----"Thou art with me, here, upon the banks Of this fair river; thou, my dearest friend, My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, or the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain winds be free To blow against thee; and, in after-years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind Shall be a mansion of all lovely forms, Thy memory be a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations. Nor, perchance, If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes those gleams Of past existence, wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshiper of nature, hither came, Unwearied in that service; rather say With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods, and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear both for themselves and for thy sake!" Was there something in "the shooting gleams of those wild eyes," which foretold that, like the lights of a fitful sky, they should flash and quickly disappear? The mind of that beloved sister has for many years gone, as it were, before her, and she lives on in a second infancy, carefully cherished in the poet's home. Wordsworth, as I have observed, devoted himself to no profession but that of poetry. He followed the stream of life as it led him down the retired vale of poetic meditation, but not without, at times, being visited by fears of what the end might be. Of this he gives a graphic description in his poem of Resolution and Independence, the hero of which is the old leech gatherer.