Wordsworth's poems:--
----"our trees so hack'd above the ground,
That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries
crown'd,
Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand,
_As for revenge to Heaven each held a wither'd hand._" [1]
That is very fine.
[Footnote 1: Polyol VII.
"He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent; one
who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable
of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass
upon him." 'Like me that list,' he says,
----'my honest rhymes
Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.'
And though he is not a poet _virum volitarc per ora_, nor one of those
whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted
admirers,--yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its
subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to
ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will
think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for
the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a
feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their
labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing
himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity.
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