The prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,

Again I seize the theme, then but begun,

May wind their path of blood along the West;

But ne'er will freedom seek this fated soil,

But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil.

The success of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" was maintained by a rapid succession of fresh utterances. In May, next year, 1813, the "Giaour was published, in December the "Bride of Abydos" was published, and the "Corsair" written. Scott's star as a popular poet paled its ineffectual fire in the eyes of a public that now worshipped in Byron a rising sun. Scott felt also, justly, the greater power of the rival poet, and in 1814, while Byron continued his successes with the "Corsair" and "Lara," Scott published "Waverley." Thus he found expression for the full strength of his nature, and showed forth the breadth of his genius in prose. He was not less a poet for the want of rhyme, but even a fuller poet, with his genial wisdom, his humour, his shrewd lovingkindness, his whole healthy being shaped into pictures of life, that as the "Waverley" Novels by some Great Unknown appeared at the rate of two a year for many years thereafter. Byron married Miss Milbanke in January, 1815, when he was twenty-seven years old. She found reason to question his sanity. Their daughter, Augusta Ada, was born in December, and in February his wife took the advice of a trustworthy family friend and left him. He had already published in the beginning of the year "The Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina." Then Byron left England again, never to return. He went by way of the Rhine to Switzerland, and began, in May, 1816, the Third Canto of " Childe Harold." It was finished in July; "The Prisoner of Chillon" being produced during the same weeks. His journey to Switzerland furnished the scenery of the Third Canto of the Pilgrimage," and these were its opening stanzas.

46

CANTO III.

I.

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted-not as now we part,
But with a hope.-

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by

When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine

eye.

II.

Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar ! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead! Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, Still must I on; for I am as a weed, Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.

III.

In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;

And bear it with me, as the rushing wind Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, O'er which all heavily the journeying years Plod the last sands of life,- where not a flower appears.

IV.

Since my young days of passion-joy, or pain,
Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string,
And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
I would essay as I have sung to sing.
Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
So that it wean me from the weary dream
Of selfish grief or gladness-so it fling
Forgetfulness around me-it shall seem

To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

V.

He who grown aged in this world of woe,

In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life,
So that no wonder waits him; nor below
Can love or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife,
Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
Of silent sharp endurance: he can tell
Why thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
With airy images, and shapes which dwell

Still unimpair'd, though old, in the soul's haunted cell.

VI.

'Tis to create, and in creating live

A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give

The life we image, even as I do now.
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,

Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible but gazing, as I glow

Mix'd with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,

And feeling still with thee in my crush'd feelings' dearth.

VII.

Yet must I think less wildly; I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,

A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame :
And thus untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poison'd. 'Tis too late!
Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what time cannot abate,
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.

VIII.

Something too much of this :-but now 'tis past, And the spell closes with its silent seal, Long absent HAROLD re-appears at last; He of the breast which fain no more would feel, Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal; Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him In soul and aspect as in age: years steal Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

Byron had passed from Switzerland to Italy, was living in Venice, and had visited Rome, when he began the Fourth Canto of "Childe Harold." He began it at Venice, in June, 1817, and it was published in

1818, when Byron's age was thirty. It opens in Venice "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs"its theme is Italy, and the unity that makes restoration of a true life among nations fallen to dishonour or decay the master note of the whole poem is preserved to the end. This is the end :

CANTO IV.

CLXXVIII.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal

CLXXIX.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin--his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

CLXXX.

His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay.

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of warThese are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou;Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,—

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done, my song hath ceased, my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ;
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me-and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been—
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,

If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain.

66

Now let us pause at the year 1814, when Walter Scott published his Waverley." The music of Shelley was to come. He had only published his "Queen Mab" in the preceding year. Keats did not publish his first book of poems until 1817. But Wordsworth in 1814 published his "Excursion.” Southey in that year produced the best of his long poems, "Roderick ;" and Jane Austen, who began to publish in 1811 works written some years earlier, published in 1814 one of her maturest novels, “Mansfield Park."

