Great wonder to our gentle tribe it was
Whenever from our valley he withdrew;
For happier soul no living creature has
Than he had, being here the long day through.
Some thought he was a lover, and did woo:
Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong:
But Verse was what he had been wedded to;
And his own mind did like a tempest strong
Come to him thus, and drove the weary wight along.
An excitement which vents itself in bodily exercise carries its own
sedative with it. And in comparing Wordsworth's nature with that of
other poets whose career has been less placid, we may say that he was
perhaps not less excitable than they, but that it was his constant
endeavour to avoid all excitement, save of the purely poetic kind;
and that the outward circumstances of his life,--his mediocrity of
fortune, happy and early marriage, and absence of striking personal
charm,--made it easy for him to adhere to a method of life which was,
in the truest sense of the term, _stoic_--stoic alike in its
practical abstinences and in its calm and grave ideal. Purely poetic
excitement, however, is hard to maintain at a high point; and the
description quoted above of the voice which came through the stormy
night should be followed by another--by the same candid and
self-picturing hand--which represents the same habits in a quieter
light.
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