any other passages in
Wordsworth's poetry, is due to his recognition of this mysterious
efficacy of our childish instincts. He gives emphasis to one of the most
striking facts of our spiritual experience, which had passed with little
notice from professed psychologists. He feels what they afterwards tried
to explain.

The full meaning of the doctrine comes out as we study Wordsworth more
thoroughly. Other poets--almost all poets--have dwelt fondly upon
recollections of childhood. But not feeling so strongly, and therefore
not expressing so forcibly, the peculiar character of the emotion, they
have not derived the same lessons from their observation. The Epicurean
poets are content with Herrick's simple moral--

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may--

and with his simple explanation--

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer.

Others more thoughtful look back upon the early days with the passionate
regret of Byron's verses:

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

Such painful longings for the 'tender grace of a day that is dead' are
spontaneous and natural. Every healthy mind feels the pang in proportion
to the strength of its affections. But it is also true that the regret
resembles too often the maudlin meditation of a fast young man over his
morning's soda-water. It implies, that is, a non-recognition of the
higher uses to which the fading memories may still be put. A different
tone breathes in Shelley's pathetic but rather hectic moralisings, and
his lamentations over the departure of the 'spirit of delight.' Nowhere
has it found more exquisite expression than in the marvellous 'Ode to
the West Wind.' These magical verses--his best, as it seems to
me--describe the reflection of the poet's own mind in the strange stir
and commotion of a dying winter's day. They represent, we may say, the
fitful melancholy which oppresses a noble spirit when it has recognised
the difficulty of forcing facts into conformity with the ideal. He still
clings to the hope that his 'dead thoughts' may be driven over the
universe,

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth.

But he bows before the inexorable fate which has cramped his energies:

A he