Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime,
Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme.
Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure
Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!”
In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on the altar of
Scott, versifying the tale of _Il Bizarro_, which the dying Sir Walter
records in his Journal in Italy. _The Churchwarden and the Curate_ is
not inferior to the earlier peasant poems in its expression of
shrewdness, humour, and superstition. A verse of _Poets and Critics_ may
be taken as the poet’s last word on the old futile quarrel:—
“This thing, that thing is the rage,
Helter-skelter runs the age;
Minds on this round earth of ours
Vary like the leaves and flowers,
Fashion’d after certain laws;
Sing thou low or loud or sweet,
All at all points thou canst not meet,
Some will pass and some will pause.
What is true at last will tell:
Few at first will place thee well;
Some too low would have thee shine,
Some too high—no fault of thine—
Hold thine own, and work thy will!
Year will graze the heel of year,
But seldom comes the poet here,
And the Critic’s rarer still.”