The recent report of the Select Committee on Motor Traffic dealt only with the County Council areas of the metropolis.  Has not the time come for greater powers to be given to the county councils and highway committees who regulate the motor traffic of all descriptions in the provinces?

As matters are now, so long as the speed limit of 20 miles an hour is not exceeded, there appears to be no power in the hands either of the highway authorities or the police to deal with a new nuisance, the monopolizing of our highways at the will of clubs and combinations either of motorists or motor-cyclists, who suddenly determine on reliability trials in the name of either pastime or science.

Here, for example, in the heart of the Lake District—at a time of year when it is fullest of holiday-makers, who have come for rest and recreation—under the auspices of the A.C.U., 124 miles of road were monopolized for an hour and a half at every point by a stream of motor cycles to the number of 200, 162 of which had entered the lists for a reliability trial, and the whole of that stretch of main roads was filled with dust and din and the possibility of danger to life.  This is but one day out of six in which this lamentable procession is to occupy our main roads, and at the end of the 783 miles some one is to gain a gold medal for good nerve and judgment in riding, and some manufacturer is to gain advertisement for the reliability of his machine.

Why should it be possible for a single club thus to monopolize for pastime or for science 783 miles of public road, and issue through its correspondent suggestions that children should be kept in gardens and yards as they pass, and that people should shut all windows to keep out dust?

Is it not time that powers were given to highway authorities so to regulate this kind of traffic that certain roads only shall be chosen, and certain hours of the day only be used for these reliability trials?  What is to prevent 1,000 instead of 200 of these machines thundering along at a minute’s interval through the heart of a holiday district like our own to the disquiet of the whole neighbourhood, and why if these cycles so use the roads should not the manufacturers of traction engines go in for reliability tests of hill climbing in the same manner?  What we really need is some power to highway authorities to deal with this new phase of motor traffic. 

(Times, 21 August 1913, p. 8)

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 “Dear gell, thy Joe is gone to glory,
    Took sudden upo’ Sunday night.”
So of the drear pathetic story
    Wrote one who could not write.

“He will not keeap, his corp’s that bad,
    We bury ’im at threea to-morrow”
Words fit to send a lover mad,
    Sad words not meant for sorrow.

“We shall not send to meeát thee, gell,
    But cloathes they needn’t be no bother,
Fur Emma’s ‘black’ ’ull saive thee well
    That job, thy luvvin’ mother.”

So in such wise a mother told
    Of Joe the village lover’s death,
And of a world made blank and cold
    For her Elizabeth.

Though happy they whose souls have words
    Whose thoughts flame out in golden speech,
Our human hearts have tender chords,
    Such silence best can reach.

(Poems, Ballads, and Bucolics, p. 99)

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[Who are the truly great?]  Surely they are those who give great and enduring thoughts to the world; who enkindle our imagination, call forth our tenderest emotions, give us eyes and ears, enrich our nation not only with glorious language, but with new views of human life, reveal man unto himself….  All this Wordsworth did. He not only unfolded a new philosophy, but he made men desire it. (pp. 47-48)

For this Wordsworth, not only put men and nature on talking terms, but filled this common earth of ours with angel presences to haunt and help mankind.  It is because of Wordsworth that “the earth and common face of nature speak to us rememberable things.” (p. 48)….

He made it possible for the poorest of the poor to be rich beyond words in power of communing with Nature. (p. 49)

And Wordsworth was the Orpheus who discovered the harmony that exists between men and all the background of his human life.  He made the great reconciliation between man and the earth he walks on and the heaven to which his eyes are cast. (p. 49)….

Wordsworth’s genius lay in discovering that in Nature’s ever varying forms and phases, there was a something that had a message to the hearts of men, and that on the commonest everyday life of man there was a something that would respond to the call; and that something was absolute truth, absolute reality. (p. 50)….

He saw that the great passions that upbuild the soul, the great primal impulses of human affection, the great master powers of the mind to suffer or be glad, need no grander field for the unfolding of the drama of life and character, than is found in the life of the working men, the simple shepherds of our hills. (p. 51)

He was the Poet of common life; and he accepted it as his mission to open the eyes and widen the thoughts of his countrymen, and to teach them to discover in the humblest and most unexpected form, a presence that was kindred to what they had long recognised as the highest and the noblest. (p. 51)

Wordsworth’s chief characteristic is the noble intermingling of deep feeling with profound thought; but his gift to his time was that he opened the fountain whence this thought and feeling flow; he bade men realise that not a single ray of morning light upon a distant hill or cloud that lies cradled in the setting sun, nor a bird or creature that flashes past, not a sound of the “winds that will be wandering at all hours,” but may so touch the heart and set man thinking “on man and nature and on human life,” that even the labourer going forth into the fields may find them filled with glad companionship, and have angels at his side to bring him home at eventide. (pp. 51-52)….

The reason why some of us are such fighters to-day for the beauties of the hills and valleys that he loved, why we spend ourselves and are spent in endeavour to keep the natural features of our quiet country, unimproved, unvulgarised and unmarred, is because Wordsworth has taught us to find some of our springs for public action in that same unfailing fountain he has opened to rich and poor alike, love for “this Demi Eden other Paradise,” wherein men still may walk and talk with God. (p. 55)

(A Reminiscence of Wordsworth Day, Cockermouth, April 7th, 1896)

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We left behind the clamour of the town,
        And northwards through a sunny land we sped:
Cots brownly thatched, old halls with gables red
Peeped through the elms and orchards newly-blown.
Thence through a world where, ere the blade was grown,
’Neath sulphurous skies the corn was pale and dead,
Where grimy labour, clamorous for bread,
Cursed the black fields wherein its seed was sown.
Last to the hills we came,—the quiet steep
Of Froswick rose, the Langdale lions kept
The same silent watch, and in the silent west
Those great twin mountain-brothers leaned at rest.*
Forth from the train invigorate I stept,
New-made already in the home of sleep.

*Coniston Old Man and Wetherlam

 (Sonnets at the English Lakes, p. 40)

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Fetched from the solemn deeps, at flow of tide,
        The Esk brought sun and silence to the vale;
The yellow woodlands, weary with the gale,
Murmured no more; on Birkby’s russet side
Clouds dropped their quiet shadows; far and wide
Scawfell looked forth, beneficently pale;
While rooks, at mellow distance, told the tale
Of hearts content and hunger satisfied.
A soft wind set the thistle dancers free,
And, like the ripple of a sunlit stream
Running in air, it shook the thousand hues
Of leaf to radiance: it was hard to choose—
The forest waking from a golden dream,
The dreamless slumber of the silver sea.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 83)

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  1. A Queen’s Gazelle
  2. A Prisoner at Dunnabeck
  3. A Plea for the United States of Europe
  4. A North Country Flood