He paused, and stood entranced by that still face For late, as near a murmuring stream A light around his mossy bed; And, at her call, a waking dream Now, while his bright-haired front he bowed, The enrapt, the beautiful, the young, Belief sank deep into the crowd That he the solemn issue would determine. Nor deem it strange; the youth had worn The day when he achieved that matchless feat, Which whosoe'er approached of strength was shorn, He touched with hesitating hand And lo! those birds, far-famed through love's dominions, The swans, in triumph clap their wings; And their necks play, involved in rings, Like sinless snakes in Eden's happy land; “Mine is she,” cried the knight;—again they clapped their pinions. "Mine was she-mine she is, though dead, And to her name my soul shall cleave in sorrow;" Of colour dawned upon the damsel's cheek; And her lips, quickening with uncertain red, Seemed from each other a faint warmth to borrow. Deep was the awe, the rapture high, Of love emboldened, hope with dread entwining, Allowed a soft and flower-like breath, To lifted eyelids, and a doubtful shining. * ** * This will be admitted by all to be most graceful as well as expressive writing, and it has little or nothing of what are commonly regarded as the characteristic peculiarities of Wordsworth's manner-nothing of the undignified or over-familiar phraseology on the one hand, or of the soaring out of sight or comprehension on the other, with which he has been charged-only his easy power, the full flow and commanding sweep of his diction and his verse. Yet it is for its inner spirit that Wordsworth's poetry is admirable, rather than for its formal qualities. His style is for the most part direct and natural; when the occasion requires it rises to splendour and magnificence; if it be sometimes too colloquial, it is often also dignified and solemn; yet, with all its merits, it has not in general much of true artistic exquisiteness. In only a few of his poems, indeed, is his diction throughout of any tolerable elaboration and exactness; generally, both in his more familiar and in his loftier style, it is diffuse and unequal, a brittle mixture of poetical and prosaic forms, like the image of iron and clay in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. The music of his verse, too, though almost always pleasing, and sometimes impassioned or majestic, has rarely or never much either of subtlety or originality. COLERIDGE. In all that constitutes artistic character the poetry of Coleridge is a contrast to that of Wordsworth. Coleridge, born in 1772, published the earliest of his poetry that is now remembered in 1796, in a small volume containing also some pieces by Charles Lamb, to which some by Charles Lloyd were added in a second edition the following year. It was not till 1800, after he had produced and printed separately his Ode to the Departing Year' (1796), his noble ode entitled' France' (1797), his Fears in Solitude' (1798), and his translations of both parts of Schiller's' Wallenstein,' that he was first associated as a poet and author with Wordsworth, in the second volume of whose 'Lyrical Ballads,' published in 1800, appeared, as the contributions of an anonymous friend, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,' 'Foster Mother's Tale,' 'Nightingale,' and 'Love.' "I should not have requested this assistance," said Wordsworth, in his preface, "had I not believed that the poems of my friend would, in a great measure, have the same tendency as my own, and that, though there would be found a difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide.” Coleridge's own account, however, is somewhat different. In his Biographia Literaria,' he tells us that, besides the Ancient Mariner,' he was preparing for the conjoint publication, among other poems, the 'Dark Ladie' and the Christabel,' in which he should have 'more nearly realized his ideal than he had done in his first attempt, when the volume was brought out with so much larger a portion of it the produce of Wordsworth's industry than his own, that his few compositions, "instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter;" and then he adds, in reference to the long preface in which Wordsworth had expounded his theory of poetry," With many parts of this preface in the sense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorise, I never concurred; but, on the contrary, objected to them as erroneous in principle and contradictory (in appearance at least) both to other parts of the same preface, and to the author's own practice in the greater number of the poems themselves." Coleridge's poetry is remarkable for the perfection of its execution, for the exquisite art with which its divine informing spirit is endowed with formal expression. The subtly woven words, with all their sky colours, seem to grow out of the thought or emotion, as the flower from its stalk, or the flame from its feeding oil. The music of his verse, too, especially of what he has written in rhyme, is as sweet and as characteristic as anything in the language, placing him for that rare excellence in the same small band with Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher (in their lyrics), and Milton, and Collins, and Shelley, and Tennyson. It was probably only quantity that was wanting to make Coleridge the greatest poet of his day. Certainly, at least, some things that he has written have not been surpassed, if they have been matched, by any of his contemporaries. And (as indeed has been the case with almost all great poets) he continued to write better and better the longer he wrote; some of his happiest verses were the produce of his latest years. As we have said in a paper on the poetry of Coleridge published some years ago,* "Not only, as we proceed from his earlier to his later compositions, does the execution become much more artistic and perfect, but the informing spirit is refined and purified-the tenderness grows more delicate and deep, the fire * In the Printing Machine,' No. 12, for 16th August, 1834. 6 brighter and keener, the sense of beauty more subtle and exquisite. Yet from the first there was in all he wrote the divine breath which essentially makes poetry what it is. There was the shaping spirit of imagination,' evidently of soaring pinion and full of strength, though as yet sometimes unskilfully directed, and encumbered in its flight by an affluence of power which it sometimes seemed hardly to know how to manage: hence an unselecting impetuosity in these early compositions, never indicating anything like poverty of thought, but producing occasionally considerable awkwardness and turgidity of style, and a declamatory air, from which no poetry was ever more free than that of Coleridge in its maturer form. Yet even among these juvenile productions are many passages, and some whole pieces, of perfect gracefulness, and radiant with the purest sunlight of poetry. There is, for example, the most beautiful delicacy of sentiment, as well as sweetness of versification and expression, in the following lines, simple as they are: Maid of my love, sweet Genevieve ! I've seen your breast with pity heave, And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve! And the following little picture, entitled 'Time, Real |