Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/72

Rh Wordsworth;—our great poet, since Milton, by his performance, as Keats, I think, is our great poet by his gift and promise;—in one of his stanzas to the Cuckoo, we have:

Here the lyrical cry, though taking the simple ballad-form, is as grand as the lyrical cry coming in poetry of an ampler form, as grand as the

of Ruth; as the

of Michael. In this way, by the occurrence of this lyrical cry, the ballad-poets themselves rise sometimes, though not so often as one might perhaps have hoped, to the grand style.

But from this impressiveness of the ballad-form, when its subject-matter fills it over and over again,—is indeed, in itself, all in all,—one must not infer its effectiveness when its subject-matter is not thus overpowering, in the great body of a narrative.