He traveled more or less and knew humanity, but he did not know man.  His experience in so-called practical things was slight, his judgment not accurate.  So he lived—­quietly, modestly, dreamily.

His dust rests in a country churchyard, the grave marked by a simple slab.  A gnarled, old yew-tree stands guard above the grass-grown mound.  The nearest railroad is fifteen miles away.

As a poet, Wordsworth stands in the front rank of the second class.  Shelley, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, far surpass him; and the sweet singer of Michigan, even in uninspired moments, never “threw off” anything worse than this: 

    “And he is lean and he is sick: 
       His body, dwindled and awry,
     Rests upon ankles swollen and thick;
       His legs are thin and dry. 
     One prop he has, and only one,
       His wife, an aged woman,
     Lives with him near the waterfall,
       Upon the village common.”

Jove may nod, but when he makes a move it counts.

Yet the influence of Wordsworth upon the thought and feeling of the world has been very great.  He himself said, “The young will read my poems and be better for their truth.”  Many of his lines pass as current coin:  “The child is father of the man,” “The light that never was on land nor sea,” “Not too bright and good for human nature’s daily food,” “Thoughts that do lie too deep for tears,” “The mighty stream of tendency,” and many others.  “Plain living and high thinking” is generally given to Emerson, but he discovered it in Wordsworth, and recognizing it as his own he took it.  In a certain book of quotations, “The still sad music of humanity” is given to Shakespeare; but to equalize matters we sometimes attribute to Wordsworth “The Old Oaken Bucket.”

The men who win are those who correct an abuse.  Wordsworth’s work was a protest—­mild yet firm—­against the bombastic and artificial school of the Eighteenth Century.  Before his day the “timber” used by poets consisted of angels, devils, ghosts, gods; onslaught, tourneys, jousts, tempests of hate and torrents of wrath, always of course with a very beautiful and very susceptible young lady just around the corner.  The women in those days were always young and ever beautiful, but seldom wise and not often good.  The men were saints or else “bad,” generally bad.  Like the cats of Kilkenny, they fought on slight cause.

Our young man at Hawkshead School saw this:  it pleased him not, and he made a list of the things on which he would write poems.  This list includes:  sunset, moonrise, starlight, mist, brooks, shells, stones, butterflies, moths, swallows, linnets, thrushes, wagoners, babies, bark of trees, leaves, nests, fishes, rushes, leeches, cobwebs, clouds, deer, music, shade, swans, crags and snow.  He kept his vow and “went it one better,” for among his verses I find the following titles:  “Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree,” “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” “To a Wounded Butterfly,” “To Dora’s Portrait,” “To the Cuckoo,” “On Seeing a Needlebook Made in the Shape of a Harp,” etc.