Close by my side she sate, and fair in sight, Full in a line against her opposite; Where stood with eglantine the laurel twined, And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd. "On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long; (Sitting was more convenient for the song:) Nor till her lay was ended could I move, But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove. Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd, And every note I fear'd would be the last. My sight, and smell, and hearing were employ'd, And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd. And what alone did all the rest surpass, The sweet possession of the fairy place; Single, and conscious to myself alone, Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown; Pleasures which nowhere else were to be found, And all Elysium in a spot of ground." The Lake poets--Heaven bless them!--have one and all--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey--loudly and angrily denied to Dryden a poetical eye for nature, quoting in proof some inflated passage or another from his rhyming plays. Pope, too, according to them, was blind, and had never seen the moon and stars. Where, we ask, in all the poetry of the Lakes and Tarns, is there such a strain--so rich and so sustained--as that yet ringing in your ears? And "the ancient woman seated on Helmcrag" answers--"where?" True, the imagery is all in Chaucer. But had not Dryden's heart 'rejoiced in nature's joy,' not thus could he have caught the spirit of his master. Ay--the spirit; for there it is, in spite of the difference of manner--transfused without evaporation or other loss, from the 'rhime roial' in which Chaucer rejoiced, into the couplet in which Dryden, in his old age, moved like a giant refreshed with gulps of the dewy morn. Again:--