| Vain is the pleasure, a false calm the peace, |
| If he through whom alone our conflicts cease, |
| Our virtuous hopes without relapse advance, |
| Come not to speed the soul’s deliverance; |
| To the distempered intellect refuse |
| His gracious help, or give what we abuse.” |
But nothing in this volume better deserves attention than “Lines suggested by a Portrait from the pencil of F. Stone,” and “Stanzas on the Power of Sound.” The first for a refinement and justness of thought rarely surpassed, and the second for a lyric flow, a swelling inspiration, and a width of range, which Wordsworth has never equalled, except in the “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” and the noble ode, or rather hymn, to Duty. It should be read entire, and I shall not quote a line. By a singular naiveté the poet has prefixed to these stanzas a table of contents. This distrust of his reader seems to prove that he had risen above his usual level.
What more to the purpose can we say about Wordsworth, except—read him. Like his beloved Nature, to be known he must be loved. His thoughts may be transfused, but never adequately interpreted. Verily,
“To paint his being to a grovelling mind,
Were like describing pictures to the blind.
But no one, in whose bosom there yet lives a spark of nature or feeling, need despair of some time sympathizing with him; since one of the most brilliantly factitious writers of the day, one I should have singled out as seven-fold shielded against his gentle influence, has paid him so feeling a tribute:
| “How must thy lone and lofty soul have gone |
| Exulting on its way, beyond the loud |
| Self-taunting mockery of the scoffers grown |
| Tethered and dulled to Nature, in the crowd! |
| Earth has no nobler, no more moral sight |
| Than a Great Poet, whom the world disowns, |
