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aud injured king. What is more true to the human heart than to 

 associate the aspect of external nature with our own situation, and to 

 feel as if it ought to sympathise with our own joy or grief? How 

 sweetly and touchingly is this truth embodied in Burns's well-known 

 lament of an unhappy maiden : — 



"Ye banks and braes o'bonnie Doon, 

 How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair ? 

 How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

 And I sae weary, fu' o' care !" 



The ever-memorable Wordsworth has done distinguished service to 

 the cause of true poetry, by showing that it may be, and ought to be, 

 expressed in simple language, and freed from the aiTectation and con- 

 ventional rules by which it has been so greatly disfigured aud obscured. 

 Perhaps he pushed his theoiy to an erroneous extreme, in some of 

 his poems, mistaking what is trivial for the proper simplicity of genuine 

 poetry. The poet always aims at the expression of beauty. On every 

 subject he seizes hold of the essential truth as it appears to his own 

 heart, discarding all that is incongruous or irrelevant, and naturally 

 endeavouring to clothe his conceptions in appropriate beauty of phrase : 

 hence it is that the effect of poetry is more complete when not merely 

 the ideas are poetical, but they are conveyed to us in verse. It is 

 sometimes said, aud with truth, to be the test of good poetry, to ex- 

 press the thoughts in prose, and see if they then strike us as poeticaL 

 But we must not expect that all their poetical power will be preserved 

 when stripped of the beauty of verse. There is a pleasure to the ear 

 in a musical measure, and in the regular recurrence of rhyme, aud it is 

 a pleasing surprise to the mind to find the thoughts of the poet flowing 

 with just and pure expression in easy and graceful accordance with the 

 measure and the rhyme. Even in prose the eflect of good thoughts is 

 greatly enhanced if they are expressed in a good style, and verse is only 

 a systematic development of the beauty of style. It is the natural im- 

 pulse of the poet to study true beauty of effect in everything that can 

 heighten and make more complete the expression of his thoughts. 

 Accordingly, in poetr}' intended to be set to music, we do not appreciate 

 its full power until we have heard it sung. No one can have heard the 

 songs of Burns or of Moore, for example, well sung to the sweet national 

 airs for which they were composed, without feeling that something is 

 wanting to their full effect when they are merely read. Poetry and music 

 are closely associated. The most ancient poetry (such as the Psalms 

 of David and the rhapsodies of Homer), was composed and sung by 

 bards, whence one of the affectations of modern poets has been to ex- 

 press themselves as singinfj their various themes, even when the poetry 



