WordsworthMyers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
General
Wordsworth
Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850
Wordsworth's last days were absolutely tranquil. A cold caught on a
Sunday afternoon walk brought on a pleurisy. He lay for some weeks
in a state of passive weakness; and at last Mrs. Wordsworth said to
him, "William, you are going to Dora." "He made no reply at the time,
and the words seem to have passed unheeded; indeed, it was not
certain that they had been even heard. More than twenty-four hours
afterwards one of his nieces came into his room, and was drawing
aside the curtain of his chamber, and then, as if awakening from a
quiet sleep, he said, 'Is that Dora?'"
On Tuesday, April 23, 1850, as his favourite cuckoo-clock struck the
hour of noon, his spirit passed away. His body was buried, as he had
wished, in Grasmere churchyard. Around him the dalesmen of Grasmere
lie beneath the shade of sycamore and yew; and Rotha's murmur mourns
the pausing of that "music sweeter than her own." And surely of him,
if of any one, we may think as of a man who was so in accord with
Nature, so at one with the very soul of things, that there can be no
Mansion of the Universe which shall not be to him a home, no
Governor who will not accept him among His servants, and satisfy him
with love and peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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