To the frailer spirit of
Hartley Coleridge the weight of London might seem a load impossible
to shake off. "And what hath Nature," he plaintively asked,--
And what hath Nature but the blank void sky
And the thronged river toiling to the main?
But Wordsworth saw more than this. He became, as one may say, the
poet not of London considered as London, but of London considered as
a part of the country. Like his own _Farmer of Tilsbury Vale_--
In the throng of the Town like a Stranger is he,
Like one whose own Country's far over the sea;
And Nature, while through the great city be hies,
Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprise.
Among the poems describing these sudden shocks of vision and memory
none is more exquisite than the _Reverie of Poor Susan_:
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years;
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.
'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
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