and tractable, though wild," with its homely simile for childhood--
its own existence sufficient to fill it with gladness:

As a faggot sparkles on the hearth
Not less if unattended and alone
Than when both young and old sit gathered round
And take delight in its activity.

The next notice of this beloved child is in the sonnet, "Surprised
by joy, impatient as the wind," written when she had already been
removed from his side. She died in 1812, and was closely followed by
her brother Thomas. Wordsworth's grief for these children was
profound, violent, and lasting, to an extent which those who imagine
him as not only calm but passionless might have some difficulty in
believing. "Referring once," says his friend Mr. Aubrey de Vere,
"to two young children of his who had died about _forty years_
previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an
exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might
have been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few
weeks before. The lapse of time seemed to have left the sorrow
submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness. Yet I
afterwards heard that at the time of the illness, at least in the
case of one of the two children, it was impossible to rouse his
attention to the danger. He chanced to be then under the immediate
spell of one of those fits of poetic inspiration which descended on
him like a cloud. Till the cloud had drifted, he could see nothing
beyond."

This anecdote illustrates the fact, which to those who knew
Wordsworth well was sufficiently obvious, that the characteristic