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IXDIAXA UNIVERSITY STUDIES 



A faint erroneons ray. 

 Glanced from the iniiterfect snrfaces of things, 

 Fking lialf an image on tlie straining eye. 

 While wavering woods, and villages, and streams, 

 And rocks and monntain tops, that long retain 

 The ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene, 

 Uncertain if beheld. The sl^y is overcast 

 With a continnons clond of texture close. 

 Heavy and wan, all wliitened by tlie Moon, 

 AYhich throngli that veil is indistinctly seen, 

 A dull, contracted circle, yielding light 

 So feebly spread, tliat not a shadow falls. 

 Chequering the ground — from roek. plant, tice. or tower. 

 At lengtli a pleasant, instantaneous gleam 

 Startles the pensive traveler while he treads 

 His lonesome path, with unobserving eye 

 Bent earthwards ; he looks up — the clouds are split 

 Asunder — and above his head he sees 

 The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. 



This, for example, is a combination, for the reader's discernment, 

 of seven lines from Thomson 's ' Sunnner, ' prefixed to thirteen lines 

 from that poem in the 'Lyrical Ballads,' called 'A Night Piece.' 

 It is a clever ear that can detect any change of tone. Of course 

 Thomson much more resembles Cow^per than Words^vorth. Certain 

 descriptions in 'Winter' of a robin pecking at the "window, of a dog 

 waking up at a "wasp-bite, of a frozen river, are much like pictures 

 in 'The Task.' But I shall show^ in a moment that it is more diffi- 

 cult to distinguish AVordsworth's style from Cowper's than from 

 Thomson 's. 



From Beattie's 'Retirement' is (, noted in the gift-book a stanza 

 that is in exact accord with many a passage in 'The Excursion;^ 

 and again, WordsAvorth chose to illustrate the spirit of Solitude 

 from Dr. Akenside's 'Pleasures of the Imagination,' where the 

 poet's perception of Divinity in nature is something like that in 

 the well-knoAvn passage called 'Influence of Natural Objects.' Here 

 is the passage from the gift-book: 



Oh ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook 

 The rocky pavement and the mossy falls 

 Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream ; 

 How gladly I recall your well-known seats 

 Beloved of old. and that delightful time 

 When, all alone, for many a summer's day. 

 I wandered through your calm recesses, led 

 In silence by some powerful hand, unseen. 

 Nor will I e'er forget you ; nor shall e'er 

 The graver tasks of manhood, or the advice 



