"Sunset Wings." But now, and in this place, Surely she lean'd o'er me, her hair Nothing; the Autumn fall of leaves The whole year sets apace. Ah, sweet, even now in that bird's song Strove not her accents there Fain to be hearken'd? When those bells Strove not her steps to reach my side Down all the echoing stair?" This is almost equalled in sadness by his sonnet: "To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings. Cleaving the western sky; Wing'd, too, with wind it is, and winnowings Of strenuous flight must die. "Even thus hope's hours, in ever eddying flight, To many a refuge tend. With the first light she laugh'd, and the last light "And now the mustering rooks innumerable Together sail and soar, While for the day's death, like a tolling knell, "Is hope not plum'd, as 'twere a fiery dart? Even as thou goest, must she, too, depart, And sorrow fold such pinions on the heart Emerson in the following suggestive verses shows the power that scenery connected with his early years had of recalling the past: "Knows he who tills this lonely field, To reap its scanty corn, At midnight, and at morn? "In the long Summer afternoon, I wander'd up, I wander'd down, "The winding Concord gleam❜d below, As when my brothers, long ago, "But they are gone, the holy ones "I touch this flower of silken leaf, Its soft leaves wound me with a grief "Dirge." R. W. Emerson. And in a similar manner Longfellow writes of the seashore: "Palingene- "I lay upon the headland height and listen'd To the incessant sobbing of the sea sis." H. W. Longfellow. In caverns under me, And watch'd the waves that toss'd and fled and glisten'd, Melted away in mist. "Then suddenly as one from sleep I started, Seem'd peopled with the shapes Of those whom I had known in days departed, A moment only and the light and glory And the wild roses of the promontory Matthew Arnold gives a more modern version of the ideas Coleridge expressed in the "Ode on Dejection," which has already been quoted in this chapter. The comparison of the two passages is a very interesting one. The form in which Coleridge gives expression to his thoughts is more poetical and the treat- "Fools that these mystics are Lives in our eyes which can paint, Lives in our hearts which can feel." And we find, as we would expect in one whose poetry is full of the restlessness of modern life, numerous references to the effects of nature on the feelings: "The Youth of "Dover Beach." "Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling, Begin and cease, and then again begin, "Thyrsis." "He hearkens not! What matters it? light comer, he is flown! Next year he will return, And we shall have him in the sweet spring days, But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see.' "Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night I see her veil draw soft across the day, I feel her softly chilling breath invade The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; I feel her finger light Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, The heart less bounding at emotions new, And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again." One of the modern great poets writes in a very remarkable ode to Autumn, full of imagination and suggestion, and felicitously worded phrases, these stanzas: |