B.A. (Hons.

) English – Semester IV Core Course

Paper IX : British Romantic Literature Study Material

Unit-2
(a) William Wordsworth
(b) S.T. Coleridge

Department of English

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi
 Paper IX – British Romantic Literature

Unit-2
(a) William Wordsworth
(b) S. T. Coleridge

Prepared by:

P. C. Khanna V. P. Sharma
School of Open Learning School of Open Learning
University of Delhi University of Delhi
Delhi-110007 Delhi-110007

P. S. Nindra
School of Open Learning
University of Delhi
Delhi-110007

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 Paper IX – British Romantic Literature
Unit-2
(a) William Wordsworth
(b) S. T. Coleridge

Contents
S. No. Title Prepared by Pg. No.

(a) William Wordsworth 01

(i) ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ P. C. Khanna 07

(ii) ‘Ode : Intimations of Immortality’ V. P. Sharma 37

(b) S. T. Coleridge 73

(i) ‘Kubla Khan’ P. S. Nindra 83

(ii) ‘Dejection : An Ode’ P. S. Nindra 95

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 Unit-2(a)

(i) ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’

(ii) ‘Ode : Intimations of Immortality’

William Wordsworth

Contents
1. A Short Biographical Sketch
2. Tintern Abbey: The Poem
3. Tintern Abbey: An Analysis
4. Detailed Analysis of the Poem
5. A Critical Review
6. Check Your Understanding
7. Ode : Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood
8. The Immortality Ode: A Detailed Analysis
9. A Critical Review
10. Select Bibliography
11. Some Questions

Prepared by:
P. C. Khanna
V. P. Sharma

1
2
1. A Short Biographical Sketch

“WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was the son of John Wordsworth and Anne
Cookson, and was born at Cockermouth. His boyhood was spent among the wild hills of his
beloved Lake District. He lost his mother when he was eight and his father when he was
thirteen, but relatives helped to educate Wordsworth and his brothers and their sister Dorothy.
His schooldays at Hawkshead are vividly described in The Prelude. In 1787 he went to St.
John’s College, Cambridge where he read a great deal, but paid little attention to the
prescribed courses of study.
In 1790 and in 1791-92 he was in France, where he became a convinced revolutionist. In
1793 he was back in England and the outbreak of war with his beloved France caused him
anguish. When the excesses of ‘The Terror’ broke out he lost his belief in the Revolution and
turned to Godwin’s anarchical doctrines for consolation: barren stuff for a poet whose huge
inspiration was struggling to find adequate expression. In 1795 a legacy enabled him to set up
a house with Dorothy in the Quantocks, and in her companionship, he rediscovered joy in
Nature, and the friendship of Coleridge released the creativity within him. In 1798 Lyrical
Ballads was published, and in the following year he returned to the Lake District. From then
until 1805 his greatest work was done. He had discovered the true purpose of his life; his
marriage with Mary Hutchinson in 1802 brought him joy, his belief in Nature was ‘the nurse,
the guide, the guardian of [his] heart, and soul of all [his] moral being was unimpaired’
(Tintern Abbey, lines 100-111).
The great 1807 volume of poetry was the golden harvest of these fruitful years. The loss
at sea of his brother John in 1805 was a deep grief, and his poetry lost much of its
spontaneous joy after this. Nor was it John’s death alone and the decay of Coleridge that
saddened him; the glories of his visionary powers were waning and he felt that he had
exchanged youth for middle age:
‘Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?’
(Immortality Ode)
He turned to Duty and the memories of “the dream” to prop his remaining years.
Throughout the rest of his long life he met with increasing evidence of the esteem in which
he was held. The abuse that had greeted the Lyrical Ballads was exchanged for honours,
pensions and the Laureateship. He died in 1850 and was buried at Grasmere. After his death
The Prelude was published. He had finished it as early as 1805 but deliberately held it back
for posthumous publication, knowing the publicity that must attend this autobiographical
epic. Though a most unequal poet, Wordsworth is one of our greatest. His greatness lies
principally in his power of expressing the awe and rapture that a sensitive man experiences
when confronted by the grandeur of natural beauty. So long as men are moved by the
rainbow and the rose, by “Waters on a starry night”’, so long will they recognize the supreme
genius of William Wordsworth. (Sh. Burton, E. W. Parker, A Pageant of Longer Poems
(Longmans), pp 279-80).

