them and to all creatures. God delights
In such a being; for her common thoughts
Are piety, her life is gratitude.'

But it was not his sister the Poet speaks of here, but of his first
meeting with her who afterwards became his wife.

The results of the residence at Racedown, but especially at Alfoxden,
appeared in the shape of the first volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads,' which
were published in the autumn of 1798 by Mr. Cottle at Bristol. This
small volume opens with Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,' and
is followed by Wordsworth's short but exquisite poems of the Alfoxden
time, and is closed by the well-known lines on Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth
reaches about the highest pitch of his inspiration in this latter poem,
which contains more rememberable lines than any other of his, of equal
length, save perhaps the Immortality Ode. It was the result of a ramble
of four or five days made by him and his sister from Alfoxden in July
1798, and was composed under circumstances 'most pleasant,' he says, 'for
me to remember.' He began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the
Wye, and concluded it as he was entering Bristol in the evening.

Every one will recollect how, after its high reflections he turns at the
close to her, 'his dearest Friend,' 'his dear, dear Friend,' and speaks
of his delight to have her by his side, and of the former pleasures which
he read in 'the shooting lights of her wild eyes,' and then the almost
prophetic words with which he forebodes, too surely, that time when
'solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief should be her portion.'

That September (1798) saw the break-up of the brief, bright companionship
near Nether Stowey. Coleridge went with Wordsworth and his sister to
Germany, but soon parted from them and passed on alone to Gottingen,
there to study German, and lose himself in the labyrinth of German
metaphysics. Wordsworth and Dorothy remained at Goslar, and, making no
acquaintances, spent the winter--said to have been the coldest of the
century--by the German stoves, Wordsworth writing more lyrical poems in
the same vein which had been opened so happily at Alfoxden. There is in
these poems no tincture of their German surroundings; they deal entirely
with those which they had left on English ground. Early in spring they
returned to England, to spend the summer with their friends the
Hutchinsons at Sockburn-upon-Tees. There Dorothy remained, while in
September Wordsworth made