But when the light winds lie at rest,
And on the glassy, heaving sea,
The black duck, with her glossy breast,
Sits swinging silently,—
How beautiful! no ripples break the reach,
And silvery waves go noiseless up the beach.
There are not many verses equal to that in the "Buccaneer"—not many figures so suggestive as that of the silent rocking of the black duck on the gentle cradle of an unvexed sea.
The "Changes of Home" is, as the subject demands, meditative and pathetic. The poet revisits the scene of boyhood, and is smitten to his poet's soul by the revolution and decay and innovation it reveals; or rather, by the revolution and decay he discovers in himself while outward aspects, so far as Nature is concerned, continue much as they were. He meets one, who, like the pastor in the "Excursion," informs him of the chronicles of the village. There are many touching passages—as this:
To pass the doors where I had welcomed been.
And none but unknown voices hear within;
Strange, wondering faces at those windows see,
Once lightly tapped, and then a nod for me!—
To walk full cities, and yet feel alone—
From day to day to listen to the moan
Of mourning trees—'twas sadder here unknown.
A tale of love and bereavement and madness is the mainstay of this poem, and is very feelingly narrated—"soon 'tis told—simple though sad; no mystery to unfold, save that one great, dread mystery, the mind." Sentiment and diction are both pleasing in these verses.
The poem entitled "Factitious Life" is founded on Wordsworth's protest, that the world is too much with us, our hearts given away, our powers wasted. But there is more life and heat and meaning in that memorable sonnet of Rydal's bard, than in this protracted effort of didactic philosophy. The satire is so-so; the humour not very genial; the poetry perilously akin to prose, albeit so anti-prosaic and anti-utilitarian in its purpose. That purpose is indeed high and praiseworthy; nor do we object, as the author seems to have apprehended, to his commencing in a comparatively trifling vein, and falling gradually into the serious, and at last resting "in that which should be the home of all our thoughts, the religious." The protest is against reducing man's soul to the limits of the conventional, cramping his mind by rules of etiquette, substituting respectability for virtue—"to keep in with the world your only end, and with the world to censure or defend"—it is against a modish existence, where angularity alone is sin, where manners rather than heart are the subject of education, where the simple way of right is lost, and curious expedients substituted for truth. And the aspiration is for a return of the fresh, inartificial time, in the now dim past, when
Free and ever varying played the heart;
Great Nature schooled it; life was not an art:
And as the bosom heaved, so wrought the mind;
The thought put forth in act; and, unconfined.
The whole man lived his feelings.
