Full many a time, upon a stormy night, His voice came to us from the neighbouring height: Oft did we see him driving full in view At mid-day when the sun was shining bright; What ill was on him, what he had to do, A mighty wonder bred among our quiet crew.
Ah! Piteous sight it was to see this Man When he came back to us, a withered flower,-- Or like a sinful creature, pale and wan. Down would he sit; and without strength or power Look at the common grass from hour to hour: And oftentimes, how long I fear to say, Where apple-trees in blossom made a bower, Retired in that sunshiny shade he lay; And, like a naked Indian, slept himself away. 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.
"Nine-tenths of my verses," says the poet in 1843, "have been murmured out in the open air. One day a stranger, having walked round the garden and grounds of Rydal Mount, asked of one of the female servants, who happened to be at the door, permission to see her master's study. 'This,' said she, leading him forward, 'is my master's library, where he keeps his books, but his study is out of doors.' After a long absence from home, it has more than once happened that some one of my cottage neighbours (not of the double-coach-house cottages) has said, 'Well, there he is! We are glad to hear him _booing_ about again.'"
