Wordsworth on Helvellyn

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English poet who with Samuel Taylor Coleridge launched the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads. His masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years.

‘High is our calling, Friend! Creative Art’. Thus William Wordsworth, the supreme Romantic poet of nature, addressed Haydon in a sonnet in 1815. Haydon was to repay the compliment later, by painting one of the most memorable portraits of Romantic inspiration, showing Wordsworth musing among the clouds, high up on the Lake District peak of Helvellyn