The following, entitled The Affliction of Margaret, dated 1804, and classed among the Poems founded on the Affections, is more impassioned, but still essentially in the same style :

Where art thou, my beloved son,

Where art thou, worse to me than dead?

Oh find me, prosperous or undone !
Or, if the grave be now thy bed,
Why am I ignorant of the same,
That I may rest; and neither blame
Nor sorrow may attend thy name?

Seven years, alas! to have received
No tidings of an only child;

To have despaired, have hoped, believed,
And been for evermore beguiled;
Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss!
I catch at them, and then I miss;
Was ever darkness like to this?

He was among the prime in worth,

An object beauteous to behold;

Well born, well bred; I sent him forth
Ingenuous, innocent, and bold:

If things ensued that wanted grace,
As hath been said, they were not base;
And never blush was on my face.

Ah! little doth the young one dream,
When full of play and childish cares,
What power is in his wildest scream,
Heard by his mother unawares!
He knows it not, he cannot guess:
Years to a mother bring distress;
But do not make her love the less.

Neglect me! no, I suffered long
From that ill thought; and, being blind,
Said, "Pride shall help me in my wrong:
Kind mother have I been, as kind
As ever breathed:" and that is true;
I've wet my path with tears like dew,
Weeping for him when no one knew.

My son, if thou be humbled, poor,
Hopeless of honour and of gain,
Oh! do not dread thy mother's door;
Think not of me with grief and pain:

I now can see with better eyes;
And worldly grandeur I despise,
And Fortune with her gifts and lies.

Alas! the fowls of heaven have wings,

And blasts of heaven will aid their flight;
They mount-how short a voyage brings
The wanderers back to their delight!
Chains tie us down by land and sea;
And wishes, vain as mine, may be
All that is left to comfort thee.

Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan,
Maimed, mangled, by inhuman men ;
Or thou, upon a desert thrown,
Inheritest the lion's den;

Or hast been summoned to the deep,
Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep
An incommunicable sleep.

I look for ghosts; but none will force
Their way to me:-'tis falsely said
That there was ever intercourse
Between the living and the dead;
For, surely, then I should have sight
Of him I wait for day and night
With love and longings infinite.
My apprehensions come in crowds;
I dread the rustling of the grass;
The very shadows of the clouds
Have power to shake me as they pass;
I question things, and do not find
One that will answer to my mind;
And all the world appears unkind.

Beyond participation lie
My troubles, and beyond relief:
If any chance to heave a sigh,
They pity me, and not my grief.
Then come to me, my Son, or send
Some tidings that my woes may end;

I have no other earthly friend!

This last piece is perhaps one of the most favourable examples that could be produced in support of such a theory of poetry as Wordsworth appears to have set out with, and is supposed in the common notion to have adhered to in nearly all that he has written. The language is for the most part direct and simple, not very much distinguished except by the rhyme from what

might be poured out in the circumstances supposed on the mere impulse of natural passion; and yet the lines are full of poetical power. Undoubtedly, passion, or strong feeling, even in the rudest natures, has always something in it of poetry-something of the transforming and idealizing energy which gives both to conception and expression their poetical character; still it is not true either that poetry is universally nothing more than vivid sensation, or that the real language of men, however much excited, is usually to any considerable extent poetry. Even in this poem, unadorned as it is for the greater part, there will be found to be a good deal besides metre added to the natural language of passion; and the selection, too, must be understood as a selection of person as well as of language, for assuredly the Affliction of Margaret, even although it might have been as deeply felt, would not have supplied to one man or woman in a thousand or a million anything like either the diction or the train of reflection to which it has given birth in her—or rather in the great poet of whose imagination she, with all she feels and all she utters, is the creation. For this, after all, is the fundamental fact, that there never has been and never can be poetry without a poet; upon whatever principle or system of operation he may proceed, whether by the selection and metrical arrangement of the real language of passion or in any other way, it is the poet that makes the poetry, and without him it cannot have birth or being: he is the bee, without whom there can be no honey, the artist, or true creator, from whom the thing produced, whatever be its material, takes shape, and beauty, and a living soul.

The following, dated 1798, is from the same class, and in the same style, with the last. The verses are very beautiful; they bear some resemblance to the touching old Scotch ballad called Lady Anna Bothwell's Lament, beginning

Balow, my boy, lie still and sleep;

It grieves me sair to see thee weep—

of which there is a copy in Percy's Reliques, and others, differing considerably from that, in other collections:

Her eyes are wild, her head is bare,

The sun has burned her coal-black hair;

Her eyebrows have a rusty stain,

And she came far from over the main.

She has a baby on her arm,

Or else she were alone:

And underneath the haystack warm,
And on the greenwood stone,

She talked and sung the woods among,
And it was in the English tongue.

"Sweet babe, they say that I am mad,
But nay, my heart is far too glad;
And I am happy when I sing
Full many a sad and doleful thing:
Then, lovely baby, do not fear!
I pray thee, have no fear of me;
But safe as in a cradle, here,
My lovely baby, shalt thou be:
To thee I know too much I owe;
I cannot work thee any woe.

A fire was once within my brain;
And in my head a dull, dull pain;
And fiendish faces, one, two, three,
Hung at my breast, and pulled at me;
But then there came a sight of joy,
It came at once to do me good;
I waked, and saw my little boy,
My little boy of flesh and blood;
Oh joy for me that sight to see!
For he was there, and only he.

Suck, little babe, oh suck again!
It cools my blood, it cools my brain;
Thy lips I feel them, baby! they
Draw from my heart the pain away.
Oh! press me with thy little hand;
It loosens something at my chest;
About that tight and deadly band
I feel thy little fingers prest.
The breeze I see is in the tree :
It comes to cool my babe and me.

Oh! love me, love me, little boy!
Thou art thy mother's only joy;
And do not dread the waves below
When o'er the sea-rock's edge we go;
The high crag cannot work me harm,
Nor leaping torrents when they howl;
The babe I carry on my arm
He saves for me my precious soul;
Then happy lie; for blest am I;
Without me my sweet babe would die.

Then do not fear, my boy! for thee
Bold as a lion will I be :

And I will always be thy guide,
Through hollow snows and rivers wide.
I'll build an Indian bower; I know
The leaves that make the softest bed:
And if from me thou wilt not go,
But still be true till I am dead,
My pretty thing, then thou shalt sing
As merry as the birds in spring.

Thy father cares not for my breast,
"Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest;
"Tis all thine own!-and, if its hue
Be changed, that was so fair to view,
"Tis fair enough for thee, my dove!
My beauty, little child, is flown,
But thou wilt live with me in love;
And what if my poor cheek be brown?
"Tis well for thee, thou canst not see
How pale and wan it else would be.

Dread not their taunts, my little life;
I am thy father's wedded wife;
And underneath the spreading tree
We two will live in honesty.
If his sweet boy he could forsake,
With me he never would have stayed;
From him no harm my babe can take;
But he, poor man! is wretched made;
And every day we two will pray
For him that 's gone and far away.

I'll teach my boy the sweetest things,
I'll teach him how the owlet sings.

My little babe! thy lips are still,

And thou hast almost sucked thy fill.

Where art thou gone, my own dear child?

What wicked looks are those I see?

Alas! alas! that look so wild,
It never, never came from me:
If thou art mad, my pretty lad,
Then I must be for ever sad.

Oh! smile on me, my little lamb!
For I thy own dear mother am.
My love for thee has well been tried:
I've sought thy father far and wide.