O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of And now is almost grown the habit of my was rough, Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! This joy within me dallied with distress, Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold! With groans and tremulous shudderingsall is over It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud! A tale of less affright, And tempered with delight, As Otway's self had framed the tender lay; 'Tis of a little child Upon a lonesome wild, 120 When I was young?-Ah, woeful When! ΙΟ This body that does me grievous wrong, Not far from home, but she hath lost her When Youth and I lived in't together. way: And now moans low in bitter grief and fear, Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; 15 And now screams loud, and hopes to make Oh! the joys, that came down shower 30 Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, Like some poor nigh-related guest, WORK WITHOUT HOPE us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist [20 in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, sup All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave posing them real. And real in this sense From the BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA CHAPTER XIV During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbors, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which [10 moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and [30 incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves. In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer [40 from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by [50 awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand. With this view I wrote The Ancient [60 Mariner, and was preparing, among other poems, The Dark Ladie, and the Christabel, in which I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared |