high Shadow of the Earth, which reaches beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. 3. Then began the Eolian Harp of the creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from above; and my immortal Soul was a string in this harp. The heart of a brother, everlasting Man, swelled under the everlasting heaven, as the seas swell under the sun and under the moon. The distant village clocks struck midnight, mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient Eternity.The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin. I walked silently through little hamlets, and close by their outer church-yards, where crumbled upcast coffin-boards were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that had lain in them were mouldered into gray ashes. Cold thought! clutch not like a cold spectre at my heart: I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and over, and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and all is Godlike, or God. 4. Toward morning, I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave; I returned to the Earth; and in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great midnight, it struck half-past two: about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of spring; "Ah, retire, bloody War, like red Mars: and thou, still Peace, come forth, like the mild divided Moon!" Richter. III.—The Two Roads. 1. It was New-Year's night. An aged man was standing at a window. He raised his mournful eyes toward the deep blue sky, where the stars were floating, like white lilies on the surface of a clear calm lake. Then he cast them on the earth, where few more hopeless beings than himself now moved toward their certain goal—the tomb. 2. Already he had passed sixty of the stages which lead to it, and he had brought from his journey nothing but errors and remorse. His health was destroyed, his mind vacant, his heart sorrowful, and his old age devoid of comfort. 3. The days of his youth rose up in a vision before him, and he recalled the solemn moment when his father had placed him at the entrance of two roads-one leading into a peaceful, sunny land, covered with a fertile harvest, and resounding with soft, sweet songs; the other leading the wanderer into a deep, dark cave, whence there was no issue, where poison flowed instead of water, and where serpents hissed and crawled. 4. He looked toward the sky, and cried out in his agony, "O youth, return! O my father, place me once more at the entrance to life, that I may choose the better way!" But his father and the days of his youth had both passed away. 5. He saw wandering lights float away over dark marshes, and then disappear. These were the days of his wasted life. He saw a star fall from heaven, and vanish in darkness. This was an emblem of himself; and the sharp arrows of unavailing remorse struck home to his heart. Then he remembered his early companions, who entered on life with him, but who, having trod the paths of virtue and of labor, were now honored and happy on this NewYear's night. 6. The clock in the high church-tower struck, and the sound, falling on his ear, recalled his parents' carly love for him, their erring son,—the lessons they had taught him, the prayers they had offered up in his behalf. Overwhelmed with shame and grief, he dared no longer look toward that heaven where his father dwelt; his darkened eyes dropped tears, and with one despairing effort he cried aloud, “Come back, my early days! come back!" 7. And his youth did return; for all this was but a dream which visited his slumbers on New-Year's night. He was still young; his faults alone were real. He thanked God fervently that time was still his own; that he had not yet entered the deep, dark cavern, but that he was free to tread the road leading to the peaceful land where sunny harvests wave. 8. Ye who still linger on the threshold of life, doubting which path to choose, remember that, when years are passed, and your feet stumble on the dark mountain, you will cry bitterly, but cry in vain, "O youth, return! O, give me back my early days!" Richter. CHAPTER XXIX.-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.-1770-1850. 1. แ I.-Biographical. My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, As if life's business were a summer mood, Thus Wordsworth described himself and his faith; and all the outward circumstances of his life correspond with the description. His father was a lawyer and the agent of the Earl of Lonsdale, and young Wordsworth received a University education, graduating from Cambridge in 1791. At twenty-five he received a legacy of nine hundred pounds from a gentleman who admired his genius, and he realized a comfortable estate from a claim of his father against the Earl of Lonsdale. At thirty-three he married a friend of his childhood, who survived his venerable age. 2. Of simple and inexpensive tastes, released from care and need of toil, with his retirement solaced by the presence of kindred and friends who believed in his gifts, and impervious to criticism, he passed his years among the beautiful lakes of Cumberland, in which county he was born. Influential friends obtained for him the patronage of the government. For forty years he enjoyed the income of the office of Stamp Distributor, the duties of which were very light, and, a few months after he had resigned this office in favor of a son, he was, on the death of his friend Robert Southey, made poet-laureate of England, with a pension of three hundred pounds a year until his death. 3. Wordsworth was awkward in appearance, solemn, and pedantic. His face had a pleasant smile, but his conversation was without humor, and rather monotonous. He is called one of the metaphysical poets, as with him description sinks into reflection, and reflection into moralizing. But, withal, he is deeply religious, and in his old age he said to one of his friends, "Whatever the world may think of me or of my poetry, is now of little consequence; but one thing is a comfort to me in old age, that none of my works written since the days of my early youth contains a line I should wish to blot out because it panders to the baser passions of our nature.” 4. Wordsworth was an enthusiastic lover of nature, and in all his mental changes he only saw new aspects and meanings in nature answering to his varied moods. "The impassioned love of nature," says a writer in the British Quarterly Review, "is interfused through the whole of Mr. Wordsworth's system of thought, filling up all interstices, penetrating all recesses, coloring all media, supporting, associating, and giving coherency and mutual relevancy to it in all its parts. Though man is his subject, yet is man never presented to us divested of his relations with external Man is the text, but there is always a running commentary of natural phenomena." In one of his best nature. a These lakes, nine in number, are in Cumberland, a northwestern county of England bordering on Scotland. They are among mountains, are renowned for their scenery, and are much visited by tourists. poems, composed while visiting the banks of the Wye a few miles above Tintern Abbey, the poet expresses this unwavering love of nature, referring, first, to the impressions which nature made upon him in his boyhood : 1. 2. 3. II.-The Love of Nature. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, That had no need of a remoter charm That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes. Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy All thinking things, all objects of all thought, |