Kendal and Windermere Railway - Opposition

Opposition

There was opposition to the proposals from those who were against what they saw as destruction of the Lake District landscape. Those opposing included the poet William Wordsworth. His letters to the editor of the Morning Post are reproduced in The Illustrated Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes, P. Bicknell, Ed. (Congdon and Weed, New York, 1984), pp. 186–198. His reactions to the technological and "picturesque" incursions of man on his beloved, wild landscape most famously include the following sonnet:

Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
Must perish;—how can they this blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change bemoan
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orresthead
Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance:
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,
Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong
And constant voice, protest against the wrong.

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Famous quotes containing the word opposition:

    Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.
    Jane Austen (1775–1817)

    Therefore the love which us doth bind,
    But fate so enviously debars,
    Is the conjunction of the mind,
    And opposition of the stars.
    Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

    A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)