d_ by Pain and her sad family,
Nature's God had surely given that spot to man, though its _woods_ were
_undiscovered_.
Let us proceed,
'But doubly pitying Nature loves to show'r
Soft on his _wounded heart_ her healing pow'r,
Who _plods_ o'er hills and vales his road _forlorn_,
Wooing her varying charms from eve to morn.
_No sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_,
_Blows_ not a Zephyr but it _whispers joy_;
For him _lost_ flowers their _idle_ sweets _exhale_;
He _tastes_ the meanest _note_ that swells the gale;
For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,
And _peeps_ the far-off _spire_, his evening bourn!
Dear is the forest _frowning_ o'er his head,
And dear the green-sward to his _velvet tread_;
Moves there a _cloud_ o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upwards he looks--and calls it luxury;
Kind Nature's _charities_ his steps attend,
In every babbling brook he finds a friend.'
Here we find that _doubly_ pitying Nature is very kind to the traveller,
but that this traveller has a _wounded heart_ and _plods_ his road
_forlorn_. In the next line but one we discover that--
'No _sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_;
Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers _joy_.'
The flowers, though they have lost themselves, or are lost, exhale their
idle sweets for him; the _spire peeps_ for him; sod-seats, forests,
clouds, nature's charities, and babbling brooks, all are to him luxury
and friendship. He is the happiest of mortals, and plods, is forlorn,
and has a wounded heart. How often shall we in vain advise those, who
are so delighted with their own thoughts that they cannot forbear from
putting them into rhyme, to examine those thoughts till they themselves
understand them? No man will ever be a poet, till his mind be
sufficiently powerful to sustain this labour.--_The Monthly Review_.
_An Evening Walk_. An Epistle; in Verse. Addressed to a Young Lady, from
the Lakes of the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B.A. of St. John's,
Cambridge. 4to. pp. 27. 2s. Johnson. 1793.
In this Epistle, the subject and the manner of treating it vary but
little from the former poem. We will quote four lines from a passage
which the author very sorrowfully apologizes for having omitted:
'Return delights! with whom my road beg_un_,
When _Life-rear'd_ laughing _up her_ morning _sun_;
When Transport kiss'd away my April tear,
"Rocking as in a dream the tedious year."
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