The route from Rydal to Ullswater is still more thickly studded with poetic allusions. The _Pass of Kirkstone_ is the theme of a characteristic ode; Grisdale Tarn and Helvellyn recur again and again; and Aira Force was one of the spots which the poet best loved to describe, as well as to visit. It was on the shores of Further Gowbarrow that the _Daffodils_ danced beneath the trees. These references might be much further multiplied; and the loving diligence of disciples has set before us "the Lake-district as interpreted by Wordsworth" through a multitude of details. But enough has been said to show how completely the poet had absorbed the influences of his dwelling-place; how unique a representative he had become of the lovely district of his birth; how he had made it subject to him by comprehending it, and his own by love. He visited other countries and described other scenes. Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, have all a place in his works. His familiarity with other scenery helped him, doubtless, to a better appreciation of the lake country than he could have gained had he never left it. And, on the other hand, like Caesar in Gaul, or Wellington in the Peninsula, it was because he had so complete a grasp of this chosen base of operations that he was able to come, to see, and to make his own, so swiftly and unfailingly elsewhere. Happy are those whose deep-rooted memories cling like his about some stable home! Whose notion of the world around them has expanded from some prospect of happy tranquillity, instead of being drawn at random from the confusing city's roar! Happier still if that early picture be of one of those rare scenes which have inspired poets and prophets with the retrospective day-dream of a patriarchal, or a golden, age; of some plot of ground like the Ithaca of Odysseus, [Greek: traechsi all agathae koyrotrophos], "rough, but a nurse of _men_;" of some life like that which a poet of kindred spirit to Wordsworth's saw half in vision, half in reality, among the husbandmen of the Italian hills:-- Peace, peace is theirs, and life no fraud that knows, Wealth as they will, and when they will, repose; On many a hill the happy homesteads stand, The living lakes through many a vale expand: Cool glens are there, and shadowy caves divine, Deep sleep, and far-off voices of the kine;-- From moor to moor the exulting wild deer stray;-- The strenuous youth are strong and sound as they; One reverence still the untainted race inspires, God their first thought, and after God their sires;-- These last discerned Astraea's flying hem, And Virtue's latest footsteps walked with them. CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE--SOCIETY--HIGHLAND TOUR.