here, as we saw that he does elsewhere, the whole month, as
love's own segment of the zodiacal circle. The time of the poem itself
is accordingly 'the thridde night of May.' Wordsworth has rendered,

"But most his might he sheds _on the eve of May._"

Why so? Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt
than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary,
and why with a word lose, or obscure, or hazard the appropriation of the
month entire, so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is
Eve here taken strictly--the night before May-day, like the _Pervigilium
Veneris_? Or loosely, on the verge of May, answerably to 'ayenes May'
afterwards? To the former sense, we might be inclined to propose on the
contrary part,

"But sheds his might most on the morrow of May,"

_i.e._ in prose on May-day morning, consonantly to all the testimonies.

Chaucer says that the coming-on of the love-month produces in the heart
of the lover

"A maner ease medled with grevaunce."

That is to say, _a kind of_ joy or pleasure, (Fr. _aise_,) mixed with
sadness. He insists, by this expression, upon the strangeness of the
kind, peculiar to the willing sufferers under this unique passion,
"love's pleasing smart." Did Wordsworth, by intention or
misapprehension, leave out this turn of expression, by which, in an age
less forward than ours in sentimental researches, Chaucer drew notice to
the contradictory nature of the internal state which he described? As
if Chaucer had said, "_al_ maner ese," Wordsworth says, "all kinds of
pleasure mixed with sorrowing."

In the next line he adds to the intuitions of his master, one of his own
profound intuitions, if we construe aright--

"And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long."

That ever long! The sweetest of thoughts are never satisfied with their
own deliciousness. Earthly delight, or heavenly delight upon earth,
penetrating the soul, stirs in it the perception of its native
illimitable capacity for delight. Bliss, which should wholly possess the
blest being, plays traitor to itself, turns into a sort of divine
dissatisfaction, and brings forth from its teeming and infinite bosom a
brood of winged wishes, bright with hues which memory has bestowed, and
restless with innate aspirations. Such is our commentary on the truly
Wordsworthian line, but it is not a line answerable to Chaucer's--

"And lusty thoughtes full of gret longinge."

Is