BIEDS AND POETS. 175 



should have yet produced the most exact and singularly mi- 

 nute characterization of its peculiar song 



" My sense was filled 



With that new blissful golden melody. 



A living death was in each gush of sounds, 



Each family of rapturous hurried notes 



That fell, one after one, yet all at once, 



Like pearl-beads dropping sudden from their string, 



And then another, then another strain," &c. 



The very collocation of the words themselves, produces 

 upon the ear the effect of a remote resemblance. Alas, poor 

 Keats! The savage Archers reached him on his airy perch, 

 and cut short, forever 3 those miraculous strains. But though 

 now he be "in his far Eome grave," among "the sleepers in 

 the oblivious valley," yet must the echoes he has waked live 

 in still reverberations musical, through all the enchanted 

 caves of human thought. They are deathless, for in him 



" Language was a perpetual Orphic song 

 "Which ruled with Dasdal harmony a throng 

 Of thoughts and forms." 



But concerning "Wordsworth 



" Once have I marked thee happyest guest, 

 In all this covert of the blest. 

 Hail to THEE far above the rest 



In joy of voice and pinion ! 

 A life, a presence, like the air, 

 Scattering thy gladness without care, 

 Too blest with any one to pair ; 



Thyself thine own enjoyment!" 



The poet thus furnishes us to hand an exquisite charac- 

 terization of himself in the choir of this " covert of the 

 Blest," through whose shades we thus tardily " linger listen 

 ing." But which shall be prototype to him? 



