That Life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our long years in me doth breed,
Perpetual benediction: not indeed

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For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:-
Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature,
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised;

But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

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We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquisac one ht

To live ben your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks w ich des

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their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Returning now to "The Retreate", ARCHBISHOP TRENCH carlier, in his "Household Book of English Poetry" (1868) and DR. GEORGE MACDONALD next in "Antiphon" (1871), traced its influence on WORDSWORTH. First the Archbishop: "This poem, apart from its proper beauty, which is very considerable, has a deeper interest, as containing in the germ Wordsworth's still higher strain, namely his Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. I do not mean that Wordsworth had ever seen this poem when he wrote his. The coincidences are SO remarkable that it is certainly difficult to esteem them accidental; but Wordsworth was so little a reader of anything out of the way, and at the time. when his Ode was composed, the Silex Scintillans was altogether out of the way, a book of such excessive rarity, that an explanation of the points of contact between the poems must be

sought for elsewhere." His Grace subsequently ascertained and was good enough to inform me of it, that WORDSWORTH had a copy of "Silex Scintillans" and that it bore many marks of earnest use. The great Poet's Sale-Catalogue establishes the fact for there Silox Scintillans is duly entered. Next DR. GEORGE MACDONALD, in perfect independence of the Archbishop, as not being aware of his annotation: "Let every one who is well-acquainted with Wordsworth's grand ode -that on the Intimations of Immortality-turn his mind to a comparison between that and this: he will find the resemblance remarkable. Whether The Retreat suggested the form of the Ode is not of much consequence, for the Ode is the out-come at once and essence of all Wordsworth's theories; and whatever he may have drawn from The Retreat is glorified in the Ode. Still it is interesting to compare them. Vaughan believes with Wordsworth and some other great men, that this is not our first stage of existence; that we are haunted by dim memories of a former state. This belief is not necessary, however, to sympathy with the poem, for whether the present be our first life or no, we have come from God, and bring from

1 pp. 406-7.