cheerful praise for universal good? The soul nor check nor doubtful anguish knows, But free and pure the grateful current flows. Behold the sound oak table's massy frame Bestride the kitchen floor! the careful dame And generous host invite their friends around, While all that clear'd the crop, or till'd the ground, Are guests by right of custom:-old and young; And many a neighbouring yeoman join the throng, With artisans that lent their dexterous aid, When o'er each field the flaming sunbeams play'd.

Yet plenty reigns, and from her boundless hoard, Though not one jelly trembles on the board, Supplies the feast with all that sense can crave; With all that made our great forefathers brave, Ere the cloy'd palate countless flavours tried, And cooks had nature's judgment set aside. With thanks to Heaven, and tales of rustic lore, The mansion echoes when the banquet's o'er; A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound As quick the frothing horn performs its round; Care's mortal foe; that sprightly joys imparts To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts.

Here, fresh and brown, the hazel's produce lies In tempting heaps, and peals of laughter rise, And crackling music, with the frequent song, Unheeded bear the midnight hour along.

Here once a year distinction lowers its crest, The master, servant, and the merry guest, Are equal all; and round the happy ring The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling, And, warm'd with gratitude, he quits his place, With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven'd face, Refills the jug his honour'd host to tend, To serve at once the master and the friend; Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale, His nuts, his conversation, and his ale.

THE WIDOW TO HER HOUR-GLASS.

COME, friend, I'll turn thee up again:

Companion of the lonely hour! Spring thirty times hath fed with rain And clothed with leaves my humble bower,

Since thou hast stood
In frame of wood,

On chest or window by my side:

At every birth still thou wert near,
Still spoke thine admonitions clear,-

And, when my husband died.

I've often watch'd thy streaming sand,
And seen the growing mountain rise,
And often found life's hopes to stand
On props as weak in wisdom's eyes:
Its conic crown
Still sliding down,

Again heap'd up, then down again;
The sand above more hollow grew,
Like days and years still filtering through,
And mingling joy and pain.

While thus I spin and sometimes sing,

(For now and then my heart will glow,)
Thou measurest Time's expanding wing;
By thee the noontide hour I know:
Though silent thou,
Still shalt thou flow,

And jog along thy destined way:
But when I glean the sultry fields,
When earth her yellow harvest yields,
Thou gett'st a holiday.

Steady as truth, on either end

Thy daily task performing well,
Thou 'rt meditation's constant friend,
And strik'st the heart without a bell:

Come, lovely May:
Thy lengthen'd day

Shall gild once more my native plain; Curl inward here, sweet woodbine flower; "Companion of the lonely hour,

I'll turn thee up again."

Princes protecting sciences and art

I've often seen, in copper-plate and print; I never saw them elsewhere, for my part, And therefore I conclude there's nothing in't; But everybody knows the Regent's heart;

I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; Each board to have twelve members, with a seat To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat:From princes I descend to the nobility:

In former times all persons of high stations, Lords, baronets, and persons of gentility, Paid twenty guineas for the dedications: This practice was attended with utility;

The patrons lived to future generations, The poets lived by their industrious earning,So men alive and dead could live by learning.

Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune; [mend: Now, we must starve unless the times should Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune

If their addresses are diffusely penn'd; Most fashionable authors make a short one

To their own wife, or child, or private friend, To show their independence, I suppose; And that may do for gentlemen like those. Lastly, the common people I beseech

Dear people! if you think my verses clever, Preserve with care your noble parts of speech,

And take it as a maxim to endeavour
To talk as your good mothers used to teach,
And then these lines of mine may last for ever;
And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tail'd words in osity and ation.

I think that poets (whether Whig or Tory)
(Whether they go to meeting or to church)
Should study to promote their country's glory
With patriotic, diligent research;
That children yet unborn may learn the story,
With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch:
It stands to reason-This was Homer's plan,
And we must do like him the best we can.
Madoc and Marmion, and many more,

Are out in print, and most of them are sold; Perhaps together they may make a score; Richard the First has had his story told, But there were lords and princes long before,

That had behaved themselves like warriors bold; Among the rest there was the great King Arthur, What hero's fame was ever carried farther?

