"The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours, and their forms, were then to me An appetite, a _feeling_, and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm." But here the resemblance ends. With Wordsworth the mood passed, and he learned "To look on Nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power To chasten and subdue." He would not question Nature in search of new and untainted pleasure, but rests in her as inclusive of humanity. The secret of Wordsworth is acquiescence; "the still, sad music of humanity" is the key-note of his ethic. Byron, on the other hand, is in revolt. He has the ardour of a pervert, the rancorous scorn of a deserter. The "hum of human cities" is a "torture." He is "a link reluctant in a fleshly chain." To him Nature and Humanity are antagonists, and he cleaves to the one, yea, he would take her by violence, to mark his alienation and severance from the other.] [jg] _Of peopled cities_----[MS.] [jh] {262} ----_but to be_ _A link reluctant in a living chain_ _Classing with creatures_----[MS.] [ji] _And with the air_----[MS.] [jj] _To sink and suffer_----[MS.] [jk] ----_which partly round us cling._--[MS.] [321] [Compare Horace, _Odes_, iii. 2. 23, 24-- "Et udam Spernit humum fugiente pennâ."] [jl] {263} ----_in this degrading form._--[MS.] [jm] ----_the Spirit in each spot._--[MS.] [322][The "bodiless thought" is the object, not the subject, of his celestial vision. "Even now," as through a glass darkly, and with eyes "Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears Gave shape, hue, distance to the inward dream," his soul "had sight" of the spirit, the informing idea, the essence of each passing scene; but, hereafter, his bodiless spirit would, as it were, encounter the place-spirits face to face. It is to be noted that warmth of feeling, not clearness or fulness of perception, attends this spiritual recognition.] [jn] [_Is not_] _the universe a breathing part?_--[MS.] [jo] {264} _And gaze upon the ground with sordid thoughts and slow._--[MS.] [323] [Compare Coleridge's _Dejection. An Ode_, iv. 4-9-- "And would we aught behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd; Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth."] [jp] _But this is not a time--I must return._--[MS.] [jq] _Here the reflecting Sophist_----.--[MS.]