But there is one still deeper element in Wordsworth’s poetry. He tells us very clearly that the true liberty and grandeur of mankind are to be found along the line of obedience to law and fidelity to duty. This is the truth which was revealed to him, slowly and serenely, as a consolation for the loss of his brief revolutionary dream. He learned to rejoice in it more and more deeply, and to proclaim it more and more clearly, as his manhood settled into firmness and strength.
Fixing his attention at first upon the humblest examples of the power of the human heart to resist unfriendly circumstances, as in Resolution and Independence, and to endure sufferings and trials, as in Margaret and Michael, he grew into a new conception of the right nobility. He saw that it was not necessary to make a great overturning of society before the individual man could begin to
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 fulfil his destiny. “What then remains?” he cries—
“To seek
Those helps for his occasion ever near
Who lacks not will to use them; vows, renewed
On the first motion of a holy thought;
Vigils of contemplation; praise; and prayer—
A stream, which, from the fountain of the heart,
Issuing however feebly, nowhere flows
Without access of unexpected strength.
But, above all, the victory is sure
For him, who seeking faith by virtue, strives
To yield entire submission to the law
Of conscience—conscience reverenced and obeyed,
As God’s most intimate presence in the soul,
And his most perfect image in the world.”
If we would hear this message breathed in tones of lyric sweetness, as to the notes of a silver harp, we may turn to Wordsworth’s poems on the Skylark,—
“Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.”
If we would hear it proclaimed with grandeur, as by a solemn organ; or with martial ardour, as by a ringing trumpet, we may read the Ode to Duty or The Character of the Happy Warrior, two of the noblest and most weighty poems that Wordsworth
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 ever wrote. There is a certain distinction and elevation about his moral feelings which makes them in themselves poetic. In his poetry beauty is goodness and goodness is beauty.
But I think it is in the Sonnets that this element of Wordsworth’s poetry finds the broadest and most perfect expression. For here he sweeps upward from the thought of the freedom and greatness of the individual man to the vision of nations and races emancipated and ennobled by loyalty to the right. How pregnant and powerful are his phrases! “Plain living and high thinking.” “The homely beauty of the good old cause.” “A few strong instincts and a few plain rules.” “Man’s unconquerable mind.” “By the soul only, the Nations shall be great and free.” The whole series of Sonnets addressed to Liberty, published in 1807, is full of poetic and prophetic fi............