"I love fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness.
And because I have found benevolence and quietness growing within me as
that fondness has increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of
implanting it in others, and to destroy the bad passions not by
combating them but by keeping them in inaction." Under the calming and
clarifying influence of the stronger Northern spirit the fever of his
revolutionary dreams abated, he found happiness in the conscious
exercise of his poetic powers, and for one year in his troubled
existence his genius showed itself in all its splendor.

The immediate poetic result of their friendship was the "Lyrical
Ballads," published by Cottle in September, 1798. The origin of the work
has been described both by Wordsworth (in a prefatory note to "We Are
Seven") and by Coleridge (in the _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xiv.). At
first, they were to collaborate in writing a poem the proceeds of which
should pay the expenses of a little tour they were making when the plan
was thought of, in November, 1797; and thus "The Ancient Mariner" was
begun. As this poem grew under Coleridge's "shaping-spirit of
imagination" Wordsworth saw that he "could only be a clog" upon its
progress, and it was resigned to Coleridge. The plan was then enlarged
to include a volume illustrating "two cardinal points of poetry, the
power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to
the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by
the modifying colours of imagination." Wordsworth was to illustrate the
former principle, Coleridge the latter, and the proceeds of the book
were to go toward the expenses of a trip to Germany, decided on in the
spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume was Wordsworth's, and was
typically Wordsworthian, ranging from such simple ballads of humble
incident as "Goody Blake" and "The Idiot Boy" to the magnificent blank
verse of "Tintern Abbey"; Coleridge's share consisted of a brief poem