The route from Rydal to Ullswater is still more thickly studded with
poetic allusions. The _Pass of Kirkstone_ is the theme of a
characteristic ode; Grisdale Tarn and Helvellyn recur again and again;
and Aira Force was one of the spots which the poet best loved to
describe, as well as to visit. It was on the shores of Further
Gowbarrow that the _Daffodils_ danced beneath the trees. These
references might be much further multiplied; and the loving
diligence of disciples has set before us "the Lake-district as
interpreted by Wordsworth" through a multitude of details. But
enough has been said to show how completely the poet had absorbed the
influences of his dwelling-place; how unique a representative he had
become of the lovely district of his birth; how he had made it
subject to him by comprehending it, and his own by love.

He visited other countries and described other scenes. Scotland,
Wales, Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, have all a place in his
works. His familiarity with other scenery helped him, doubtless, to
a better appreciation of the lake country than he could have gained
had he never left it. And, on the other hand, like Caesar in Gaul, or
Wellington in the Peninsula, it was because he had so complete a
grasp of this chosen base of operations that he was able to come, to
see, and to make his own, so swiftly and unfailingly elsewhere.
Happy are those whose deep-rooted memories cling like his about some
stable home! Whose notion of the world around them has expanded from
some prospect of happy tranquillity, instead of being drawn at
random from the confusing city's roar! Happier still if that early
picture be of one of those rare scenes which have inspired poets and
prophets with the retrospective day-dream of a patriarchal, or a
golden, age; of some plot of ground like the Ithaca of Odysseus,
[Greek: traechsi all agathae koyrotrophos], "rough, but a nurse of