﻿16 



INDIANA ITNIVEESITY STUDIES 



I love thee, moiiriifnl, sober-suited Night ! 



When the faint moon, yet glimmering in her wane 

 And veiled in clouds, with pale uncertain light, 

 . Hangs o'er the waters of the restless main, 

 n deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind 



Will to the deaf cold elements complain. 

 And tell the embosomed grief, however vain, ' 



To sullen surges and the viewless wind. 

 Though no response on thy dark breast I find. 



I still enjoy thee — cheerless as thou art ; 

 For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart 



Is calm, though wretched ; hopeless, yet resigned. 

 While to the winds and waves its sorrows given. 



May reach — though lost on earth — the ear of Heaven ! 



We know that much of the descriptive poetry of the eighteenth 

 century struck a note congenial to WordsAvorth — poetry of which he 

 approved, Avhich was something like his own, or which was certainly 

 much more like his than that of any other poet of the new school. 

 This is instanced by his gift-book to Lady Mary Lowther. In 1819 

 he presented to this neighbor of his a collection of verses copied in 

 his own hand from some twenty-four different poets. I did not 

 examine this book, accessible in reprint through the courtesy of its 

 owner, Mr. Rogers Rees, till I had remarked many passages among 

 minor eighteenth century poets as having the Wordsworthian note. 

 The selections in the gift-book were chiefly from the same authors ; 

 and the editor of the little volume points out that while the collec- 

 tion is 'one more refutation of the stupid remark that Wordsworth 

 cared for no one 's poetry but his own, ' it also might be taken at a 

 time when Byron was still near the zenith of his fame, as a desire 

 to convince a young lady of taste ' that the principles of true poetry 

 were not the Byronian principles, but rather the Wordsworthian, 

 as exemplified in the practice of poets far older than Wordsworth. ' 

 It is true that the actual selections do not often strike the Words- 

 worthian note, as I have tried to define it ; but they indicate inter- 

 estingly his taste. One third of them are from Lady Winchelsea, 

 whose descriptions, then uncollected, have considerably more atmos- 

 phere, more sense of place, as in the -'Nocturnal Reverie,' than can 

 be found elsewhere in the day of Pope and Thomson, outside their 

 verse. In the preface to Miss Reynolds's collection of Lady Win- 

 chelsea 's poems, are quoted letters from Wordsworth to Alexander 

 Dyce, which show how much Wordsworth had been impressed. As 

 a matter of fact, her poems are only as dull as Wordsworth's own 

 dullest. Represented in the gift-book are, among others, Waller, 