3
1.1 William Wordsworth : The Poet
Wordsworth was the first poet who raised simple, bare and naked words to the level of
poetry. He did not depend upon any poetic cliche, mythology- or any other stereotyped
rhetoric. What distinguished Wordsworth from all other poets, is not only his attitude towards
Nature, or his language but also his views on the role of a poet as an individual and his
special concern for the ‘still sad music of humanity’. We shall here consider how these
aspects of his poetry are realized in some of his finest poems.
Wordsworth’s claim to the title of a great poet, as many critics believe, rests upon the
work of a single decade: his poetic genius showed at its best in what he wrote between 1798
and 1808. The Lyrical Ballads, (which Coleridge and Wordsworth conceived together), the
Lucy poems, some of his great Sonnets and The Immortality Ode all belong to this period.
Tintern Abbey which was the last poem of the first volume of The Lyrical Ballads and which,
it is believed, contains the central theme of all his major works, was written in 1798, the year
which marks the shaping of the great soul of a poet in the making.
Let me quote Coleridge who was the first, to recognize Wordsworth’s genius, and who
still remains the poet’s best interpreter:
I was in my twenty fourth year when I had the happiness of knowing Mr.
Wordsworth personally, and while my memory lasts, I shall hardly forget the sudden
effect produced in my mind, by his recitation of a manuscript poem. There was no mark
of strained thought, no forced diction, no crowd or turbulence of imagery. It was not
however the freedom from false taste, whether in common defects, or to those more
properly his own, which made so unusual an impression on my feelings immediately and
subsequently upon my judgement. It was the union of deep feelings with profound
thought, the fine balance of truth in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying
the objects observed; and above all the original gift of spreading the tone, the
atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents
and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, has
dried up the sparkle and the dewdrops.’ (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817))
Yes, ‘the dew drops’. This is how Wordsworth’s simple words fall upon our mind. ‘Poetry’,
Wordsworth declares, ‘sheds not tears such as the Angels weep “but natural and human
tears.” ‘What is a poet? Asks Wordsworth, and answers: ‘He is a man speaking to men: a
man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility more enthusiasm and tenderness, who
has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed
to be common among mankind, a man pleased with his own passions and volitions and who
rejoices more than others in the spirit of life that is within him: delighting to contemplate
similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe and habitually,
compelled to create them where he does not find them’(Wordsworth, Preface, 1800)).

4
 Wordsworth is a man speaking to men in a language which rejects all poetic ornaments
and mechanical devices. In The Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth for his part was ‘to give the
charm of novelty to things of every day and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural,
by directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us.’ He attempts to give
charm and novelty to things of everyday life by ‘awakening the mind’s attention from the
lethargy of custom,’ to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate and
describe them, throughout, as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men,
and at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby
ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect, and further, above all,
to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not
ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which
he associates ideas in a state of excitement. For this reason, ‘humble and rustic life was
generally chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil
in which they can attain their maturity and because in that condition passions of men are
incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature’ (Preface). The rustic and
humble people lacked sophistication, spoke, a language which contained the elemental force
of pure and primal emotions and showed human nature untrammeled by the conventions of
upbringing, custom and education. ‘All good poetry, he believes, ‘is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings and takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility.
The emotion is contemplated till by a series of reactions the tranquility gradually disappears
and an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually
produced and does itself actually exist in the mind’(Preface). In this mood, successful
composition begins and it is in this mood that it is carried on. We shall actually see it
happening when we study Tintern Abbey. Here the powerful role of memory in retaining
certain images, and the contemplation of this memory in tranquility, recreates the entire
experience and growth of his mind in arriving at a certain maturity of vision and thought. The
language and movement of the poem is simple, natural and powerful. It is always true to the
emotion, the objects which caused this emotion and the philosophy or view of life which
sprang from this emotion.
Wordsworth is a poet speaking to men and his main concern is man and his mind. But he
regrets that man’s basic or inherited tendency is to lose the paradise naturally gifted to him.
Wordsworth regains this paradise in Nature, and is therefore regarded as a poet of Nature and
a worshipper of Nature. But Wordsworth’s basic preoccupation is not with the paradise he
regains, but with man, who is gradually losing his paradise, or the ‘still sad music of
humanity’(Tintern Abbey).
Wordsworth’s basic conviction is that man by alienating himself from Nature is
unconsciously orphaning himself. Away from the parent Nature there is no rest for his mind
or peace for his soul. Nature, to him with all its loveliness, is a living presence which co-
exists in the mind of man and the soul which is in unison with Nature is blessed by her peace.
He sincerely believes that the natural piety which binds all men together is best sustained
with a simple communion with Nature.
5
 Wordsworth’s attitude towards Nature is different from that of other Romantic poets. In
them we find that the poet’s joy or melancholy is transferred to natural objects or rather, a
selection is made of natural objects in which a sympathetic analogy can be traced and then
these objects are endowed with the appropriate mood. For Wordsworth, however. Nature has
her own life, a sense sublime, which also dwells in the mind of man. Mind and Nature always
act and react upon each other. It is a continuous process, consisting mainly of three phases,
the “glad animal moments’ of childhood, the “passions’ and ‘appetites’ of youth, and lastly
that serene and blessed mood in which mind and nature achieve complete harmony and “we
are laid asleep in body and become a living soul,”(Tintern Abbey). Nature thus plays an
active role in shaping the soul of man. So, in Wordsworth, we find that the great union of
Mind and Nature is consummated by a process of association which links up at every stage of
his life, experience and the experiencing self, leading from sensation to feeling, from feeling
to thought and then creating a union of all these faculties when the mighty world of eye and
ear ceases to exist; and the same sublime sense which dwells in Nature becomes coexistent
with the mind of man, and though the same impulse animates all objects and all thought, the
mind rises above the objects it contemplates to the creation of a moral being, a soul.
In Tintern Abbey and The Immortality Ode we experience this pilgrimage of the poet’s
soul inspired by Nature. We also realize the moral influence it exercises on him while
shaping his soul. The ‘still sad music of humanity’, and man’s inherited tendency to lose his
paradise haunts his songs.
Wordsworth’s concern for mankind’s slow march to doom with the growth of
industrialization and neglect of Nature can be felt in The World is Too Much with Us. This
shows that the poet Wordsworth is a man speaking to men and although he finds a temple for
himself, his main worry was the fate of mankind which was gradually drifting from that
temple.
The two poems we are going to study combine in them the essence of Wordsworth’s
poetic achievement and indicate the major milestone of the growth of his mind.

