Thus was man
Ennobled outwardly before my sight;
And thus my heart was early introduced
To an unconscious love and reverence
Of human nature; hence the human form
To me became an index of delight,
Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.
"This sanctity of Nature given to man,"--this interfusion of human
interest with the sublimity of moor and hill,--formed a typical
introduction to the manner in which Wordsworth regarded mankind to
the end,--depicting him as set, as it were, amid impersonal
influences, which make his passion and struggle but a little thing;
as when painters give but a strip of their canvas to the fields and
cities of men, and overhang the narrowed landscape with the space
and serenity of heaven.
To this distant perception of man--of man "purified, removed, and to
a distance that was fit"--was added, in his first summer vacation, a
somewhat closer interest in the small joys and sorrows of the
villagers of Hawkshead,--a new sympathy for the old Dame in whose
house the poet still lodged, for "the quiet woodman in the woods,"
and even for the "frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland," with
whom he now delighted to spend an occasional evening in dancing and
country mirth.
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