Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,

That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:

But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forbode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

CHAPTER VI

THE BALLAD

I knew a very wise man that believed that . . . if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun

THE ballad, unlike the song, is not lyric but narrative. It is not the expression of a poet's mood or emotion, but the story of a bold deed, a dramatic incident, a chase, or a fight. In the lyric the poet tries to express his own feelings as completely as possible; in the ballad he effaces himself in order that his characters may occupy the front of the stage.

The ballad is the short story of poetry; yet, unlike the prose short story, which of all the important literary types is the youngest, the ballad is among the most ancient. Only the folk-song is equally old. The ballad is older than the Iliad and the Odyssey; in fact, these epics had their beginnings in the ballad. The merits of a good ballad are much the same as those of the prose short story. The characters and incidents must be interesting; and the story must be vivid, spirited, full of movement and action. The brevity of the ballad, however, compels its author to select a simpler story and to tell it more directly and more rapidly than he would tell

it in prose. The limitations of poetic language, moreover, force him to suggest rather than describe in detail his characters and his background.

Ballads are of two distinct types: the popular, or folk, ballad; and the literary, or artistic, ballad. The literary ballad is the work of one author, a known individual; the popular ballad is the work of unknown authors, so numerous and so obscure that we call it the work of the people. The popular ballad is much the older of the two types; and it is often, as we shall presently see, the inspiration of the literary ballad.

In the earliest stage the popular ballad appears to have been, like the folk-song, always chanted or sung, often perhaps to the accompaniment of a dance. Traces of this connection of the ballad with music are to be seen in the choruses and refrains which some of the ballads preserve. Just how the ballads were composed, we do not know; and authorities disagree rather violently. The orthodox theory is that they were composed by a singing, dancing group. Professor Louise Pound, of the University of Nebraska, has attacked this theory in her interesting Poetic Origins and the Ballad. Her theory is that the ballads were written by individual authors, as in later poetry. However the ballads may have been originally composed, there is no doubt that they owe their chief stylistic characteristics to the way in which they have been handed down. Every one who has played the old game of Gossip knows that few persons can accurately repeat a verbal message of any length. One word or phrase replaces another until, by the time the sentence has gone round the circle, it seldom bears any resem