We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem.
----'Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make 'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake, Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms: And such too is the grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; &c. &c.'--pp. 3, 4.
Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_ produces the simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the _dooms_ of the mighty dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the '_fair musk-rose blooms_.'
'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass; Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold, To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.'--p. 8.
Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_, a silvery pyre of clouds, _wherein_ a spirit may _win_ oblivion and melt his essence _fine_, and scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the _sun_, and cold springs had _run_ into the _grass_, and then the pulse of the _mass_ pulsed _tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of the new-born day, &c.
'Be still the unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.'--p. 17.
_Lodge, dodge_--_heaven, leaven_--_earth, birth_; such, in six words, is the sum and substance of six lines.
We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic metre.
'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite.'--p. 4.