There is a comfort in the strength of love;
  ’Twill make a thing endurable, which else
  Would overset the brain, or break the heart:  450
  I have conversed with more than one who well
  Remember the old Man, and what he was
  Years after he had heard this heavy news. 
  His bodily frame had been from youth to age
  Of an unusual strength.  Among the rocks 455
  He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,
  And listened to the wind; and, as before,
  Performed all kinds of labor for his sheep,
  And for the land, his small inheritance. 
  And to that hollow dell from time to time 460
  Did he repair, to build the Fold of which
  His flock had need.  ’Tis not forgotten yet
  The pity which was then in every heart
  For the old Man—­and ’tis believed by all
  That many and many a day he thither went, 465
  And never lifted up a single stone.

  There by the Sheep-fold, sometimes was he seen
  Sitting alone, or with his faithful Dog,
  Then old, beside him, lying at his feet. 
  The length of full seven years, from time to time 570
  He at the building of this Sheep-fold wrought,
  And left the work unfinished when he died. 
  Three years, or little more, did Isabel
  Survive her Husband; at her death the estate
  Was sold, and went into a stranger’s hand. 475
  The Cottage which was named the evening star
  Is gone,—­the ploughshare has been through the ground
  On which it stood; great changes have been wrought
  In all the neighborhood:—­yet the oak is left,
  That grew beside their door; and the remains 480
  Of the unfinished Sheep-fold may be seen
  Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Ghyll.
2.  Green-head Ghyll.  Near Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home at Grasmere.

Ghyll.  A short, steep, and narrow valley with a stream running through it.

5.  The pastoral mountains.  In Professor Knight’s Life of Wordsworth are found fragments which the poet intended for Michael and which were recovered from Dorothy Wordsworth’s manuscript book.  Among these are the following lines, which as Professor Dowden suggests, are given as Wordsworth’s answer to the question, “What feeling for external nature had such a man as Michael?” The lines, which correspond to lines 62-77 of the poem, are as follows;

  “No doubt if you in terms direct had asked
  Whether beloved the mountains, true it is
  That with blunt repetition of your words
  He might have stared at you, and said that they
  Were frightful to behold, but had you then
  Discoursed with him . . . . . . . . 
  Of his own business and the goings on
  Of earth and sky, then truly had you seen
  That in his thoughts there were obscurities,
  Wonder and admiration, things that wrought
  Not less than a religion of his heart.”