Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

In 1797 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxton House Somerset just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. Wordsworth as with his siblings had little involvement with their father and they would be distant from him until his death in 1783. He received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could pursue writing poetry.

Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850. William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who with Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.