There was in his being a region of tumult as well as a higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his poetry lived.

It turned aside from mere _personal_ excitements; and for that reason, doubtless, it developed more deeply those special ardours which belong at once to the higher imagination and to the moral being.

The passion which was suppressed elsewhere burned in his 'Sonnets to Liberty,' and added a deeper sadness to the 'Yew-trees of Borrowdale.' But his heart, as well as his imagination, was ardent.

When it spoke most powerfully in his poetry it spoke with a stern brevity unusual in that poetry, as in the poem 'There is a change and I am poor,' and the still more remarkable one, 'A slumber did my spirit seal,' a poem impassioned beyond the comprehension of those who fancy that Wordsworth lacks passion, merely because in him passion is neither declamatory nor, latently, sensual.

He was a man of strong affections, strong enough on one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from poetry.[270] [270] 'For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow' (Dedicatory Stanzas to 'The White Doe of Rylstone').
Referring once to two young children of his who had died about forty years previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might have been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few weeks before.
The lapse of time appeared to have left the sorrow submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness.