whole of what he will, he may;
Against him dare not any wight say nay;
To humble or afflict whome'er he will,
To gladden or to grieve, he hath like skill;
But most his might he sheds on the eve of May.

"For every true heart, gentle heart and free,
That with him is, or thinketh so to be,
Now against May shall have some stirring--whether
To joy, or be it to some mourning; never
At other time, methinks, in like degree.

"For now when they may hear the small birds' song,
And see the budding leaves the branches throng,
This unto their rememberance doth bring
All kinds of pleasure, mix'd with sorrowing,
And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long.

"And of that longing heaviness doth come,
Whence oft great sickness grows of heart and home;
Sick are they all for lack of their desire;
And thus in May their hearts are set on fire,
So that they burn forth in great martyrdom."

Here is the master of the art; and his work, most of all, therefore,
makes us doubt the practicability of the thing undertaken. He works
reverently, lovingly, surely with full apprehension of Chaucer; and yet,
at every word where he leaves Chaucer, the spirit of Chaucer leaves the
verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can
possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical
sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet,
vanishes--brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the
lightest and most timorous touch.

"For he can make of lowe hertes highe."

There is the soul of the lover's poet, of the poet himself a lover,
poured out and along in one fond verse, gratefully consecrated to the
mystery of love, which he, too, has experienced when he--the shy, the
fearful, the reserved--was yet by the touch of that all-powerful ray
which

"Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep,"

enkindled, and to his own surprise made elate to hope and to dare.

But now contract, as Wordsworth does, the dedicated verse into a half
verse, and bring together the two distinct and opposite mysteries under
one enunciation--in short, divide the one verse to two subjects--

"For he of low hearts can make high--of high
He can make low;"

and the fact vouched remains the same, the simplicity of the words is
kept, for they are the very words, and yet something is gone--and in
that something every thing! There is no longer the dwelling upon the
words, no longer th