Guide to the Lakes prose-poem about light, shapes, and textures, about movement and stillness ... It is a paean to a way of life, but also a lament for the inevitability of its passing ... What holds this diversity together is the voice of complete authority, compounded from experience, intense observation, thought, and love. Wordsworth was born in the Lake District and spent much of his life living there. Wordsworth and his friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge became known as Lake Poets not only because they lived in this area but also because its landscapes and people inspired their work. By 1810,
To Southey name "To Robert Southey, of Baliol College, Oxford, Author of the 'Retrospect,' and Other Poems". It was the only time the poem was published. Although Coleridge and Southey continued to spend time together and collaborate on their poetic efforts, their relationship was greatly strained and their ideas for the Pantisocratic government fell apart. The change in Coleridge's opinions on both Southey and William Godwin is reflected in Coleridge's not republishing the poems on either of them within his 1796 collection of poems. However, Coleridge also omitted the poems because he did not think they were any good. The only edition