THE EXCURSION

is a poem complete in itself, although planned as the second of three parts of a larger poem that was to have been called the "Recluse." The poet's aim was to produce a didactic poem that should have for its theme the whole problem of Society, and show the way to its solution. The pure ideal of a humanity in which the millions shall have been raised to the level now reached only by a few, was always present to the mind of Wordsworth. As the Recluse he would study Nature, and for chief part of Nature, Man. The first of the intended three parts of his poem would probably have connected his purpose with the life and thought of the Recluse himself.

An unpublished fragment of this First Part is said to exist. But that it should have been suffered to remain unpublished is incredible. Wordsworth himself, in preface to the first edition of the "Excursion,” quoted some lines written to form the close of the First Part. They include the hope to which all points:

Paradise, and groves

Elysian, Fortunate Fields-like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main--why should they be
A history only of departed things,

Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.

I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation :-and by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted - and how exquisitely too-

Theme this but little heard of among men--
The external World is fitted to the Mind;
And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish-this is our high argument.

The published Second Part of the "Recluse," the "Excursion," introduces, besides the Recluse himself, three typical characters, the Wanderer, the Solitary, and the Pastor, that by the supposed contact of their minds livelier expression may be given to the main thought of the poem. Part of the opening Wordsworth had written when he lived at Racedown, where his friendship with Coleridge began. The common crossed by the Recluse to meet the Wanderer, the Scotch Pedlar, is, therefore, not painted from any scene in the lake district, but is a common near Crewkerne. The story of Margaret, by whose ruined home the Pedlar is waiting for his friend, in the First Book of the "Excursion," an opening picture of the misery that waits on our imperfect civilisation, belongs to the same earlier days, when the conception of the whole design was rising in Wordsworth's mind. Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth in the summer of 1799, "My dear friend, I do entreat you to go on with the 'Recluse; and I wish you would write a poem in blank verse, addressed to those who in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost Epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes." Whether it was the suggestion of Coleridge that bore fruit I cannot say, but the Solitary in the "Excursion," does precisely stand for the mind capable of generous thought, whose faith in God and Man is lost in the dead ashes of the revolutionary fire. Apart from the Recluse

Wordsworth himself the three speakers in the "Excursion" are as three factors used by the poet to express the process of thought by which he comes to his solution of the problem of humanity. The Scotch Pedlar the Wanderer-represents shrewd sense trained by sympathetic intercourse year after year with men whose homes he has visited, and with the outside world. Sincere religious feeling elevates his shrewdness into wisdom.

Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirit, undamped By worldly-mindedness or anxious care; Observant, studious, thoughtful and refreshed By knowledge gathered up from day to day; Thus had he lived a long and innocent life.

With the Pedlar, whom he had known since his school-days, and now met by chance, the Recluse had agreed to take a country walk, after the manner of old days when their acquaintance was yet new.

Many a time,

On holidays, we rambled through the woods:
We sate-we walked; he pleased me with report
Of things which he had seen; and often touched
Abstrusest matter, reasonings of the mind
Turned inward; or at my request would sing
Old songs, the product of his native hills;
A skilful distribution of sweet sounds,
Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed
As cool refreshing water by the care

Of the industrious husbandman diffused
Through a parched meadow-ground, in time of drought.
Still deeper welcome found his pure discourse:
How precious when in riper days I learned
To weigh with care his words, and to rejoice
In the plain presence of his dignity!

Oh! many are the Poets that are sown
By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse
(Which, in the docile season of their youth,
It was denied them to acquire, through lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books,
Or haply by a temper too severe,

Strongest minds

Or a nice backwardness afraid of shame),
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of.
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least; else surely this Man had not left
His graces unrevealed and unproclaimed.
But, as the mind was filled with inward light,
So not without distinction had he lived,
Beloved and honoured-far as he was known.
And some small portion of his eloquent speech,
And something that may serve to set in view
The feeling pleasures of his loneliness,
His observations, and the thoughts his mind
Had dealt with--I will here record in verse;
Which, if with truth it correspond, and sink
Or rise as venerable Nature leads,

The high and tender Muses shall accept

With gracious smile, deliberately pleased,

And listening Time reward with sacred praise.

