That comes and goes—will sometimes leap
From hiding-places ten year’s deep;
Or haunts me with familiar face,
Returning, like a ghost unlaid,
Until the debt I owe be paid.
The next volume of Wordsworth was a series of sonnets, under the general title of “The River Duddon,” published in 1820, and singularly pure in style and fresh in conception. This was followed, in 1821, by “Itinerary Sonnets,” chronicling a journey to the Continent; “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” in 1822, celebrating events and characters in the history of the English church; and “Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems,” in 1834. In old age he still preserved his young love for nature, and lost none of his power of interpreting her teachings. In a poem entitled “Devotional Incitements,” written at the age of sixty-two, and distinguished for the delicate keenness of its insight, no less than its lyric rapture, it will be perceived that natural objects were still visible and audible to his heart and imagination. “Where,” he exclaims,
Where will they stop, those breathing powers,
The spirits of the new-born flowers?
They wander with the breeze, they wind
Where’er the streams a passage find;