;
His legs are thin and dry.
One prop he has, and only one,
His wife, an aged woman,
Lives with him near the waterfall,
Upon the village common."

Jove may nod, but when he makes a move it counts.

Yet the influence of Wordsworth upon the thought and feeling of the world
has been very great. He himself said, "The young will read my poems and
be better for their truth." Many of his lines pass as current coin: "The
child is father of the man," "The light that never was on land nor sea,"
"Not too bright and good for human nature's daily food," "Thoughts that
do lie too deep for tears," "The mighty stream of tendency," and many
others. "Plain living and high thinking" is generally given to Emerson,
but he discovered it in Wordsworth, and recognizing it as his own he took
it. In a certain book of quotations, "The still sad music of humanity" is
given to Shakespeare; but to equalize matters we sometimes attribute to
Wordsworth "The Old Oaken Bucket."

The men who win are those who correct an abuse. Wordsworth's work was a
protest--mild yet firm--against the bombastic and artificial school of
the Eighteenth Century. Before his day the "timber" used by poets
consisted of angels, devils, ghosts, gods; onslaught, tourneys, jousts,
tempests of hate and torrents of wrath, always of course with a very
beautiful and very susceptible young lady just around the corner. The
women in those days were always young and ever beautiful, but seldom wise
and not often good. The men were saints or else "bad," generally bad.
Like the cats of Kilkenny, they fought on slight cause.

Our young man at Hawkshead School saw this: it pleased him not, and he
made a list of the things on which he would write poems. This list
includes: sunset, moonrise, starlight, mist, brooks, shells, stones,
butterflies, moths, swallows, linnets, thrushes, wagoners, babies, bark
of trees, leaves, nests, fishes, rushes, leeches, cobwebs, clouds, deer,
music, shade, swans, crags and snow. He kept his vow and "went it one
better," for among his verses I find the following titles: "Lines Left
Upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree," "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey," "To a Wounded Butterfly," "To Dora's Portrait," "To the Cuckoo,"
"On Seeing a Needlebook Made in the Shape of a Harp," etc.

Wordsworth's service to humanity consists in the fact that he has shown
us old truth in a new light, and has made plain the close relationship
that