At noon, when by the forest’s edge He lay beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; _he never felt_ _The witchery of the soft blue sky._ On a fair prospect some have looked And felt, as I have heard them say, _As if the moving time had been_ _A thing as steadfast as the scene_ _On which they gazed themselves away._ —— There was a hardness in his cheek, There was a hardness in his eye, As if the man had fixed his face, In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open sky. “The Wagoner,” is altogether unworthy of Wordsworth’s genius. It is an attempt of a poet without humor to be gay and jocular, and very dismal gayety it is. But even this poem is not to be dismissed without a reference to its one exquisite passage—that in which he describes the obligation upon him to write it: Nor is it I who play the part, But a _shy spirit_ in my heart, That comes and goes—will sometimes leap From hiding-places ten year’s deep; Or haunts me with familiar face, Returning, like a ghost unlaid, Until the debt I owe be paid. The next volume of Wordsworth was a series of sonnets, under the general title of “The River Duddon,” published in 1820, and singularly pure in style and fresh in conception. This was followed, in 1821, by “Itinerary Sonnets,” chronicling a journey to the Continent; “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” in 1822, celebrating events and characters in the history of the English church; and “Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems,” in 1834. In old age he still preserved his young love for nature, and lost none of his power of interpreting her teachings. In a poem entitled “Devotional Incitements,” written at the age of sixty-two, and distinguished for the delicate keenness of its insight, no less than its lyric rapture, it will be perceived that natural objects were still visible and audible to his heart and imagination. “Where,” he exclaims, Where will they stop, those breathing powers, The _spirits_ of the new-born flowers? They wander with the breeze, they wind Where’er the streams a passage find; Up from their native ground they rise _In mute aërial harmonies;_ From humble violet—modest thyme— Exhaled, the _essential odors_ climb, As if no space below the sky Their subtle flight could satisfy: Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride— If like ambition be _their_ guide.