King Arthur, and the Knights of his Round Table, Were reckon'd the best king, and bravest lords,

Of all that flourish'd since the tower of Babel,

At least of all that history records; Therefore I shall endeavour, if I'm able,

To paint their famous actions by my words : Heroes exert themselves in hopes of fame, And having such a strong decisive claim,

It grieves me much, that names that were respected
In former ages, persons of such mark,
And countrymen of ours, should lie neglected,
Just like old portraits lumbering in the dark:
An error such as this should be corrected,

And if my Muse can striké a single spark,

Why then (as poets say) I'll string my lyre; And then I'll light a great poetic fire;

I'll air them all, and rub down the Round Table, And wash the canvas clean, and scour the frames, And put a coat of varnish on the fable,

And try to puzzle out the dates and names; Then (as I said before) I'll heave my cable, And take a pilot, and drop down the Thames-These first eleven stanzas make a proem, And now I must sit down and write my poem.

SIR GAWAIN.

SIR Gawain may be painted in a word-
He was a perfect loyal cavalier;
His courteous manners stand upon record,
A stranger to the very thought of fear.
The proverb says, As brave as his own sword;
And like his weapon was that worthy peer,
Of admirable temper, clear and bright,
Polish'd yet keen, though pliant yet upright.
On every point, in earnest or in jest,

His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit, Were deem'd the very touchstone and the test Of what was proper, graceful. just, and fit; A word from him set every thing at rest

His short decisions never fail'd to hit; His silence, his reserve, his inattention, Were felt as the severest reprehension : His memory was the magazine and hoard,

Where claims and grievances, from year to year, And confidences and complaints were stored, [peer: From dame and knight, from damsel, boor, and

Loved by his friends, and trusted by his lord,
A generous courtier, secret and sincere,
Adviser-general to the whole community,
He served his friend, but watch'd his opportunity.
One riddle I could never understand-

But his success in war was strangely various;
In executing schemes that others plann'd,
He seem'd a very Cæsar or a Marius;
Take his own plans, and place him in command,
Your prospect of success became precarious :
His plans were good, but Launcelot succeeded
And realized them better far than he did.

His discipline was steadfast and austere,
Unalterably fix'd, but calm and kind;
Founded on admiration, more than fear,

It seem'd an emanation from his mind;
The coarsest natures that approach'd him near
Grew courteous for the moment and refined;

Beneath his eye the poorest, weakest wight
Felt full of point of honour, like a knight.
In battle he was fearless to a fault,

The foremost in the thickest of the field;
His eager valour knew no pause nor halt,
And the red rampant lion in his shield
Scaled towns and towers, the foremost in assault,
With ready succour where the battle reel'd:

At random like a thunderbolt he ran, [man. And bore down shields, and pikes, and horse, and WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the seventh of April, 1770. With his brother, (the Rev. Dr. WORDSWORTH, author of Greece, Historical and Picturesque,) he was sent at an early age to the Hawkshead grammar school, in Lancashire, whence, in his seventeenth year, he was removed to St. John's College, Cambridge. On leaving the university, he made the pedestrian tour through France, Switzerland and Italy, commemorated in his Descriptive Sketches in Verse, which, with an Epistle to a Young Lady from the Lakes in the North of England, were published in 1793. He was in Paris at the commencement of the French Revolution, lodging in the same house with BRISSOT, but was driven from the city by the Reign of Terror. Returned to England, he passed a considerable time at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, where he became intimately acquainted with COLERIDGE. It was during his residence here that he completed the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, which was published in 1798. He soon after made a tour through a part of Germany, where he was joined by COLERIDGE, with whom, at the end of thirty years, he revisited that country. In 1803 he married MARY HUTCHINSON, and settled at Grassmere, a home subsequently exchanged for his present beautiful residence at Rydal, in Westmoreland. In 1807 he published a second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, and in 1809 a prose work On the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal to each other. In 1814 appeared The Excursion, "being a portion of The Recluse, a poem," which was followed, in 1815, by The White Doe of Rylstone; in 1819 by Peter Bell the Waggoner; in 1820 by The River Duddon, a series of sonnets, Vaudracour and Julia and other pieces, and Ecclesiastical Sketches; in 1822 by Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, and A Description of the Lakes in the North of England; in 1835 by Yarrow Revisited and other Poems; and in 1842 by his last volume, Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years, including The Borderers, a Tragedy, written in 1785.

Mr.

