So William Wordsworth, it turns out, was a total jerk. You may remember from high school English one of his better-known poems, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (if not, you can refresh your memory here.) But what you probably never learned (I certainly hadn't) is that on the day that inspired Ol' Wordsy to recollect, in tranquility*, the emotions that led him to identify with said cloud, he was actually on a walk with his sister, Dorothy! He wasn't 'wandering'--'lonely'--at all. As my professor put it, "That's not very nice." Indeed, Professor Mole. Indeed.
If I were Dorothy, I'd be a little miffed.
*I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
-- William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
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