BIRDS AND POETS. 
177 
numbered witli " The Propliets Old." Thougli tliy head 
silvered. Time clotlies 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 Eobin, 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 crovs^ned 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 Yulture 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 : 
12 