On their way up the hills, their Excursion, as the Pedlar plans it, brings the Recluse and the Wanderer to the home of the Solitary.

"In a spot that lies

Among yon mountain fastnesses concealed,
You will receive, before the hour of noon,
Good recompense, I hope, for this day's toil,
From sight of One who lives secluded there,
Lonesome and lost; of whom, and whose past life,
(Not to forestall such knowledge as may be
More faithfully collected from himself)
This brief communication shall suffice.

"Though now sojourning there, he, like myself,
Sprang from a stock of lowly parentage
Among the wilds of Scotland, in a tract
Where many a sheltered and well-tended plant
Bears, on the humblest ground of social life,
Blossoms of piety and innocence,

Such graceful promises his youth displayed:
And, having shown in study forward zeal,
He to the Ministry was duly called;
And straight, incited by a curious mind

Filled with vague hopes, he undertook the charge
Of Chaplain to a military troop

Cheered by the Highland bagpipe, as they marched
In plaided vest-his fellow-countrymen.
This office filling, yet by native power

And force of native inclination made

An intellectual ruler in the haunts

Of social vanity, he walked the world,
Gay, and affecting graceful gaiety;
Lax, buoyant-less a pastor with his flock
Than a soldier among soldiers-lived and roamed
Where Fortune led :-and Fortune, who oft proves
The careless wanderer's friend, to him made known
A blooming Lady-a conspicuous flower,
Admired for beauty, for her sweetness praised;
Whom he had sensibility to love,
Ambition to attempt, and skill to win.

"For this fair Bride, most rich in gifts of mind
Nor sparingly endowed with worldly wealth,
His office he relinquished; and retired
From the world's notice to a rural home.
Youth's season yet with him was scarcely past,

And she was in youth's prime. How free their love,
How full their joy! Till, pitiable doom!
In the short course of one undreaded year,
Death blasted all. Death suddenly o'erthrew
Two lovely Children-all that they possessed.
The Mother followed:-miserably bare
The one Survivor stood; he wept, he prayed
For his dismissal, day and night, compelled
To hold communion with the grave, and face
With pain the regions of eternity.
An uncomplaining apathy displaced
This anguish; and, indifferent to delight,
To aim and purpose, he consumed his days,
To private interest dead, and public care.
So lived he; so he might have died.

But now,

To the wide world's astonishment, appeared

A glorious opening, the unlooked-for dawn,
That promised everlasting joy to France.
Her voice of social transport reached even him.
He broke from his contracted bounds, repaired
To the great City, an emporium then
Of golden expectations, and receiving
Freights every day from a new world of hope.
Thither his popular talents he transferred;
And, from the pulpit, zealously maintained
The cause of Christ and civil liberty,
As one, and moving to one glorious end.
Intoxicating service! I might say

A happy service; for he was sincere
As vanity and fondness for applause,

And new and shapeless wishes, would allow."

The best and the worst were linked together in the struggle, and some of the better natures became tainted with

"A proud and most presumptuous confidence In the transcendent wisdom of the age.”

The Solitary, among others, lost his faith in God. He renounced his sacred functions and gave rein to licence, while still he retained in his abasement what he had received from nature, an intense and glowing mind.

"The glory of the times fading away--The splendour, which had given a festal air To self-importance, hallowed it, and veiled From his own sight-this gone, he forfeited All joy in human nature; was consumed, And vexed, and chafed, by levity and scorn, And fruitless indignation; galled by pride; Made desperate by contempt of men who throve Before his sight in power or fame, and won, Without desert, what he desired; weak men, Too weak even for his envy or his hate. Tormented thus, after a wandering course Of discontent, and inwardly opprest With malady—in part, I fear, provoked By weariness of life-he fixed his home, Or, rather say, sate down by very chance, Among these rugged hills; where now he dwells And wastes the sad remainder of his Lours, Steeped in a self-indulging spleen, that wants not Its own voluptuousness;-on this resolved, With this content, that he will live and die Forgotten,-at safe distance from a world Not moving to his mind.""

