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It is, perhaps, because of this that he is comparatively so roseless a poet. But what an ear he had, what a harvesting eye! One cannot read The Prelude or The Ode or Tintern Abbey without feeling that seldom can there have been a poet with a more exquisite capacity for the enjoyment of joyous things. In his profounder moments he reaches the very sources of joy as few poets have done.
It was not till after the reading was over that we found out that the poor paralytic invalid we had seen in the morning was the sister to whom "Tintern Abbey" was addressed, and her condition, now, accounted for the fervor with which the old Poet read lines which reminded him of their better days.
Time, however, compelled us to retrace our steps, and after partaking of a lunch, we mounted a horse for the first time in ten years, and started for Tintern Abbey. The distance from Chepstow to the Abbey is about five miles, and the road lies along the banks of the river. The river is walled in on either side by hills of much beauty, clothed from base to summit with the richest verdure.
We next find him in Glasgow, where he remained four years, studying the fine cathedral there during his spare time. He returned to England again, this time working his way further south; studying Canterbury, Winchester, Tintern, and other well-known structures. In 1824 he formed the design of travelling over Europe with the same object, supporting himself by his trade.
In contemplating these ruins more closely, the mind insensibly reverts to the period of feudal and regal oppression, when structures like that of Tintern Abbey necessarily became the scenes of stirring and highly-important events. How altered is the scene!
Wordsworth was not great enough to have written King Lear; and Shakespeare was not late enough to have written Tintern Abbey. Every poet lives in his own time, has a share in its scientific and philosophical advance, and his individuality is coloured by his experience.
Yet if we are bidden to place him among the poets, it is enough to open Keats at the Ode to a Nightingale, or Shelley at The Cloud, the Skylark, or the Sensitive Plant, or Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey, or Goethe at Das Göttliche, or Victor Hugo in the Contemplations.
He settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, and shortly afterwards removed to Alfoxden, in the Quantock Hills, to be near Coleridge, who was then living at Nether Stowey in the same neighbourhood. One result of the intimacy thus established was the planning of a joint work, Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and W., among other pieces, Tintern Abbey.
The two poets produced in 1798 the Lyrical Ballads, among the contents of which it is sufficient to mention Tintern Abbey and The Ancient Mariner; and they subsequently travelled together in Germany. Then Wordsworth returned to his native lakes and never left them for long, abiding first at or near Grasmere, and from 1813 at his well-known home of Rydal Mount.
He put the nod and the smile, and the sharp glance of the dark eyes together, and perceived that Lady Tintern had drawn certain conclusions. "There is some expression in her face," said the old lady, musingly, "which makes me think of Marie Stuart's farewell to France. I don't know why. I have odd fancies.
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