THE FLOWER OF THE MIND
Page: 27

"What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?"

Yet they are not lost. Pope's awe and ardour are authentic, and
they prevail; the succeeding couplet--inimitably modulated, and of
tragic dignity--proves, without delay, the quality of the poem.
The poverty and coldness of the passage (towards the end), in which
the roses and the angels are somewhat trivially sung, cannot mar so
veritable an utterance. The four final couplets are the very glory
of the English couplet.


LINE ON RECEIVING HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE


Cowper, again, by the very directness of human feeling makes his
narrowing English a means of absolutely direct communication. Of
all his works (and this is my own mere and unshared opinion) this
single one deserves immortality.


LIFE


This fragment (the only fragment, properly so called, in the
present collection) so pleased Wordsworth that he wished he had
written the lines. They are very gently touched.


THE LAND OF DREAMS


When Blake writes of sleep and dreams he writes under the very
influence of the hours of sleep--with a waking consciousness of the
wilder emotion of the dream. Corot painted so, when at summer dawn
he went out and saw landscape in the hours of sleep.


SURPRISED BY JOY


It is not necessary to write notes on Wordsworth's sonnets--the
greatest sonnets in our literature; but it would be well to warn
editors how they print this one sonnet; "I wished to share the
transport" is by no means an uncommon reading. Into the history of
the variant I have not looked. It is enough that all the
suddenness, all the clash and recoil of these impassioned lines are
lost by that "wished" in the place of "turned." The loss would be
the less tolerable in as much as perhaps only here and in that
heart-moving poem, 'Tis said that some have died for love, is
Wordsworth to be confessed as an impassioned poet.


STEPPING WESTWARD


This and the preceding two exquisite poems of sympathy are far more
justified, more recollected and sincere than is that more
monumental composition, the famous poem of sympathy, Hartleap Well.