Page:Poems and extracts - Wordsworth.djvu/21

 Rh skill shown by Wordsworth in dealing with this poem, and reference to Wordsworth's own writings will attest his appreciation of Dyer's work. In Professor Knights Life of W. (Works, x. 324), Wordsworth says: 'a beautiful instance of the modifying and investive power of imagination may be seen in that noble passage in Dyer's Ruins of Rome, where the poet hears the voice of Time; and in Thomson's description of the streets of Cairo, expecting the arrival of the caravan which has perished in the storm.' The 'noble passage' from Dyer will be found below, p. 71; and the description of the Caravan (from Summer, 1. 980) is prefixed to The Waggoner.

Wordsworth thought that Dyer was undeservedly neglected. Reference may be made to the 'Bard of the Fleece' sonnet, and note; and to notes on Excursion, Book viii, and on the Duddon Sonnets.

The second extract from Waller has an interesting change that seems due to Wordsworth's dissatisfaction with the wording of the original. Waller wrote (II. 11–12, p. 73):

But Wordsworth chastens this to

Two 'Eminent Ladies' follow, Mrs. Pilkington and Miss Warton. The tone of both is elegiac and sad, but their verse is touched with real sorrow, and not merely by the 'pensiveness' of the mid-eighteenth century. An epitaph by Thomas Carew sustains the ordering of subject-matter already noticed, as do some noble elegiac lines by Sir John Beaumont.