Our Poets!

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894. Excerpt: ... You don't touch Wordsworth's depths, I must concede, Dear William, but you do not touch his heights, Your Muse is of a smaller, finer breed, Content with mediocre, safe delights. A bijou Wordsworth of the calmer mood Of that great demi-god of Rydal Mount, Your verse doth show--I think this notion's good--. A smaller, clearer, even chillier fount: A deep, secluded, cold Wordsworthian tarn, Where is that tarn'--you know--in Scotland, is it? Well, all the same, to quote the guide-book's yarn, A local treasure--well repays a visit, That's very like your Heliconian spring, 18 Calm, deep, and faintly tinged--diaphanous, Free from all turbid, turgid thoughts that bring The sense of life, and strife, cacaphonous. O life, O poetry, what notes of power Sound while I utter them now carelessly, And ring within me this awakened hour Emotions surging up, tumultuously. The myriad passions of the human heart, The airy fancy, delicatest thought, Fine emanations of that nobler part Deep in the Man essentially enwrought. I touch them all, these things of human life, Each like a note of some loved instrument, And seek the harmony within that strife, That first o'erwhelmed me in bewilderment. A harmony in life, and not apart Secluded, hidden, cloistered from the view, Refining some mere dainty thing of art--Nay, let me find the deeper import true, The feeling's clad in purple and in gold, The joys that shake the heart and fire the soul, The sheer delight of primal impulse bold, Whose instinct breaks the bond of false control. To taste of life, this thing that steals away, To see its depth, its high magnificence, To feel its broad sweep, and the magic play Of all its diverse shapes of thought intense! We live, then let us live, I cry again, Though not in joys of sensual le...