----“smooth domestic life,
Affectionate, without disquietude,
Her talk, her business pleased me, and no less
Her clear, though shallow stream of piety,
That ran on Sabbath days a fresher course;
With thoughts unfelt till now, I saw her read
Her Bible on hot Sunday afternoons,
And loved the book, when she had dropped asleep,
And made of it a pillow for her head.”
It would be impossible to follow the poet in all those minute relations
of incident and feeling which run throughout the “Prelude,” during this
first vacation amongst the hills.--One anecdote, however, must be told,
for it is an inlet into the poet’s nature, and shewed that he had a
heart, and deep sympathies also for suffering and poverty, let the
critics say what they will.
During the autumn, while Wordsworth was wandering amidst the hills round
Windermere,--with no living thing in sight, and breathless silence over
all,--he was suddenly startled by the appearance of an uncouth shape, in
a turning of the road. At first he was a little timid, and perhaps
alarmed, for it was close to him, and he knew not what to make of it.
The dusky light of the evening increased the mystery, and Wordsworth
retreated noiselessly under the shadow of a thick hawthorn, that he
might watch it unobserved. It turned out to be a poor wanderer, of tall
stature,
“A span above man’s common measure, tall,
Stiff, lank, and upright; a more meagre man
Was never seen before, by day or night.
Long were his arms, pallid his hands; his mouth
Looked ghastly in the moonlight; from behind
A mile-stone propped him up.”