Sir ISAAC NEWTON is reported to have said that any man of good ability who could have paid the same long and undivided attention to mathematical pursuits that he had, would have wrought out the same results. Probably almost any thoughtful and well-educated person, devoting a long and quiet life to the cultivation of poetry, would sometimes produce passages of sublimity and beauty. WORDSWORTH has produced very many such; but he has written no single great poem, harmonious and sustained, unless exceptions be found in two or three of his shorter pieces. In the beginning of his career, acting upon the belief that a man of genius must "shape his own road," he affected an originality of style. He determined to be simple, and became puerile; he disdained to owe anything to the dignity of his subjects, and often selected such as were contemptible. Complained that poetry had been written in an inflated and unnatural diction, compounded of a "certain class of ideas and expressions,"

He

to the exclusion of all others, and vaunted of his courage in setting these aside. But the complaint was ill-grounded; there was mannerism enough, inflation enough, in the beginning of this century, but there was also genuine simplicity and tenderness, and independence of feeling and expression. CHAUCER and SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE and MILTON, were studied as well as POPE; and COWPER and THOMSON and Burns had as truly as himself written "the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation." The principles he ostentatiously avowed were a mere repetition of what nearly every poet whose works retain a place in English literature had practically acknowledged. Sportsmen have a phrase, "running the thing into the ground," which has been applied to the racing of asses; and Mr. WORDSWORTH, in the White Doe of Rylstone, Peter Bell, and other pieces, has merely applied the art to simplicity of diction. In him mannerism, an obstinate adherence to a theory, well nigh ruined a great poet; for such he has shown himself to be when the divine afflatus has obtained a mastery over the rules by which he has chosen to be fettered. The general scope of his poetry is shown in the following extract from the conclusion of the first book of The Recluse, introduced into the preface to The Excursion:

ON man, on nature, and on human life,
Musing in solitude, I oft perceive
Fair trains of imagery before me rise,
Accompanied by feelings of delight,
Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mix'd;
And I am conscious of affecting thoughts
And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes
Or elevates the inind, intent to weigh
The good and evil of our mortal state.
To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come,
Whether from breath of outward circumstance,
Or from the soul-an impulse to herself,-
I would give utterance in numerous verse.
Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope-
And melancholy fear subdued by faith;
Of blessed consolations in distress;

Of moral strength, and intellectual power;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;
Of the individual mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there

To conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence which governs all;
I sing!" fit audience let me find, though few!"
So pray'd, more gaining than he ask'd, the bard,
Holiest of men-URANTA, I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven!
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep-and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
All strength, all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form;
Jehovah-with his thunder and the choir
Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones-
I pass them unalarm'd. Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,

Nor aught of blinder vacancy-scoop'd out
By help of dreams can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look

Into our minds, into the mind of man,

My haunt, and the main region of my song.

By words

Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external world
Is fitted; and how exquisitely, too,-
Theme this but little heard of among men,-
The external world is fitted to the mind;
And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be call'd) which they with blended might
Accomplish: This is our high argument.

Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft
Must turn elsewhere-to travel near the tribes
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights
Of madding passions mutually inflamed;
Must hear humanity in fields and groves
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang
Brooding above the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore

Within the walls of cities; may these sounds
Have their authentic comment-that even these
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!
-Descend, prophetic spirit! that inspirest
The human soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come; and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts

Of mighty poets; upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight; that my song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine;
Shedding benignant influence-and secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect

Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere!

It was for a long time the custom to treat WORDSWORTH with unmerited contempt. His faults were so conspicuous as to blind men to his merits. The fashion is changed, and he is now as much overpraised. The stone which the builders rejected, has by a few been placed at the head of the corner, but it cannot remain there. He has written poetry worthy of the greatest bards of all the ages, and as wretched verbiage and inanity as any with which paper was ever assoiled.

Mr. WORDSWORTH has been an eminently happy man in his circumstances. Depressed by no poverty, worn out with no over-exertion, and successful in his few efforts of a private nature, nothing has disturbed the tranquillity of his life. He has realized the vision of literary ease and retirement which has mocked the ambition of so many men of genius. All other poets of high reputation have passed considerable portions at least of their lives in the current of society, but his days have been spent in the beautiful region of his home, and the quiet meditation of his works.

Few men have been more beloved than Mr. WORDSWORTH in private life. Among his intimate friends have been COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, and many of the other eminent men of his time. On the death of SOUTHEY he was ap pointed Poet Laureate, and, at seventy-five, he promises to live yet many years to enjoy his fame and the honours of his station.

The selections from WORDSWORTH in this volume are in but few instances complete poems. I have chosen rather to give in detached passages some of his most beautiful and sublime thoughts, with enough of the characteristic to enable the reader to perceive the peculiarities of his style. No one but the author of the Lyrical Ballads would have written "We are Seven."

A complete edition of the works of Mr. WORDSWORTH has been published in Philadelphia, under the superintendence of Professor HENRY REED, of the University of Pennsylvania, a gentleman to whom he owes much of his reputation in America; and another edition was published several years ago in New Haven.