of human love and joy hangs like a mirage in the air, and only when
it seems irrecoverably distant seems also intolerably dear. But,
however this particular passage may impress the reader, it is not
hard to illustrate by abundant references the potent originality of
Wordsworth's outlook on the external world.

There was indeed no aspect of Nature, however often depicted, in
which his seeing eye could not discern some unnoted quality; there
was no mood to which nature gave birth in the mind of man from which
his meditation could not disengage some element which threw light on
our inner being. How often has the approach of evening been described!
And how mysterious is its solemnizing power! Yet it was reserved for
Wordsworth in his sonnet "Hail, Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful
hour," to draw out a characteristic of that grey waning light which
half explains to us its sombre and pervading charm. "Day's mutable
distinctions" pass away; all in the landscape that suggests our own
age or our own handiwork is gone; we look on the sight seen by our
remote ancestors, and the visible present is generalized into an
immeasureable past.

The sonnet on the Duddon beginning "What aspect bore the Man who
roved or fled First of his tribe to this dark dell," carries back
the mind along the same track, with the added thought of Nature's
permanent gentleness amid the "hideous usages" of primeval man,--
through all which the stream's voice was innocent, and its flow
benign. "A weight of awe not easy to be borne" fell on the poet, also,
as he looked on the earliest memorials which these remote ancestors
have left us. The _Sonnet on a Stone Circle_ which opens with these
words is conceived in a strain of emotion never more needed than now,--
when Abury itself owes its preservation to the munificence of a