6
2. Tintern Abbey: The Poem

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the
Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone. 20

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye !
But oft , in lonely rooms, arid ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration :- feelings too 30
Of unremembered pleasure: such perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
7
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world 40
Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft – 50
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60
The picture of the mind revives again :
while here 1 stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
1 came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led : more like a man 70
Flying from something that he dreads than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days.

8
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all – I cannot paint
What then 1 was. The sounding cataract
Hunted me like a passion : the tall rock.
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood.
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80
That had no need of a remoter charm.
By thought supplied, nor any interest,
Unborrowed from the eye—That time is past.
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures : Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music, of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused.
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air.
And the blue sky. and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods.
And mountains; and all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, –both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse.
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,
If I were nor thus taught, should 1 the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

9
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of the wild eyes. Oh ! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once.
My dear, dear Sister ! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her :’ tis her privilege,
Through al! the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is whin us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 130
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 140
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh ! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations ! Nor perchance-
If 1 should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence— wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream 150
We stood together; and that I. so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love-on ! with far deeper zeal

10
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake !

11
3. Tintern Abbey: An Analysis
Tintern Abbey was composed on Friday, July 13, 1798. With this poem closed the
volume, Lyrical Ballads, a volume of poems written partly in collaboration with another
famous poet and Wordsworth’s friend Coleridge. It is not only a great poem of flawless and
noble beauty but also one of his most personal pieces, wrought from the his inmost mind and
heart. It sums up all that Nature, Man, and his own history meant for him in the light of his
own ripe thinking and impassioned observation, quickened by the constant companionship of
Coleridge and Dorothy.
Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy went to Bristol to see Lyrical Ballads through the
press. During their stay they made a tour on foot and by boat up the Wye valley to Tintern. At
Tintern Abbey Wordsworth recalled his visit there five years before in the tumultuous period
of revolutionary enthusiasm when war with France had lately broken out. He meditated on
the new quality he had found in Nature since that time. And as was usual with him,
meditation led to composition. Verses were forming in his head as he walked back to his
lodging near Bristol. The poem was written down, probably at Cottel, and added to the
volume already set up in type.
About the composition of this poem Wordsworth writes:
“No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to
remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it
just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days (Tuesday
10th-Friday 13th July) with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it
written down till I reached Bristol.”
3.1 Subject and Theme of the Poem
Wordsworth describes in Tintern Abbey his attitude to Nature at different stages of his
life-the “glad animal movements” of childhood, the “passions” and “appetites” of youth, and
lastly “that serene and blessed mood” when “we are laid asleep in body, and become a living
soul”.
Tintern Abbey is at once a Hymn of Praise, and a Confession of Faith. Nature is extolled
for she still enlarges her bounty to the measure of man’s growing needs:
“Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; it’s her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy.”
Nature is described here as Man’s “prime teacher”, exercising a purifying influence on
him. It enables him to “see into the life of things”, and brings to him the sense of an all-
pervading spirit that “rolls through all things”. Wordsworth recognizes Nature as not merely
the guide of feeling and heart but also as the “soul of all his moral being”.

