READINGS IN WORDSWORTH.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850).

[Mr. Matthew Arnold observes: "The Excursion and the Prelude, his poems of greatest bulk, are by no means Wordsworth's best work. His best work is in his shorter pieces, and many, indeed, are there of these which are of first-rate excellence. Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some sixty years; and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that within one single decade of those years, between 1798 and 1808, almost all his really first-rate work was produced. Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execu tion, he is unique. His best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a warm admiration for Laodameia and for the great Ode;* but if I am to tell the very truth, I find Laodameia not wholly free from something artificial, and the great Ode not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as Michael, The Fountain, The Highland Reaper."-Selected Poems of Wordsworth.

Then, as to his diction, hear Wordsworth himself: "I have proposed to myself to imitate, and as far as is possible to adopt, the very language of men......I have taken as much pains to avoid what is usually called poetic diction as others ordinarily take to produce it."]

1. From "Michael."

Upon the forest-side in Grasmere Vale
There dwelt a shepherd, Michael was his name;
An old man, stout of heart and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength: his mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs,
And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence had he learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes,
When others heeded not, he heard the south
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.
The shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him; and he to himself would say,
"The winds are now devising work for me!"
And, truly, at all times, the storm-that drives
The traveller to a shelter-summoned him
Up to the mountains: he had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So lived he till his eightieth year was past.

* On Intimations of Immortality, given on p. 467.

And grossly that man errs who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the shepherd's thoughts.
Fields where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air; the hills which he so oft

Had climbed with vigorous steps, which had impressed
So many incidents upon his mind

Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear;
Which, like a book, preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals whom he had saved,
Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts
The certainty of honorable gain—

Those fields, those hills (what could they less?) had laid
Strong hold on his affections; were to him

A pleasurable feeling of blind love,

The pleasure which there is in life itself.

2. From "The Fountain."

[Matthew, the village teacher, speaks :—]

"Down to the vale this water steers,
How merrily it goes !

"Twill murmur on a thousand years,
And flow as now it flows.

"And here, on this delightful day,
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.

"My eyes are dim with childish tears,*
My heart is idly stirred;
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

"Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.

"The blackbird in the summer trees,

The lark upon the hill,

Let loose their carols when they please,

Are quiet when they will.

* Sir Walter Scott in the Antiquary (chap x.) makes Mr. Oldbuck quote in terms of strong admiration the eight lines beginning, "My eyes are dim," etc.

Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending.
I listened till I had my fill ;
And when I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.

MONOSYLLABIC SONNET-THE POWER OF
SHORT WORDS.

JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER (1809-1860).

Think not that strength lies in the big round word,
Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak.
To whom can this be true, who once has heard
The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak
When want or woe or fear is in the throat,
So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note
Sung by some fay or fiend! There is a strength
Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine,

Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,
And he that will may take the sleek fat phrase,

Which glows but burns not, though it beam and shine;—
Light, but no heat; a flash, but not a blaze.

THE DESCENT OF THE CONGO.

HENRY M. STANLEY (b. near Denbigh, Wales, in 1840).

[Stanley's success in the Livingstone Search Expedition induced the proprietors of the London Telegraph and the New York Herald to send him again to Africa, "to complete the discoveries of Speke, Burton, and Livingstone." This commission implied a comprehensive exploration of the great river-fountains of Equatorial Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. Stanley reached Zanzibar September 21, 1874. His course was first directed to Lake Victoria Nyanza, which he circumnavigated, and of which he found the area to be twenty-one thousand square miles: thence westward to Lake Albert Nyanza, which he ascertained to be unconnected with Lake Tanganyika. He explored the south half of this latter lake, and then struck away to Nyangwe, on the great river discovered by Livingstone, and by him named the Lualaba, and believed to be the Upper Nile. Accompanied by Frank Pocock, a young English boatman, and by about one hundred and fifty natives, Stanley embarked on this mysterious river, and determined to follow it to the sea. It proved to be the Congo, or, as Stanley renamed it, the LIVINGSTONE. The descent of this mighty river-second in volume to only the Amazon-occupied nearly nine months, and proved to be extremely perilous, not alone from the many dangerous cataracts, but from the hostility of the natives. Pocock's tragic death occurred June 3, 1877, when the party were about two hundred and twenty miles from the Atlantic coast.]

At this moment Frank forgot all my caution, and probably his high spirit had secretly despised it.

But he was also goad

ing brave men to their and his own destruction.

"Little master," said Vledi the cockswain, gravely, stung to the quick, "neither white men nor black men can go down this river alive, and I do not think it right that you should say we are afraid. As for me, I think you ought to know better. See! I hold out both hands, and all my fingers will not count the