Like angels in yon snowy land;
No! by the stars that, pure and pale,
Look down each night on Rydal-vale.
J. Truman.
Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount. These verses were published in Macmillan’s, 1879.
“Nor something fairer far.” In Sir F. Younghusband’s Kashmir (1911) there is another suggestion, supplementary to this: “There came upon me this thought, which doubtless has occurred to many another besides myself—why the scene should so influence me and yet make no impression on the men about me. Here were men with far keener eyesight than my own, and around me were animals with eyesight keener still.... Clearly it is not the eye, but the soul that sees. But then comes the still further reflection: what may there not be staring me straight in the face which I am as blind to as the Kashmir stags are to the beauties amidst which they spend their entire lives? The whole panorama may be vibrating with beauties man has not yet the soul to see. Some already living, no doubt, see beauties that we ordinary men cannot appreciate. It is only a century ago that mountains were looked upon as hideous. And in the long centuries to come may we not develop a soul for beauties unthought of now? Undoubtedly we must. And often in reverie on the mountains I have tried to imagine what still further loveliness they may yet possess for men.”
He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind, fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth best avert the dolours of death.
Bacon.