BIRDS AND POETS. 177 



numbered with " The Prophets Old." Though thy head is 

 silvered. Time clothes himself in gray when his topmost 

 deeds of wisest strength are to be done, and, in the language 

 of another daring Singer, to whom, like this Kobin, our new 

 world has given birth, we would address thee on this dread- 

 ful pause betwixt Sublimity and Death : 



" Then let the sunset fall and flush Life's Dial ! 

 No matter how the years may smite my frame, 

 And cast a piteous blank upon my eyes 

 That seek in vain the old, accustomed stars, 

 Which skies hold over blue Winandermere, 

 Be sure that I a crowned Bard will sing, 

 Until within the murmuring barque of verse 

 My Spirit bears majestically away, 

 Charming to golden hues the gulf of death 

 Well knowing that upon my honored grave, 

 Beside the widowed lakes that wail for me, 

 Haply the dust of four great worlds will fall 

 And mingle thither brought by Pilgrim's feet." 



Byron stands in singular contrast with Wordsworth. Of 

 Wordsworth's calm, slumberous, Oceanic mind, Earth is 

 populous with Similitudes ; but of Byron our Mother fur- 

 nishes no Anti-type. We know of no sentient natural thing 

 upon her broad placid bosom which symbolizes him and 

 unless we adopt the old Greek Fancy, and embody the dis- 

 tortions of Human action and passion in scenes like those in 



which 



" the half horsy people, Centaurs hight, 



Fought with the bloudie Lapithies at bord," 



we are utterly at a loss to conceive how he is to be illustrated. 

 We might create some monstrous cross of the dull, filthy, 

 ravin-hearted Vulture upon the beamy, bounding Lark, and 

 thereby make a tame " similitude" of him to the apprehen- 

 sion of the shadow-substanced Citizens of " Faery" ! But to 

 the Common World Wordsworth has quietly and fitly de- 

 signated his hybrid entity, when he says : 



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