THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, VOL. 8 (Completed)

FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED

Composed 1834.--Published 1835.

One of the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection."--ED.

Among a grave fraternity of Monks,

For One, but surely not for One alone,

Triumphs, in that great work, the Painter's skill,

Humbling the body, to exalt the soul;

Yet representing, amid wreck and wrong

And dissolution and decay, the warm

And breathing life of flesh, as if already

Clothed with impassive majesty, and graced

With no mean earnest of a heritage

Assigned to it in future worlds. Thou, too,

With thy memorial flower, meek Portraiture!

From whose serene companionship I passed

Pursued by thoughts that haunt me still; thou also--

Though but a simple object, into light

Called forth by those affections that endear

The private hearth; though keeping thy sole seat

In singleness, and little tried by time,

Creation, as it were, of yesterday--

With a congenial function art endued

For each and all of us, together joined

In course of nature under a low roof

By charities and duties that proceed

Out of the bosom of a wiser vow.

To a like salutary sense of awe

Or sacred wonder, growing with the power

Of meditation that attempts to weigh,

In faithful scales, things and their opposites,

Can thy enduring quiet gently raise

A household small and sensitive,--whose love,

Dependent as in part its blessings are

Upon frail ties dissolving or dissolved

On earth, will be revived, we trust, in heaven.[7]

[7] In the class entitled "Musings," in Mr. Southey's Minor Poems, is one upon his own miniature picture, taken in childhood, and another upon a landscape painted by Gaspar Poussin. It is possible that every word of the above verses, though similar in subject, might have been written had the author been unacquainted with those beautiful effusions of poetic sentiment. But, for his own satisfaction, he must be allowed thus publicly to acknowledge the pleasure those two poems of his Friend have given him, and the grateful influence they have upon his mind as often as he reads them, or thinks of them.--W.W. 1835.