imself and his work, from 1797 to 1799; (4) a long
period of retirement in the northern lake region, where he was born, and
where for a full half century he lived so close to nature that her
influence is reflected in all his poetry. When one has outlined these four
periods he has told almost all that can be told of a life which is marked,
not by events, but largely by spiritual experiences.

Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland, where the Derwent,

Fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams.

It is almost a shock to one who knows Wordsworth only by his calm and noble
poetry to read that he was of a moody and violent temper, and that his
mother despaired of him alone among her five children. She died when he was
but eight years old, but not till she had exerted an influence which lasted
all his life, so that he could remember her as "the heart of all our
learnings and our loves." The father died some six years later, and the
orphan was taken in charge by relatives, who sent him to school at
Hawkshead, in the beautiful lake region. Here, apparently, the unroofed
school of nature attracted him more than the discipline of the classics,
and he learned more eagerly from the flowers and hills and stars than from
his books; but one must read Wordsworth's own record, in _The Prelude_, to
appreciate this. Three things in this poem must impress even the casual
reader: first, Wordsworth loves to be alone, and is never lonely, with
nature; second, like every other child who spends much time alone in the
woods and fields, he feels the presence of some living spirit, real though
unseen, and companionable though silent; third, his impressions are exactly
like our own, and delightfully familiar. When he tells of the long summer
day spent in swimming, basking in the sun, and questing over the hills; or
of the winter night when, on his skates, he chased the reflection of a star
in the black ice; or of his exploring the lake in a boat, and getting
suddenly frightened when the world grew big and strange,--in all this he is
simply recalling a multitude of our own vague, happy memories of childhood.
He goes out into the woods at night to tend his woodcock snares; he runs
across another boy's snares, follows them, finds a woodcock caught, takes
it, hurrie