This is from the little poem to “Louisa.” It is curious that Wordsworth, in the octavo edition of his works, published when he was seventy-seven years old, omits this stanza. It was so refined that he had probably lost the power to perceive its delicate beauty, and dismissed it as meaningless.
In describing nature as connected with, and embodied in, human thoughts and sentiments, Wordsworth’s descriptive power rises with the complexity of the theme. Thus, in the poem of Ruth, we have an example of the perversion of her energizing power:
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a youth to whom was given
So much of earth—so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound,