Wheat and the Poets. 



155 



summer, middle age the later summer, and age is the 

 autumn and near winter of human life. Only Words- 

 worth, with his exceeding reserve and keenness to 

 recover interest by a pathetic colouring, has made old 

 age poetical in the ordinary 

 sense ; but even he generally 

 effects this by subtle 

 presentations of con- 

 trast — theyoungchild 

 by the side of age — 

 his great and uncon- 

 scious art lies in subtle 

 contrast, and making 

 the one tell by almost in- 

 sensible touches on the 

 other, and thus interpret 

 and enforce the treatment 

 of both. 



Wheat is the greatest 

 favourite with the poets, 

 though why it should be so 

 is not easy to discover, un- 

 less, indeed, it may be that 

 wheat is the tallest, most powerful, 

 and uniformly regular in aspect, 

 looked at from the level. But oats 

 and barley, particularly long-awned 

 barley, have their points of supe- 

 riority too, viewed merely as 

 picturesque and affecting. The 

 words corn and cornfields, it is true, would perhaps be 

 found to occupy even a greater space in concordances 

 than wheat and wheat-fields, not to speak of barley and 

 barley-fields ; but in a great many instances " corn " is 



CULTIVATED OAT. 



