It would be difficult to picture to the mind’s eye a scene of more enchanting repose; in such a place as this, with such objects before him, the verdant pastures, the pendent groves, the winding river, the tranquil sky,--where the very clouds, with their fleecy wings stretched forth in vain to catch the subtile current, seem like a fleet becalmed on the wide ocean, waiting for the breeze;--with these before him, ambition forgets the world; sorrow looks up with more cheerful resignation; cares and disappointments lose both their weight and their sting: with so little of sordid earth, so much of the sublimity of nature to contemplate, his thoughts become chastened, soothed, and elevated; and the heart expands under a new sense of happiness, and a feeling of brotherly kindness and benevolence towards everything that breathes. He feels the poet’s exhortation in all its force-- When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come, like a blight, Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, the shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart, Go forth into the open sky, and list To Nature’s teaching! And then turning to Wordsworth:-- For I have learnt To look on Nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the roused ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows, and the woods, And mountains, and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create, And what perceive.