Perhaps you think this is a parody of Cowper. But I can assure you it is nothing of the kind. It was written by the poet himself; and in his abounding pages you will find hundreds of verses of this realistic and pedestrian character. But not Cowper alone, one much greater than Cowper, one who rose over and over again to the very heaven of poesy, Wordsworth himself, has likewise left hundreds, aye, thousands of verses, little better than the passage I have just read from Cowper, through the mistaken notion that kindly feeling, compassion for the poor and the patient, and sound moral sentiments, when expressed in verse, must result in poetry. There is no one here whose admiration of Wordsworth at his best can be greater[Pg 46] than mine, but, in order to show you how the feminine note in poetry, the note of sympathy with the weak, the obscure, and the unfortunate, can even in the voice of a great master of poetry, lapse into verse utterly destitute of the soul and spirit of poetry, I will ask you to allow me to read you a portion of Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman: [Pg 46] And he is lean and he is sick; His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; His legs are thin and dry. One prop he has, and only one, His Wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village Common. Oft, working by her husband’s side, Ruth does what Simon cannot do; For she, with scanty cause for pride, Is stouter of the two. And though you with your utmost skill From labour could not wean them, Alas! ’tis very little—all Which they can do between them. O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything. What more I have to say is short, And you must kindly take it: It is no tale; but, should you think, Perhaps a tale you’ll make it. Is not that sorry stuff, regarded as poetry? Wordsworth here had the assistance of the music, not only of verse, but of rhyme; and with what a result! It is the feminine note of pity in its dotage, whereby we[Pg 47] see that it is not enough to have a warm heart, to have tender feelings, to be full of sympathy for the suffering, and then to express them in verse. In the prose of conversation and of everyday life, kindly feeling is all well enough. But the Heavenly Muse will not place herself at our disposal so readily and cheaply. She is a very difficult lady, is the Heavenly Muse, not easily won, and never allowing you, if you want to remain in her good graces, to approach her, that is to say, in dressing gown and slippers. She is the noblest and most gracious lady in the world, and the best, the most
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