These serious words

Closed the preparatory notices

That served my Fellow-traveller to beguile
The way, while we advanced up that wide vale.
Diverging now (as if his quest had been
Some secret of the mountains, cavern, fall
Of water, or some lofty eminence,
Renowned for splendid prospect far and wide),
We scaled, without a track to ease our steps,
A steep ascent; and reached a dreary plain,
With a tumultuous waste of huge hill tops
Before us; savage region! which I paced
Dispirited when, all at once, behold,
Beneath our feet, a little lowly vale,

A lowly vale, and yet uplifted high
Among the mountains; even as if the spot
Had been from eldest time by wish of theirs
So placed, to be shut out from all the world!
Urn-like it was in shape, deep as an urn;
With rocks encompassed, save that to the south
Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close:
A quiet treeless nook, with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glittered in the sun,
And one bare dwelling; one abode, no more.

It seemed the home of poverty and toil,

Though not of want: the little fields, made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,

Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland house.
-There crows the cock, single in his domain :
The small birds find in spring no thicket there
To shroud them; only from the neighbouring vales
The cuckoo, straggling up to the hill tops.
Shouteth faint tidings of some gladder place.

Ah! what a sweet Recess, thought I, is here! Instantly throwing down my limbs at ease Upon a bed of heath ;-full many a spot Of hidden beauty have I chanced to espy Among the mountains; never one like this, So lonesome, and so perfectly secure; Not melancholy-no, for it is green, And bright, and fertile, furnished in itself With the few needful things that life requires. -In rugged arms how softly does it lie, How tenderly protected! Far and near We have an image of the pristine earth, The planet in its nakedness: were this Man's only dwelling, sole appointed seat, First, last, and single, in the breathing world, It could not be more quiet: peace is here Or nowhere; days unruffled by the gale Of public news or private; years that pass Forgetfully; uncalled upon to pay The common penalties of mortal life, Sickness, or accident, or grief, or pain.

The Recluse and his friend are imagined to pass from a plain country up the Langdale Valley, striking off a good way above the chapel to the western side of the vale. Mounting the hill they look down upon the hollow near its summit, in which lies Blea Tarn, where there was, and is still, but a single house among the mountain solitudes. This spot was in Wordsworth's mind when describing the retreat of the Solitary. When the walk is afterwards continued, it is over a low ridge and then down the hill towards the Little Langdale Valley. Towards the head of this valley is a house which is transformed into a Parsonage as the poem advances, and the third of the three voices, that of

the Pastor, begins to be heard. Then the imagined scene is broadened out, and the poet has in mind, as he paints features of the landscape, the valley of Grasmere with its ancient parish church, and the last words are supposed to be spoken on the side of Loughrigg Fell, looking down on the lake and the whole vale and the surrounding mountains.

We return to the supposed home of the Solitary by Blea Tarn. As the Wanderer and his comrade

I knew from his deportment, mien, and dress
That it could be no other; a pale face,
A meagre person, tall, and in a garb
Not rustic-dull and faded like himself.
He saw us not, though distant but few steps;
For he was busy dealing from a store
Upon a broad leaf carried, choicest strings
Of red ripe currants; gift by which he strove
With intermixture of endearing words

To soothe a child, who walked beside him, weeping
As if disconsolate.-" They to the grave
Are bearing him, my little one," he said,
"To the dark pit; but he will feel no pain;
His body is at rest, his soul in heaven."

Seeking to comfort the child body and mind, the man who has put away his faith falls back instinctively upon the consolation of the hope of immortality. The Pedlar was eagerly welcomed. The funeral was that of a seventy-year-old pauper who had been placed out by his parish as an inmate of the cottage, his meek and willing nature subject there to a harsh housewife who overtasked his strength. last, when he had been sent up the mountain early in the morning to cut turf from the moorland, a fierce storm raged, and at noon it was found that the old man had not returned. The storm continued. He was sought in vain. Throughout the next night the

storm lasted.

At