It was on their return from this visit that Wordsworth again changed his home and went to live at Dove Cottage, near Grasmere, in the Lake District, which as a boy he had known and loved. And here, among the hills, he made his home for the rest of his life.

The days at Grasmere flowed along peacefully and almost without an event. Wordsworth published a second volume of lyrical ballads, and then went on writing and working steadily at his long poem The Prelude, in which he told the story of his early life.

Coleridge soon followed his friend, and settled at Greta Hall, Keswick, and there was much coming and going between Dove Cottage and Greta Hall. At Greta Hall there were two houses under one roof, and soon Southey took the second house and came to live beside his brother-in-law, Coleridge. And so these three poets, having thus drifted together, came to be called the Lake Poets, although Southey's poetry had little in common with that of either Wordsworth or Coleridge.

It seemed hardly to break the peaceful flow of life at Dove Cottage, when, in 1802, Wordsworth married his old playmate and schoolfellow, Mary Hutchinson. They had known each other all their lives, and marriage was a natural and lovely ending to their friendship. Of her Wordsworth wrote—

The years passed in quiet fashion, with friendly comings and goings, with journeys here and there, now to Scotland, now to the Continent.

Children were born, friends died, and once or twice the Wordsworths changed their house until they finally settled at Rydal Mount, and there the poet remained for the rest of his long life. And all the time, for more than fifty years, Wordsworth steadily wrote, but it is not too much to say that all his best work was done in the twenty years between 1798 and 1818.

Besides The Prelude, of which we have already spoken, Wordsworth's other long poems are The Excursion  and The White Doe of Rylstone. The White Doe  is a story of the days of Queen Elizabeth, of the days when England was still in the midst of religious struggle. There was a rebellion in Yorkshire, in which the old lord of Rylstone fought vainly if gallantly for the Old Religion, and he and his sons died the death of rebels. Of all the family only the gentle Emily remained "doomed to be the last leaf on a blasted tree." About the country-side she wandered alone accompanied only by a white doe. In time she, too, died, then for many years the doe was seen alone. It was often to be seen in the churchyard during service, and after service it would go away with the rest of the congregation.

The Excursion, though a long poem, is only part of what Wordsworth meant to write. He meant in three books to give his opinions on Man, Nature, and Society, and the whole was to be called The Recluse. To this great work The Prelude  was to be the introduction, hence its name. But Wordsworth never finished his great design and The Excursion  remains a fragment. Much of The Excursion  cannot be called poetry at all. Yet, as one of Wordsworth's great admirers has said: "In deserts of preaching we find delightful oases of poetry." There is little action in The Excursion, and much of it is merely dull descriptions and conversations. So I would not advise you to read it for a long time to come. But to try rather to understand some of Wordsworth's shorter poems, although at times their names may seem less inviting.

One of the most beautiful of all his poems Wordsworth calls by the cumbrous name of Intimations of Immortality from recollections of Early Childhood. This is his way of saying that when we are small we are nearer the wonder-world than when we grow up, and that when we first open our eyes on this world they have not quite forgotten the wonderful sights they saw in that eternity whence we came, for the soul has no beginning, therefore no ending. I will give you here one verse of this poem:—

Wordsworth, for the times in which he lived, traveled a good deal, and in his comings and goings he made many new friends and met all the great literary men of his day. And by slow degrees his poetry won its way, and the younger men looked up to him as to a master. The great, too, came to see in him a power. Since 1813 Southey had been Laureate, and when in 1843 he died, the honor was given to Wordsworth. He was now an old man of seventy-three, and although he still wrote a few poems, he wrote nothing as Laureate, except an ode in honor of the Prince Consort when he became Chancellor of Cambridge University. Now, as he grew old, one by one death bade his friends to leave him—

At length in 1850, at the age of eighty, he too closed his eyes, and went "From sunshine to the sunless land."

Poems of Wordsworth, selected by C. L. Thomson.

Selections, by Matthew Arnold.