The poems which succeed are distinguished from those of my Father's Stowey life by a less buoyant spirit. Poetic fire they have, but not the clear bright mounting flame of his earlier poetry. Their meditative vein is graver, and they seem tinged with the sombre hues of middle age; though some of them were written before the Author was thirty-five years old. A characteristic poem of this period is _Dejection, an Ode_: composed at Keswick, April 4, 1802. _Wallenstein_ had been written in London in 1800. _The Three Graves_ was composed in 1805 or 6;[63] the second part of _Christabel_ soon after the Author's settling in the Lake country (in 1801);[64] _Youth and Age_ not long before he quitted it as a residence for ever (in 1810).[65] _Recollections of Love_ must have been written on his return to Keswick from Malta in 1806: _The Happy Husband_ at that time, or earlier. The small fragment called _The Knight's Tomb_ probably belongs to the North. _The Devil's Thoughts_ appeared in _The Morning Post_ in 1800.[66] This production certainly has in it more of youthful sprightliness than of middle-aged soberness; still it is less fantastic and has more of world-wisdom in its satire than the _War Eclogue_ of 1796. The _Complaint and Reply_ first appeared in 1802. The _Ode to Tranquillity_ was published in _The Friend_, March, 1809.
The poems of his after years, even when sad, are calmer in their melancholy than those produced while he was ceasing to be young. We are less heavy-hearted when youth is out of sight than when it is taking its leave. _Duty surviving Self-Love_, _The Pang more sharp than all_, _Love's Apparition and Evanishment_, _The Blossoming of the solitary Date tree_, and some other poems of his latter years, have this character of resigned and subdued sadness. _Work without Hope_ was written at fifty-six. The _Visionary Hope_ and _The Pains of Sleep_,[67] which express more agitation and severer suffering, are of earlier date. These and all in the _Sibylline Leaves_ were written before the end of 1817, when he had completed his forty-fifth year. The productions of the fourth epoch, looked at as works of imagination, are tender, graceful, exquisitely finished, but less bold and animated than those of his earlier day. This may be said of _Zapolya_, _Alice du Clos_,[68] _The Garden of Boccaccio_,[69] _The Two Founts_, _Lines suggested by the last Words of Berengarius_, _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, and other poems written, I believe, when the poet was past forty, the four last-named after he was fifty years old. _Love, Hope, and Patience in Education_ was, I think, one of his latest poetical efforts, if not the very last.