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a lofty religious passion, a love of beauty, and a pervading plainness, sincerity, and earnestness. It has been said that Wordsworth's vocation was "to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and sincerely virtuous." But he did more than that. He was the unpretentious priest of nature, revealing the beauty of the landscape to the religious heart capable of entering into his holy of holies, about which, however, he threw no veil of mystery.

Wordsworth's popularity grew with extreme slowness, and was constantly being eclipsed by more brilliant lights; but since his death, Matthew Arnold has placed him next to Shakespeare and Milton. Says Arnold:

"Nature herself seems to take the pen out of his hand and write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power.... Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple elementary affections and duties, and because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy and renders it so as to make us share it."

Says Coleridge:

"He shows us, as no other man has done, the beauty, the glory, the holiness of nature."

A liking for Wordsworth can come only with time and repeated reading; but as the years go by and we feel the weariness of the strife and

struggle and clash of the world about us, we shall be likely more and more often to seek the calm and serenity of his simple and lofty verse, for its sustaining faith and restful quiet. The common things around us will take on a beauty we had not before suspected, duty will appear to be divine service, and in the glories of nature we shall find a heaven that lies about us even from our infancy. It is the mission of poets to clothe the world in beauty. Wordsworth has revealed to us the beauty in the common and universal, in mountain, stream, and valley, in the flower by the wayside, in the child playing in the dust of the road, in the bent form of the peasant sitting in his cottage door. And for him this beauty is transformed into the spirit of holiness, and every act of our daily lives becomes an act of worship unhardened by the worn formality of sect or creed.

SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT

SHE was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleam'd upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;

Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

"

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine ;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.

THE DAFFODILS

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed

and gazed -- but little thought

1804.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

STRANGE FITS OF PASSION HAVE I

KNOWN

STRANGE fits of passion have I known :

And I will dare to tell,

But in the Lover's ear alone,

What once to me befell.

When she I loved look'd every day

Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way,

Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fix'd my eye,

All over the wide lea;

With quick'ning pace my horse drew nigh

Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reach'd the orchard-plot;

And, as we climb'd the hill,

The sinking moon to Lucy's cot

Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature's gentlest boon!

And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopp'd:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropp'd.

1804.

WAYS

SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

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She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

1799.

I TRAVELL'D AMONG UNKNOWN MEN

I TRAVELL'D among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;

And she I cherish'd turn'd her wheel

Beside an English fire.

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