ese words the English poet occurred to me, who also thus complains:

From heaven if this belief be sent,
If such be nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man.

"Yet, how happy the poets are," said she. "Their words call the
deepest feelings into existence in thousands of mute souls, and how
often their songs have become a confession of the sweetest secrets!
Their heart beats in the breasts of the poor and the rich. The happy
sing with them, and the sad weep with them. But I cannot feel any poet
so completely my own as Wordsworth. I know many of my friends do not
like him. They say he is not a poet. But that is exactly why I like
him; he avoids all the hackneyed poetical catch-words, all
exaggeration, and everything comprehended in Pegasus-flights. He is
true--and does not everything lie in this one word? He opens our eyes
to the beauty which lies under our feet like the daisy in the meadow.
He calls everything by its true name. He never intends to startle,
deceive, or dazzle any one. He seeks no admiration for himself. He
only shows mankind how beautiful everything is which man's hand has not
yet spoiled or broken. Is not a dew-drop on a blade of grass more
beautiful than a pearl set in gold? Is not a living spring, which
gushes up before us, we know not whence, more beautiful than all the
fountains of Versailles? Is not his Highland Girl a lovelier and truer
expression of real beauty than Goethe's Helena, or Byron's Haidee? And
then the plainness of his language, and the purity of his thoughts! Is
it not a pity that we have never had such a poet? Schiller could have
been our Wordsworth, had he had more faith in himself than in the old
Greeks and Romans. Our Ruckert would come the nearest to him, had he
not also sought consolation and home under Eastern roses, away from his
poor Fatherland. Few poets have the courage to be just what they are.
Wordsworth had it; and as we gladly listen to great men, even in those
moments when they are not inspired, but, like other mortals, quietly
cherish their thoughts, and patiently wait the moment that will
disclose new glimpses into the infinite, so have I also listened gladly
to Wordsworth himself, in his poems, which contain nothing more than
any one might have said. The greatest poets allow themselves rest. In
Homer we often read a hundred verses without a single beauty, and just
so in Dante; while Pindar, whom all