12
3.2 Summary
Wordsworth is revisiting Tintern Abbey, after five years. The setting is full of great
natural beauty and quietness. It is the same landscape as he had seen before. Only now he has
a more sober appreciation of it. The quiet scene gives rise to deep thoughts in his mind. The
steep hills and the poet’s own thoughts connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky. The
plots of cottage ground, the orchards with the green unripe fruits mixing easily with the
groves and bushes. The smoke going up in silence reminds the poet of some wanderers,
settled for the time being somewhere inside the woods, or of some holy man, sitting alone by
his fire.
The scenes haunted the poet’s mind even when he was away from them. They calmed his
mind in the midst of the fever and the fret of city life. They influenced him in his small acts
of kindness and love, such as a good man performs daily, almost unconsciously, forgetting
them soon afterwards. These forms of Nature have, moreover, brought to him spiritual
knowledge beyond the reach of the physical senses.
The river is addressed, as though it were a human being. The poet acknowledges the
happiness which its remembrance brought to him in days of despair. He knows, moreover,
that the memory of this scene will make him happy in the future also.
The poet in his early boyhood felt pure animal delight in roaming about in the mountains
by the riverside; with adolescence and youth, his passionate delight in Nature did not require
any promptings of a thoughtful mind. The pleasure was absolute and sensuous. He became
aware of unknown modes of being in Nature that disciplined his mind. With the passage of
time the poet loses that acute pleasure in Nature, but he gains something instead. In his
mature years he looks upon Nature as a manifestation of the divine spirit, which is present
everywhere in everything whether animate or inanimate. The poet now realizes the beauty
and the sadness of human life which has sobered him in his attitude to Nature. The realization
of this essential unity of all the universe, has given new dimensions to the love of Nature. The
beauty which enters the poet’s mind through his senses is further nourished by his
imagination. The poet acknowledges Nature as his teacher, guardian and friend, the source of
all his purest thoughts and the guide of his morality.
The poet’s sister Dorothy’s presence reminds him of his own youthful delight in Nature.
She is told that if ever in future she meets with any misfortune, Nature will surely come to
her aid. Nature never fails one who is really devoted to her, and fills his mind with joy and
tranquility. The poet affirms that the landscape is loved by him both for its own sake and
because it is associated with the presence of Dorothy.
In this way, we learn of the development of Wordsworth’s mind through this poem. In a
nutshell then the growth of the poet’s mind in his relationship with Nature has passed through
three stages.
 The first one related to the purely animal delight of his boyhood days.

13
  The second stage was of the poet’s adolescence and youth. At this stage he felt a
purely sensuous and passionate delight in Nature.
 Lastly, in his sober and mature years with his knowledge of human sorrow he
learnt to look upon Nature with a chastened and subdued spirit. He came to
realize that Nature is infused with the divine spirit that pervades everything,
animate or inanimate.
He acknowledges his debt to Nature and regards her as his friend, philosopher and guide,
the unfailing fountain of his mental peace and the source of his spiritual knowledge of the
ultimate reality. And thus the poem is rounded off with a hymn sung in praise of Nature, the
object of this total devotion.

