solemnity.

Religious sentiment, consecrating the natural affections and rights of
the human heart, above all that pitiful care and awe for the perishing
human clay of which relic-worship is but the corruption, has always had
much to do with localities, with the thoughts which attach themselves
to definite scenes and places. And what is true of it everywhere is
truest in those secluded valleys, where one generation after another
maintains the same abiding-place; and [101] it was on this side that
Wordsworth apprehended religion most strongly. Having so much to do
with the recognition of local sanctities, the habit of connecting the
very trees and stones of a particular spot of earth with the great
events of life, till the low walls, the green mounds, the
half-obliterated epitaphs, seemed full of oracular voices, even the
religion of those people of the dales appeared but as another link
between them and the solemn imageries of the natural world. And,
again, this too tranquillized them, by bringing them under the rule of
traditional, narrowly localized observances. "Grave livers," they
seemed to him under this aspect, of stately speech, and something of
that natural dignity of manners which underlies the highest courtesy.

And, seeing man thus as a part of nature, elevated and solemnized in
proportion as his daily life and occupations brought him into
companionship with permanent natural objects, he was able to appreciate
passion in the lowly. He chooses to depict people from humble life,
because, being nearer to nature than others, they are on the whole more
impassioned, certainly [102] more direct in their expression of
passion, than other men; it is for this direct expression of passion
that he values their humble words. In much that he said in exaltation
of rural life he was but pleading indirectly for that sincerity, that
perfect fidelity to one's own inward presentations, to the precise
features of the picture within, without which any profound poetry is
impossible. It was not for their tameness, but for their impassioned
sincerity, that he chose incidents and situations from common life,
"related in a selection of language really used by men." He constantly
endeavours to bring his language nearer to the real language of men;
but it is to the real language of men, not on the dead level of their
ordinary intercourse, but in certain select moments of vivid sensation,
when this language is winnowed and ennob