Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn.
Or—
Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose.
In one passage only do I find him falling, falling, falling into the flattest style of the Excursion:—
"I overheard a kind-eyed girl relate
To her companions how a favouring chance
By some few shillings weekly had increased
The earnings of her household."
But as I read this, I murmur to myself those lines from Wordsworth—
"And I have travelled far as Hull to see
What clothes he might have left, or other property,"
and wonder how it is that such aberrations can befal even the very man who seems most determined to avoid them.
Watson's second endowment is still one of taste and intellect. It is the gift of literary criticism. The special charm of the great poets is so subtly apprehended by him, and so exquisitely expressed, that it will be a source of much surprise if many of his concise verdicts do not become the household words of students of literature. Let me quote a passage from his poem on Wordsworth's Grave:—
You who have loved, like me, his simple themes,
Loved his sincere large accent nobly plain,
And loved the land whose mountains and whose streams
Are lovelier for his strain.
It may be that his manly chant, beside
More dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune;
It may be, thought has broadened, since he died,
Upon the century's noon;
It may be that we can no longer share
The faith which from his fathers he received;
It may be that our doom is to despair
Where he with joy believed;—
Enough that there is none since risen who sings
A song so gotten of the immediate soul,
So instant from the vital fount of things
Which is our source and goal;
And though at touch of later hands there float
More artful tones than from his lyre he drew,
Ages may pass e'er trills another note
So sweet, so great, so true.