4. Detailed Analysis of the Poem

4.1 Stanza I (Lines 1-21)
Wordsworth is revisiting Tintern Abbey after five years ‘five summers’ and five long
winters!’ By using the words ‘revisiting’ and ‘five long winters ’ the poet invites us to share
with him some very crucial and important moments of his life. Whenever we revisit a place
we start travelling back in time. Our memory is activated and it activates our awareness of
our present and confronts it with the recollection of our past. It keeps on uniting as well as
contrasting our present with our past. The revisit is always a value-based probe to determine
whether our living-coefficient has grown or declined. The seriousness of this confrontation of
past and present and the gravity of the consequent value-based probe depends upon many
factors. It depends upon the experiences of the life spent during this interval (the phrase ‘five
long winters!’) thus becomes significant and the sign of exclamation makes the agony of the
winter more poignant. It depends upon the mood when he first visited the place and the
nature of impressions it then left on his mind and it depends upon the present mood, the
reasons which have persuaded him to revisit the place and the expectations with which he is
revisiting it. All this is a very common human experience. That is why 1 consider that by
using the words ‘revisiting” and ‘five long years!” Wordsworth has invited us to share his
poetic experience and to join ‘r his value-based probe which raises a big question, his
capacity to live life has increased or decreased. Life is a very relative term but to all
discerning and sensitive persons it means living meaningfully in harmony with the universe
outside.
The revisit begins when the poet says ‘again I hear’ The poet catalogues all the
components of the landscape just to reassure himself. By saying ‘again’ (2) or ‘once again’
(1,4,9 and 14) the poet is trying to re-establish his “I-thou” relationship with Nature. His first
contact with the landscape or his revisit is auditory. Leaving behind the ‘din’ of the city life,
he now hears ‘the soft inland murmur’ of ‘these waters rolling down from their mountain
springs. It is a soft inland-murmur since the poet is still outside the scene. The scene is not
within his visual grasp. But the ‘din’ of cities is annihilated. The visual communication is

14
soon established when the poet beholds the lofty cliffs which ‘connect the land-scape with the
quiet of the sky”.
‘The “quiet of the sky’ (L.8) is perhaps the most significant phrase in the poem.
Wordsworth, in the days when he was composing his first great poem in all those
teachings which are most his own, was frequently a quietist, “Not for him the heaven
of dance and song of Milton’s saintly shout... Nowhere more magnificently than in
Tintern Abbey does Wordsworth’s imagery express this quietist phase of his
philosophy. The greatly not-to-be desired life of the cities is characterized by din. The
nature which in his earlier days had aroused in him dizzy raptures had spoken through
the sounding cataract. Now in the valley of the Wye upon his second visit the sounds
are less insistent... Indeed in the imagery of the poem there are two progressions to
quiet rather than just one : from din to murmur to silence, and from human life to
vegetable life to the cliff and sky’ (James Benziger, ‘Tintern Abbey Revisited’ in
Wordsworth : Lyrical Ballads: A Casebook, 1987, pp 238-39)
The auditory communication indicates a moment of descent and the visual communication
indicates a movement of ascent. The entire poem is one long record of these moods of ascent
and descent which alternate with each other and help the poet to see visions of his romantic
ideas without losing grasp over the reality.
The ‘steep and lofty cliffs’ perform two functions simultaneously. They elevate the poet
from his horizontal plane of reality to a vertical plane of ‘thoughts of more deep seclusion’
and they also ‘connect’ the landscape with the ‘quiet of the sky’ Thus we perceive there are
two movements in the poem as the poet describes the landscape, the movement of his
physical eye and the movement of ‘inward eye’; the eye of his soul. His physical eye reminds
him of his earthly reality and his inward eye craves for ‘the quiet of the sky’.
We see a harmony is established between the landscape, the mind of the man and the
quiet of the sky. This is the great Cosmic Harmony, Wordsworth now ‘reposes’ (19) and
‘views’ (10) the same harmony on the horizontal plane. The ‘cottage ground’ the ‘orchard-
tufts’ and ‘groves and copses’ all lose their individual identities and get dressed in the same
green garment.
The world of man, of pastoral farms and plots of cottage grounds merges gently
through orchard and hedge-row, into Nature’s copses and woodland. And the world of
organic nature, by way of lofty cliffs, merges gently with the inorganic ‘quiet of the
sky’- with what is surely a symbol of the Divine Quiet, the Eternal Silence as it is called
in the Ode on Intimations. (James Benziger, ‘Tintern Abbey Revisited’ p.237)
The hedge-rows which divide man’s cultivation from Nature’s groves and copses now
lose their identity. They ‘are little lines’/of sportive wood run wild.’ They also celebrate this
union between Man and Nature. It is the green grass which covers the entire universe
beginning from the doors of man’s cottage and travelling right up to steep and lofty cliffs.
Grass and its greenness, the humblest child of the earth, is symbolic of peace and protection.

