Then, and not till then, the humane poet bethinks him of the insensate earth—insensate not; for beast and bird being satisfied, and lowing and singing in their gratitude, so do the places of their habitation yearn for the blessing—
"E'en mountains, vales,
And forests, seem impatient, to demand
The promised sweetness."
The religious Poet then speaks for his kind—and says devoutly—
"Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude."
In that mood he is justified to feast his fancy with images of the beauty as well as the bounty of nature; and genius in one line has concentrated them all—
"Beholds the kindling country colour round."
'Tis "an a' day's rain"—and "the well-showered earth is deep-enriched with vegetable life." And what kind of an evening? We have seen many such—and every succeeding one more beautiful, more glorious to our eyes than another—because of these words in which the beauty and the glory of one and all are enshrined—
"Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance, instantaneous, strikes
Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds
In fair proportion, running from the red
To where the violet fades into the sky."
How do you like our recitation of that surpassing strain? Every shade of feeling should have its shade of sound—every pause its silence. But these must all come and go, untaught, unbidden, from the fulness of the heart. Then indeed, and not till then, can words be said to be set to music—to a celestial sing-song.
The mighty Minstrel recited old Ballads with a warlike march of sound that made one's heart leap, while his usually sweet smile was drawn in, and disappeared among the glooms that sternly gathered about his lowering brows, and gave his whole aspect a most heroic character. Rude verses, that from ordinary lips would have been almost meaningless, from his came inspired with passion. Sir Philip Sidney, who said that "Chevy Chase" roused him like the sound of a trumpet, had he heard Sir Walter Scott recite it, would have gone distracted. Yet the "best judges" said he murdered his own poetry—we say about as much as Homer. Wordsworth recites his own Poetry (catch him reciting any other) magnificently—while his eyes seem blind to all outward objects, like those of a somnambulist. Coleridge was the sweetest of sing-songers—and his silver voice "warbled melody." Next to theirs, we believe our own recitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times, though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have pronounced it detestable, and the long-eared ludicrous; their delight being in what is called Elocution, as it is taught by player-folk.