Inseparably linked. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Where'er the aged beggar takes his rounds, The mild necessity of use compels To acts of love; and habit does the work Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul, By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued, Doth find itself insensibly disposed To virtue and true goodness. . . . . . . . . . . . . The easy man Who sits at his own door,--and, like the pear That overhangs his head from the green wall, Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young, The prosperous and unthinking, they who live Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove Of their own kindred;--all behold in him A silent monitor, which on their minds Must needs impress a transitory thought Of self-congratulation." Though it must be confessed that this is a sermon, it is a sermon in the very best style. In that same Naturalism which in due time consistently developed into pure humanism and revolt against convention, there was at first an inclination to admonition and to evangelic piety. It sought out the simple-hearted, the poor, the mean in the eyes of the world--for this was Gospel morality. It rejected the highly cultured, and chose as its heroes fishermen and peasants--in this also following Gospel example. Hence it is that we have in Wordsworth perfectly consistent worship of nature along with the exhortatory and evangelically homiletic element which finds such favour in England. And even his purely didactic poems are not to be indiscriminately rejected. There is often a peculiar grandeur in the manner in which the simple lesson is enforced. There is, for instance, real sublimity in the passage in _Laodamia_ in which it is impressed upon the sorrowing wife that, instead of craving for the return of her husband, she ought to renounce her desire, and purify herself through her love to enjoy another, nobler, more spiritual life:-- "Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend Towards a higher object.--Love was given, Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end: For this the passion to excess was driven-- That self might be annulled." Even the abstract _Ode to Duty_, which is inspired by an enthusiasm of the nature of Kant's, contains a couple of magnificent lines which are as contrary to reason as one of the sublime paradoxes of the Fathers of the Church. It is to Duty that the poet cries: "Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong." From all the poems of this species, however, the reader will quickly turn again to Wordsworth's specialty, his idylls.