"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 admire so much, drives me to distraction with his ecstacies. What would I not give to spend one summer on the lakes; visit with Wordsworth all the places to which he has given names; greet all the trees which he has saved from the axe; and only once watch a far-off sunset with him, which he describes as only Turner could have painted."