PART II.
SONNET--RYDAL WITH WORDSWORTH.
BY THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE.
'What we beheld scarce can I now recall In one connected picture; images Hurrying so swiftly their fresh witcheries O'er the mind's mirror, that the several Seems lost, or blended in the mighty all.
Lone lakes; rills gushing through rock-rooted trees: Peaked mountains shadowing vales of peacefulness: Glens echoing to the flashing waterfall.
Then that sweet twilight isle! with friends delayed Beside a ferny bank 'neath oaks and yews; The moon between two mountain peaks embayed; Heaven and the waters dyed with sunset hues: And he, the Poet of the age and land, Discoursing as we wandered hand in hand.' The above-written sonnet is the record of a delightful day spent by my father in 1833 with Wordsworth at Rydal, to which he went from the still more beautiful shores of Ulswater, where he had been sojourning at Halsteads.

He had been one of Wordsworth's warmest admirers, when their number was small, and in 1842 he dedicated a volume of poems to him.[273] He taught me when a boy of 18 years old to admire the great bard.

I had been very enthusiastically praising Lord Byron's poetry.

My father calmly replied, 'Wordsworth is the great poet of modern times.' Much surprised, I asked, 'And what may his special merits be ?' The answer was, 'They are very various, as for instance, depth, largeness, elevation, and, what is rare in modern poetry, an _entire_ purity.

In his noble "Laodamia" they are chiefly majesty and pathos.' A few weeks afterwards I chanced to take from the library shelves a volume of Wordsworth, and it opened on 'Laodamia.' Some strong, calm hand seemed to have been laid on my head, and bound me to the spot, till I had come to the end.