Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/138

 cxxxiv INTRODUCTION ���was not an instantaneous one. It took time for the delicate originality of her taste to assert itself. And she had not, as had Wordsworth, a fund of childhood impressions on which to draw. It was only after long and familiar contact with nature that its full effect was apparent. But yet, sea- son by season, year by year, new lessons were being learned, and insensibly nature was bringing to her its normal gifts. It is not of the sweet surprises, the novel excitements of the early life at Eastwell of which she writes best. The ade- quate poem comes only after years of accumulated experi- ence, when the loveliness of the place is known and taken for granted, when love for it is a part of herself, when the thought of it has mellowed and ripened. . In spite of many impor- tant differences that might be insisted on, there is this one important point of likeness between Lady Winchilsea and Wordsworth they both write out of the calm that follows the storm. Their simplicity and repose grow out of the fact that so much of life has been tested and set aside, and that the essentials of happy living have been found to be few and not difficult of access. In her youth Ardelia wrote an Enquiry after Peace. It is a brief version of the world-old vanitas vanitatum, very much in the style of Parnell's Hymn, and there is a suggestion, reminding one inevitably of Dyer's Grongar Hill, that peace may be found on some mountain- top under the wide arch of the sky, or in some shut-away valley. This plaintive little poem is only a fragment, but it is beautifully rounded out and answered by the Reverie. The two poems represent the extremes of the portion of Lady Winchilsea' s life best known to us its early dissatisfactions, questionings, rejections, its final certainties and poise. ��� �