15
Grass, the primordial upward movement of the earth, brings about a cosmic unity in the
valley. The first seventeen lines which celebrate the poet’s visit to Tintern Abbey after a gap
of five long years are soaked in atmosphere of peace, tranquility. calm and harmony inspiring
in the poet thoughts of more deep seclusion and deeper realization of Nature and its Oneness.
The poet first hears the waters rolling down, then he beholds the steep mountain cliffs
which impress upon him thoughts of more deep seclusion. The poet then reposes and views a
cosmic harmony. The poet so far is a passive receiver of certain sensations and impressions
which are tranquil and speak of harmony. But when the poet comes to hedge rows and
smokes, the poet sees (14). Seeing is different from hearing, beholding, reposing and viewing
when you see you not only behold and view but also interpret. That is what the poet does
when he says ‘once again I see’. The hedge-rows he imagines are not dividing woods from
the cultivated land. They are uniting man with nature and they run wild with happiness in this
game of theirs. Then there is a smoke among the ‘trees’! The Poet is rightly surprised when
he says ‘sent up’ in silence. The words ‘sent up” and ‘silence’ contrast this smoke with the
industrial smoke of the cities which is always associated with noise and being heavier than air
always falls down. But this smoke, a product of silence is moving heavenwards, to join the
‘quiet of the sky’. The poet is not sure of their source that is why he uses the words,
‘uncertain notice’, and “might seem”. The poet’s imagination traces the smoke to the activity
of some vagrant dwellers or to a lonely Hermit who is sitting by his fire all alone in a cave.
The stanza begins with a great cosmic unity of Nature, uniting man and ‘quiet of the sky’ and
ends in a solitary human activity.
We must observe that the landscape description of stanza I is far less purely objective
than might be thought on a purely superficial reading. The strong sensory assertions (‘I hear’,
‘I behold’, ‘I see”) unexpectedly lead to somewhat dubious statement that the smoke - which
the poet does ‘see’ - gives : Some uncertain notice, as might seem, ‘Of vagrant dwellers in
the houseless woods /Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire / The Hermit sits alone.’
In a way, this intimation of human presence brings the landscape description to a climax.
Wordsworth had endowed the conventional eighteenth century hermit with a significance that
goes beyond the merely picturesque: his solitariness exemplify the highest form of
contemplation and wisdom; they are men stripped of all un-essentials, living in intimate
communion with nature. Thus the hermit in his cave carries a faint suggestion of human
ideals towards which Wordsworth was striving at that time, and which he was to define with
greater assurance in later poems. (Albert S. Gerard : Exploring Tintern Abbey, Critics On
Wordsworth. (Universal Book Stall, New Delhi, pp. 60-61).
Study Notes
2. of five long winters! : The adjective ‘long’ lends a subjective colour to an objective
description of the landscape. Winter symbolizes lack of warmth, read stanza II (25). The sign
of exclamation emphasizes the poet’s personal loss and complaint during five years of
separation which include five long winters.

