At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 5.

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction.

Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

Stanza 9.

Ibid.

Truths that wake,

To perish never.

Ibid.

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Ibid.

Which brought us hither.

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.

In years that bring the philosophic mind.
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Two voices are there: one is of the sea,
One of the mountains, each a mighty voice.

-

Stanza 10.

Ibid.

Stanza 11.

Ibid.

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland.

Earth helped him with the cry of blood.1

Song at the Feast of Broughton Castle.

The silence that is in the starry sky.

Ibid.

1 This line is from Sir John Beaumont's "Battle of Bosworth Field."

The monumental pomp of
age
Was with this goodly personage;
A stature undepressed in size,
Unbent, which rather seemed to rise
In open victory o'er the weight
Of seventy years, to loftier height.

The White Doe of Rylstone. Canto iii.

"What is good for a bootless bene?
With these dark words begins my tale;
And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring
When prayer is of no avail?

Force of Prayer.

A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules.

Alas! what boots the long laborious Quest?

Of blessed consolations in distress.

Preface to the Excursion. (Edition, 1814.)

The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.

The Excursion. Book i.

The imperfect offices of prayer and praise.
That mighty orb of song,

Ibid.

The divine Milton.

The good die first,1

And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust

Burn to the socket.

This dull product of a scoffer's pen.

With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars.

Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop

Than when we soar.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Book ii.

Ibid.

Book iii.

1 Heaven gives its favourites - early death. - BYRON: Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza 102. Also Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 12.

Quem Di diligunt

Adolescens moritur

(He whom the gods favor dies in youth).

PLAUTUS: Bacchides, act iv. sc. 7.

Wrongs unredressed, or insults unavenged.

Aerial.

The Excursion. Book iii.

Monastic brotherhood, upon rock

The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on a dim and perilous way!1

Society became my glittering bride,

And airy hopes my children.

And the most difficult of tasks to keep

Heights which the soul is competent to gain.

There is a luxury in self-dispraise;
And inward self-disparagement affords
To meditative spleen a grateful feast.

Recognizes ever and anon

The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul.

Pan himself,

The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god!

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy, for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with his native sea.2

So build we up the being that we are.

1 See page 465.

2 But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue;

Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Book iv.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

LANDOR: Gebir, book v.

One in whom persuasion and belief Had ripened into faith, and faith become A passionate intuition.

The Excursion. Book iv.

Spires whose "silent finger points to heaven." 1

Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man,
Could field or grove, could any spot of earth,
Show to his eye an image of the pangs
Which it hath witnessed, — render back an echo
Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod!

And when the stream

Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left
Deposited upon the silent shore

Of memory images and precious thoughts
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

Wisdom married to immortal verse.2

A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
And confident to-morrows.

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars;
The charities that soothe and heal and bless
Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.

By happy chance we saw

A twofold image: on a grassy bank
A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood
Another and the same! 8

The gods approve

The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.

Book vi.

Ibid.

Book vii.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Book ix.

Ibid.

Laodamia.

1 An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries with spire steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and stars. -COLERIDGE: The Friend, No. 14.

2 See Milton, page 249.

8 Another and the same. - DARWIN: The Botanic Garden.

Mightier far

Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway

Of magic potent over sun and star,

Is Love, though oft to agony distrest,

And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast.

Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,

Laodamia.

Brought from a pensive through a happy place.

Ibid.

He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsighed for, and the future sure.

Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams.
Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

But shapes that come not at an earthly call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid.

But thou that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day

Her delicate creation.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Dion.

Yarrow Visited.

'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

Weak is the Will of Man.

We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud
And magnify thy name Almighty God!
But man is thy most awful instrument
In working out a pure intent.

Ode. Imagination before Content.