enough to sorrow

Wordsworth sets up striking parallels in the first two stanzas making an obvious distinction between the wise old man and the young listener. While the young traveler “stretched (him)self on the brown earth (his) limbs from very heat could find no rest, the elder, not far off “on the soft cool moss extends his careless limbs.” His site is on a “pale stream,” while the younger man’s is on “slippery ground.” And while the young man finds shade beneath “clustering rooms that sprang from the same root,” the story-teller rests under “some huge oak whose aged branches make a twilight of their own.”

Though at first his situation seems unfortunate, we later learn that the young man has a simple case of “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” (or maybe more appropriately, “the moss is always softer on the far other lot”). We know from Tintern Abbey that Wordsworth believes maturity brings on tranquility of the mind. Here in The Ruined Cottage he shows us why. Hardships are relative. As soon as we hear a sadder tale than ours, we are able to “be wise and cheerful, and no longer read the forms of things with an unworthy eye.”