16
 2. again I hear : The poet is visiting the place once again and his first contact with the
landscape is auditory.
3. inland : from within the valley. The poet is still at a distance.
6. wild : untamed, here means a place which has not been urbanized or industrialized.
The poet has a special dislike for cities and towns. Read stanza II and III.
6. secluded : A secluded place is quiet, private and undisturbed.
7. thoughts of more deep seclusion : thoughts which have nothing to do with ordinary
routine life of cities which to the poet mean only a ‘fretful stir’ (stanza III 1. 52)
6-8. steep and lofty.... quiet of the sky : The lines reflect, the poet’s emotional response
to the scene. The steep and lofty cliffs perform two functions. They connect the horizontal
landscape with the ‘quiet of the sky’ and also lift the poet’s mind to great heights.
8. quiet of the sky : The poem is a journey from the noise of cities to the ‘quiet of the
sky’. It is a gradual ascent from noise to soft inland murmur and ultimately to ‘quiet of the
sky’ which according to some critics is a symbol of the Divine Quiet, the Eternal Silence as it
is called in The Immortality Ode.
11-18 These plots of cottage... very door : The world of man of pastoral forms and plots
of cottage ground merges gently, through orchard and hedgerow, into Nature’s copses and
woodland, and the world of organic nature by way of the lofty cliffs, merges gently with the
inorganic ‘quiet of the sky’.
13. One green line : green symbolizes peace and protection. The words again I hear (1.2)
once again/Do 1 behold (4-5), I again repose, view (9-10) and once again 1 see describe
Wordsworth’s personal mood as he describes the great landscape and its Great cosmic
harmony.
17-18 -sent up in silence....the trees!: The use of passive voice (sent up) denotes a
human activity. The sign of exclamation (the trees!) emphasizes the poet’s surprise at the
presence of human life among the trees and contrasts Wordsworth’s personal loneliness of
five long winters with the loneliness of ‘The Hermit’ or the ‘vagrant dwellers. Wordsworth is
surprised by the presence of life among ‘trees’! and is compelled to compare his personal
loneliness of five long winters’ with the loneliness experienced by the person or persons
living in the lap of this Great cosmic harmony. Perhaps the loneliness among the trees reflects
what Wordsworth later calls the ‘still, sad music of humanity.’ The two signs of exclamations
in stanza 1 symbolize two kinds of loneliness. The loneliness of the cities which is a
compulsion forced by the society (which means cities divorced from nature) and the
loneliness of the wild secluded landscape which is a refuge and shelter.
19. uncertain notice... might seem : So far Wordsworth has been sure of what he is
describing. He has been using the words, ‘1 hear’, ‘behold’, ‘see’ but when it comes to a
human activity Wordsworth suddenly switches to conjecture. The phrases ‘uncertain notice’
and ‘might seem’ show that while describing nature Wordsworth is certain but while
17
describing a human activity or a human condition Wordsworth can only guess. Wordsworth
had a great fascination for these ‘solitaries’ (The Solitary Reaper’, ‘Resolution and
Independence’) and he always tried to guess what they sang or said but the mood is always of
great tragedy which is at once chaste and chastening.
20. Of vagrant dwellers... woods : houseless woods express Wordsworth’s dislike for
urbanization or cities which are full of houses, housing lifeless people or all the forces which
are inimical to nature. That is why they become homes for “vagrant dwellers’, persons who
refuse to adopt city and its ways or to Hermits who know the significance of ‘the quiet of the
sky’.
21. Hermit: a hermit is a person who lives alone with a very simple lifestyle away from
people and normal society, especially for religious reasons. That is why perhaps Wordsworth
uses a capital letter for Hermit.
4.2 Stanza II (Lines 23-50)
Five Years Separation
The poet now speaks of the five years which separated him from Tintern Abbey. He says
these ‘beauteous forms were never absent from his mind’s eye all those years. The stanza is a
tribute to the beauty of Tintern Abbey, their influence on his mind, and the role of memory
which always recreated those ‘beauteous forms’ for him whenever he required them. The
memory thus contrasts the actual physical return to Tintern Abbey of Stanza I with the mental
returns which he experienced while he was far away from it, alone in the ‘lonely rooms’ of
cities. These lines also contrast the condition of the “Vagrant dwellers” and the lonely
‘Hermit’ with that of the lonely poet. The vagrant dwellers and the lonely Hermit are living in
peace, in harmony with nature whereas the lonely poet is vainly struggling with burden of
city life even though the memory of these ‘beauteous forms’ always comes to his rescue. The
‘I-thou’ relationship made unreflectingly with the landscape is refreshingly retained by the
memory. The memory of these beauteous forms healed him not only physically but induced
in him certain sweet sensations which he could feel in his blood and heart and these
sensations travelled to his purer mind, restoring in him a unique tranquility. This tranquility
in its train brought feelings of unremembered pleasures. The poet calls them ‘unremembered’
since they are ordinary or routine pleasures. But they are very significant, since it is these
pleasures which spring into ‘little nameless’ acts of kindness and love and which constitute
the best part of a good man’s life. The poet is struggling with the weariness caused by the din
of cities. These ‘beauteous forms’ induce in him a tranquil restoration. This sensation is
transformed into a feeling of a pleasure. This pleasure governs the best part of a good man’s
life. The memory of the scene becomes more important than the actual scene itself. The ‘
Vagrant dweller ‘ or the Hermit in the cave living away from man-kind (although living in
the lap of nature) cannot experience these little acts of love and kindness. The poet now
remembers another debt which he owes to the memory of these “beauteous forms’. He recalls
a phenomenon almost supernatural and mystical in its nature, of a ‘blessed mood’, of some

