IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY. 171 



' Slant watery lights, from parting clouds, apace 

 Travel along the precipice's base, 

 Cheering its naked waste of scatter'd 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 mountain 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 



