PRELUDE, THE (quotation from) 10, 12, 21, 23, 185, 198, 208 RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE RETIREMENT SCORN NOT THE SONNET STEPPING WESTWARD THOUGHT OF A Briton on thE SUBJUGATION OF SWITZER LAND To H. C. TO THE CUCKOO TO THE DAISY TO THE RIVER DUDDON TO THE SKYLARK TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE WARNING, THE (quotation from) WE ARE SEVEN 252 56 WORDSWORTH CHAPTER I THE EARLY YEARS T "The poet, to whose mighty heart Not his own course, but that of man. HESE lines from a thoughtful and finished poem by Matthew Arnold, introduce by contrast an extended and very beautiful statement of what the ideal poet's life should be; a life full of high and serene contemplation, of deep and placid sympathies with nature and with man, but lived in calm isolation, apart from the loud noises of the 1 world. The scenery of the poem is all drawn from the Lake Country familiar to all lovers of English poetry as the home of William Wordsworth; and it seems impossible to doubt that his picture of the ideal poet's life was suggested to Arnold by thought of the great man whose long career was then drawing toward its tranquil close. Certainly no life so eminent as that of Wordsworth was ever more nobly simple, more lacking in picturesque or romantic details. After a comparatively brief period of enthusiasm and independence, his remaining story presents hardly any incidents more noteworthy than the removal from one end of a mountain lake to the other. He had few intimate friends, and cared little for chance acquaintance. To his plain country neighbors he seemed a respected, rather reserved stamp-collector who was said to write verses. For the last twenty years of his life he was the most venerable figure in England, recognized as the first poet of his generation, but living apart in thoughtful seclusion among the hills of the Lake Country, with the light of his fame like a pure cold halo about him. Evidently the biographer must concern himself chiefly with the inner life of Wordsworth, the de |