The majestic solemnity of the poem and the fine quality of its blank verse
may be felt in this selection:--
"... The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods--rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man."
_Thanatopsis_ shows the old Puritan tendency to brood on death, but the
_Inscription for Entrance to a Wood_, written in 1815 and published in the
same number of _The North American Review_ as his first great poem, takes
us where
"... the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds."
The gladness of the soft winds, the blue sky, the rivulet, the mossy rocks,
the cleft-born wild-flower, the squirrels, and the insects,--all focus our
attention on the "deep content" to be found in "the haunts of Nature," and
suggest Wordsworth's philosophy of the conscious enjoyment of the flower,
the grass, the mountains, the bird, and the stream, voicing their "thousand
blended notes.
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