Of his serious poems we may take the last lines he ever wrote:

Farewell, Life! My senses swim;
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night,—
Colder, colder, colder still
Upwards steals a vapour chill-
Strong the earthy odour grows-
I smell the Mould above the Rose!

Welcome, Life! the Spirit strives!
Strength returns, and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn,-
O'er the earth there comes a bloom-
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapour cold—

I smell the Rose above the Mould!

Hood's repute as a humorist has too much overshadowed his merits as a poet, which-as Rossetti, an unerring judge, considered-were very great and real. In the temple of fame his monument, though it may not strike the careless eye, is one that will not crumble.

Thomas Moore, who was born twenty years before Hood and outlived him by seven, achieved during his lifetime an exaggerated reputation and success that were in themselves romantic. For Lalla Rookh, which actually placed him momentarily on the level of Byron and Scott, he received £3,000 from his publishers! But his fame spent itself almost as quickly as he spent the fortune it brought him, and the anxieties of his old age were relieved by a Civil list pension. Lalla Rookh, however, has a niche in the archives of romantic poetry, while some of his lyrics,

others of the Irish Melodies which have b whole tribe of composers during the last So also will his Life of Byron, which r biographies ever given to the world.

§ 8

WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake was born in 1757 in father kept a draper's shop. He was bro counter, where, instead of giving up his he vats and stockings, he drew sketches and sc backs of bills. From his youth he suffered saw God putting His head out of a window, a tree, the prophet Ezekiel sitting under a view of his artistic tastes he was apprentice wood-engraver, and in 1782 married a serv not write her name, but who turned out one that ever a man had. He was employed by to illustrate his life of Cowper, and stayed at his house at Felpham, where he used to evening by the sea, meeting Moses and Dante majestic, colossal shadows," and watching th fairies. On one occasion he painted Lot's po he met the devil coming downstairs. His visi went by, became more and more demente nightmares, enormous fish preying on dead bo pent, angels pouring out the vials of plague, F the sun.

Poems of Beauty and Simplicity

When we come to deal with his poetry, much that is wild and whirling, and indeed some

At Rydal Mount, overlooking Rydal Water in Westmorland, Wordsworth lived for thirty-seven years, and there in the peace of his beloved lake country he died.

gible, verses of the sweetest beauty-verses which gave the eyes of men their first glimpse into that kingdom of romance in which Keats and Shelley were afterwards to wander and to dwell. Even in his first book, Poetical Sketches, which appeared in 1783, we have such lines as these from The Evening Star:

Smile on our loves; and while thou drawest round
The sky's blue curtains scatter silver dew

On every flower that closes its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake: speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver.

None of the great after-poets of romance ever surpassed in loveliness these exquisitely cadenced and softly-coloured lines.

In Songs of Innocence and Experience, which followed, we have his style of sweet and simple melody, limpid as a drop of dew, in the Introductory Verses:

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a lamb!"

So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again"; So I piped: he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe:

Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"
So I sang the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read":
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,