"'Think you, mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking? "'Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old gray stone, And dream my time away.'" The same doctrine is inculcated in the very next poem, The Tables Turned. Here the poet calls his friend from his books, as full of toil and trouble, adding:-- "And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let nature be your teacher. "She has a world of ready wealth Our minds and hearts to bless-- Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. "One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. "Sweet is the lore which nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things; We murder to dissect. "Enough of science and of art; Close up their barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives." Now, if George Fox had written poetry, that is exactly what he would have written. So completely does it embody the grand Quaker doctrine, that Clarkson, in his Portraiture of Quakerism, has quoted it, without however perceiving that the grand and complete fabric of Wordsworth's poetry is built on this foundation; that this dogma of quitting men, books, and theories, and sitting down quietly to receive the unerring intimations and influences of the spirit of the universe, is identical in Fox and Wordsworth; is the very same in the poetry of the one as in the religion of the other. The two reformers acquired their faith by the same process, and in the same manner. They went out into solitude, into night, and into woods, to seek the oracle of truth. Fox retired to a hollow oak, as he tells us, and with prayers and tears sought after the truth, and came at length to see that it lay not in schools, colleges, and pulpits, but in the teaching in a passive spirit of the great Father of Spirits. Wordsworth retired to the "Mountains, to the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lovely streams, Wherever nature led." And he tells us that to this practice he owed "A gift Of aspect most sublime; that blessed mood In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood In which the affections gently lead us on, Until the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood, Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul. While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things."--Vol. ii. p. 181.