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I^'DIAXA UXITERSITY STUDIES 



That, as we downward tend. 

 Lyeoris ! life requires an art 

 To wbicli our souls must bend. 



lie was quite unwilling, except in a few rare moments, to describe 

 his early experiences joj^onsly for their own sake, letting them go 

 unrelated to his endless self-anah^sis. No doubt this is a fault, and 

 yet one that compensates itself. For from the same source springs 

 the poet's essential genius. The doctrine is this: As the romantic 

 mind enlarges, and the round of experience tends to complete it- 

 self, the hour of thoughtless youth with all its aching joys and 

 dizzy raptures, when the sounding cataract haunted him like a pas- 

 sion, is seen in relation to the other stages of life. The romantic 

 appearance of things, sensational objects once enjoyed solely for 

 their owm sake, the mountain, the deep and gloomy w^ood, their 

 colors and their forms, needing no remoter charm by thought sup- 

 plied, or any interest unborrowed from the eye, must now^ be har- 

 monized wdth other meanings till the poet may feel a new and more 

 powerful enthusiasm — 



a sense submlime 

 Of sometbing far more deeply interfused, 

 Wbose dwelling is tbe ligbt of setting suns, 

 And tbe round ocean and tbe living air. 

 And tbe blue sky, and in tbe mind of man ; 

 A motion and a spirit, tbat impels 

 All tbinking tbings, all objects of all tbougbt, 

 And rolls tbrougb all tbings. 



It is in this view^ of things that he sees Nature's sj^mbols for the 

 relation of man Avith man. It is this view^ of things that all objects 

 of all thought take their place as part of nature, not in the scien- 

 tific but in the humanitarian and poetical sense. Poor Susan, the 

 Highland girl, the old Cumberland beggar, Michael, Margaret, 

 these are the objects of his reverence because he has had a vision 

 of things that invests them with the beauty of Nature's brother- 

 hood. He sees them, therefore, not so much as indivduals, as part 

 of the great scene wdiich stretches, before and after, beyond the 

 limits of our ken. 



Wordsworth here surpasses the sense of mystery and wonder 

 which led him to this view of nature ; and the romantic mind, which 

 seeks eternally the eternal mysterj^, may, in its widening conscious- 

 ness, surpass any definitions with wdiich w^e have once hedged it 

 about. English romanticism was not bent on retaining grotesque 

 traces of its origin. Like all soundly progressive art. it moves 



