WORDSWORTH DEFENDED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20088, 27 October 1928, Page 9 (Supplement)

WORDSWORTH DEFENDED.

A " DESPISED " POET. At the anual congress of tho National Union of Organists' Associations at Lancaster rccontly, tho delegates heard an address on Wordsworth by Mr. C. Hardrnan, president, of the Cambridge Union Society in 1925. "It is tho fashion to despise Wordsworth to-day," said Mr. Hardman. "Young people do not read him because ho is considered very moral in his teachings and prosy in his poetry. That is not thought a good tiling, but how can young people judge pootry ? In thirty years' time perhaps Wordsworth will have regained his high place in literature. There is no one to-day who can write poems like 'Tintern Abbey,' with its rich organ notes of luxuriant music." To appreciate fully tho beauty of the English lakes, continued Mr. Hardman, it was necessary to leavo chars-a-banc, motor-cars and petrol pumps behind and climb and walk as Wordsworth did. Wordsworth had walked, on tho whole, 170,000 miles in his lifetime.