Page:The Spirit of the Age.djvu/243

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MR. WORDSWORTH.
235

avail himself of the advantages which nature or accident holds out to him. He chooses to have his subject a foil to his invention, to owe nothing but to himself. He gathers manna in the wilderness, he strikes the barren rock for The gushing moisture. He elevates the mean by the strength of his own aspirations; he clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur from the store of his own recollections. No cypress-grove loads his verse with perfumes: but his imagination lends "a sense of joy

"To the bare trees and mountains bare,
 And grass in the green field."

No storm, no shipwreck startles us by its horrors: but the rainbow lifts its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs through the withered fern. No sad vicissitude of fate, no overwhelming catastrophe in nature deforms his page: but the dew-drop glitters on the bending flower, the tear collects in the glistening eye.

"Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales,
 The generations are prepared; the pangs,
 The internal pangs are ready; the dread strife
 Of poor humanity's afflicted will,
 Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."

As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, and salutes the morning skies; so