126 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



in such felicitous language. Every lineament of his 

 hills and dales is depicted as luminously and faithfully 

 in his verse as it is reflected on the placid surface of 

 his beloved meres, but suffused by him with an ethereal 

 glow of human sympathy. He drew from his moun- 

 tain-landscape everything that 



' Can give an inward help, can purify 

 And elevate, and harmonize and soothe.' 



It brought to him ' authentic tidings of invisible things '; 



and filled him with . _, 



1 I he sense 



Of majesty and beauty and repose, 



A blended holiness of earth and sky.' 



For his obligations to that native scenery he found 

 continual expression. 



' Ye mountains and ye lakes, 

 And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds 

 That dwell among the hills where I was born, 

 If in my youth I have been pure in heart, 

 If, mingling with the world, I am content 

 With my own modest pleasures, and have lived 

 With God and Nature communing, removed 

 From little enmities and low desires — 

 The gift is yours.' 



Not only did his observant eye catch each variety 

 of form, each passing tint of colour on his hills and 

 valleys, he felt, as no poet before his time had done, 

 the might and majesty of the forces by which, in the 

 mountain-world, we are shown how the surface of the 

 world is continually modified. 



' To him was given 

 Full many a glimpse of Nature's processes 

 Upon the exalted hills.' 



