IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY 157 



"Slant watery lights, from parting clouds, apace 

 Travel along the precipice's base, 

 Cheering its naked waste of scattered stone." 



Amid these scenes one comes face to face with 



nature, 



" With the pristine earth. 

 The planet in its nakedness," 



as he cannot in a wooded country. The primal, 

 abysmal energies, grown tender and meditative, as 

 it were, thoughtful of the shepherd and his flocks, 

 and voiceful only in the leaping torrents, look out 

 upon one near at hand and pass a mute recognition. 

 Wordsworth perpetually refers to these hills and 

 dales as lonely or lonesome ; but his heart was still 

 more lonely. The outward solitude was congenial 

 to the isolation and profound privacy of his own 

 soul. "Lonesome," he says of one of these moun- 

 tain dales, but 



" Not melancholy, — no, for it is green 

 And bright and fertile, furnished in itself 

 With the few needful things that life requires. 

 In rugged arms how soft it seems to lie. 

 How tenderly protected." 



It is this tender and sheltering character of the 

 mountains of the Lake district that is one main 

 source of their charm. So rugged and lofty, and 

 yet so mellow and delicate! No shaggy, weedy 

 growths or tangles anywhere; nothing wilder than 

 the bracken, which at a distance looks as solid as 

 the grass. The turf is as fine and thick as that of 

 a lawn. The dainty-nosed lambs could not crave 

 a tenderer bite than it affords. The wool of the 



