I told her of the knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The lady of the land.

I told her how he pined, and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
And she forgave me that I gazed
Too fondly on her face.

But when I told the cruel scorn

Which crazed this bold and lovely knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

But sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once,

In green and sunny glade,

There came and looked him in the face

An angel beautiful and bright;

And that he knew it was a fiend,
This miserable knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,

And saved from outrage worse than death
The lady of the land;

And how she wept and clasped his knees,
And how she tended him in vain—
And ever strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain.

And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest leaves
A dying man he lay;

His dying words-but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve-
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng;
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love and virgin shame;
And, like the murmur of a dream
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved, she stept aside;
As conscious of my look she stept-
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace,
And, bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

"Twas partly love and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears; and she was calm;
And told her love with virgin pride,
And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous bride!

YOUTH AND AGE.

VERSE, a breeze mid blossoms straying Where Hope clung feeding, like a beeBoth were mine! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!

When I was young? Ah woeful when!
Ah for the change 'twixt now and then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands,
How lightly then it flashed along!
Like those trim skiffs unknown of yore

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide,—

Naught cared this body for wind or weather, When youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree;

Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woeful ere!

Which tells me Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be that thou art gone;
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd,
And thou wert aye a masquer bold;
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size;
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but thought; so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.
IX-17

IN his outward placid life of eighty years Wordsworth experienced all the pangs of hope deferred, of cold criticism, and ridicule, that have beforetime soured when they failed to break the hearts of susceptible poets. For many years, he told a friend, his poetry did not bring in enough money to buy shoestrings. His first earnings were £100 for the "Lyrical Ballads," containing also Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." This was in 1800, when he was thirty, and his pen produced nothing for the next thirty-five years, when his copyrights were bought for £1,000. His literary success was little more cheering than the commercial. Even to-day, half a century after his death, his place among the immortals is discussed as an open question. Yet in this is proof of his sure title, for mediocrity never retains the enthusiastic devotion of able minds to the second generation. Wordsworth's evolution as a poet is traceable in three periods or phases: the first produced the "Lyrical Ballads" and other poems in his simpler vein; the second, from 1820 to 1830, his middle period, placed before the public his theory of poetry with examples for their verdict; and the third period, 1830 to 1840, gradually vindicated his stand and brought him honors. To judge particular poems without reference to their date and the phase through which the author's mind was passing, is to miss a rightful appreciation and probably do injustice to the poet.

Wordsworth was born in the Lake country of Northern England in 1770, and was graduated at Cambridge. He shared the boyish enthusiasm of the French Revolution with

his friends Coleridge and Southey. With a small patrimony, eked out by a legacy, he and his devoted sister Dorothy lived for eight uneventful years. He married in 1802, and when their family increased the poet was, in 1813, appointed stampdistributor of his county at a salary of £500. Two years later he published "The White Roe of Rylstone," which he had written eight years before, and a collected edition of his poems The Edinburgh Review poured contempt upon Wordsworth calling "The White Doe" the worst poem ever written, iu which apparently sweeping condemnation may be perceived the admission that a poem it was, for all its faults. He rashly challenged his critics by publishing two poems written in his earlier style and period, "Peter Bell," dating from 1798, and "The Wagoner," written in 1805. When made public in 1819, these received the same fierce ridicule as that which assailed his share of the "Lyrical Ballads." These trivialities were followed by several poems conceived in loftier spirit and penned to nobler measures. The "Laodamia," the "Vernal Ode," the "Intimations of Immortality," the lines on "Tintern Abbey," and the rest, have long taken a place of honor among the permanent triumphs of poetry. When the deaths of Scott and Byron freed the public from the spell they had bound it with, second thoughts asserted their right of revision, and Wordsworth's exalted and serene genius began to be perceived. Coleridge had cleared the air, not always to the advantage of his friend's crudities, but certainly to the gain of the reflective poems and their reflective readers. So sure, though slow, was the growth of his fame that when Southey died, the laureateship was conferred on Wordsworth, in 1844. He wrote but one official ode, three years before his death in 1850.

As the devotee and esoteric interpreter of nature, intent on uttering its inspirations in a language appropriately simple, Wordsworth brought to his task a profound sympathy and ample imagination. He deliberately set himself to defy the artificial poetic diction and affected style of eighteenth century verse. In his ardor for a return to the natural, he overdid his purpose, as seen in the badly prosaical ballads and some of the poems. This rigid attitude is abandoned, as if in