In The Influence of Natural Objects he described how a life spent with Nature had early purified him from passion:
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made
A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods
At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
When by the margin of the trembling lake
Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine.
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,