18
‘sublime’ moments, when ‘the mystery of this unintelligible world’, the ‘vast unknown’, was
suddenly revealed to him and he felt intensely relieved. But the poet is not very certain
whether these moments were inspired by these beauteous forms:
... Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift (31 -32)
His physical self is now laid asleep to cut the barriers which the body creates between
man and man, and man and Nature. So profound and enormous was the impact of ‘this
blessed mood’, that he felt that he ceased to live physically and became ‘a living soul’. The
soul, the essence of being which is common to all living things and ‘the life of things’
dictates his entire being. In these moments the eye is ‘made quiet’ by the power of harmony
and the deep power of joy. Remember the significance the poet attaches to ‘the quiet of the
sky’ in Stanza I.
The journey begins from Tintern Abbey and its harmony and its lonely Hermit and takes
him back to the lonely rooms of the cities where the money of the Tintern Abbey restores him
from the fatigue caused by the din of the city life. The tranquility achieved is transformed
into a feeling which accounts for the best portion of a good man’s life. And this good man he
ardently hopes is in the ‘blessed mood’ transformed into a lonely Hermit of the cities who
understands the mystery of this universe and the ‘quiet of his eye’ need not view and interpret
‘the life of things’ since it sees through them.
As Wordsworth turns from an objective symbolical description of external nature to an
analysis of his inner self, nature appears as the main causal factor in his moral evolution.
The first sentence deals with two ‘gifts’- ‘sensations’ and ‘feelings’ which are presented
as undoubtedly originating in nature. It also deals with the psychological and moral
consequences of those gifts: in the first case the sensations, sweet have wrought a ‘tranquil
restoration’ of the poet’s ‘purer mind’; in the second, a note of diffidence creeps in as
Wordsworth passes from the psychological to the moral plane: his feelings of un-remembered
pleasures have perhaps led him to ‘acts of kindness and love. There is thus a gradual ascent
from the sensory to the psychological and moral; on the other hand, slight undertones of
doubt are introduced in the passage from the psychological to the ethical.
This pattern is reproduced and developed in the second sentence: besides the sensations
and feelings, Wordsworth’s recollections of nature have also kindled in him a blessed mood;
this mood is described as such at great length and with considerable eloquence. As put by
Albert Gerard:
. . . the stanza reveals a three-fold change in the tone and subject matter: first a
raising of the level of reminiscence, which now passes from ethical to the mystical;
second a heightened poetic intensity which makes the passage particularly memorable
and eminently quotable; third an increase in the note of diffidence exemplified by the

19
 words ‘I trust’, and ‘may’. (Albert S. Gerard : Exploring Tintern Abbey, Universal Book
Stall, New Delhi, pp. 66-67)
Study Notes
22-23. ‘beauteous forms ... long absence’ : Remember ‘long winters! ‘in stanza I.
24. ‘As is a landscape ... blind man’s eye’ : Wordsworth attached great importance to the
faculty of sight. One can refuse to listen, smell, touch or taste but one cannot refuse to see.
Visual impressions get embedded in one’s mind. It is through these visual impressions that a
person animates his present with his past. Wordsworth is celebrating the role of memory. A
blind man’s memory and his imagination perhaps works differently.
25. ‘mid the din of towns and cities’ : Wordsworth equated cities with “din”, a
meaningless noise. These are the two ro’tey of life “the quiet of the sky and” the din of cities.
26-30 ‘... I have owed to them .... tranquil restoration’ : After a period of five years to
witness this great majesty and cosmic harmony he now tries to recollect the role played by
the memory of ‘these beauteous forms’. The first impact of their memory induced in him a
‘tranquil restoration’. He begins to receive ‘sweet sensations’, which fight him out of the
‘din’ hours of weariness’ and bathe him in a tranquil restoration.
31. ‘Unremembered pleasure’ : Small ordinary pleasures, which come and pass away
unnoticed without becoming a part of one’s memory unlike great happy events (like the visit
to Tintern Abbey) which stayed in his mind.
30-35. ‘feeling too ... of kindness and love’ : The second impact of the memory is
psychological. The memory of the valley used to uplift him morally and make him do little
acts of kindness and love in his daily life, A man is good not because of some great things he
does for the entire mankind but for his little acts of kindness and love in his everyday life
while dealing with other men. (Read Wordsworth’s complaint in stanza V. ‘Nor greetings
where no kindness is’ 130). It is these acts which account for the “best portion of a good
man’s life’.
35-36. ‘nor less, I trust... To them I may ... of aspect more sublime’ : The words ‘trust’
and ‘may’ depict a note of diffidence and uncertainty. Wordsworth was very certain when he
was describing the sensory or psychological impact. But when he talks of aspect more
sublime, he is not certain whether the memory of the Wye was responsible for this gift.
39-41. ‘The burthen of mystery ... lightened’ : One gets awakened to the very essence of
life and its meanings and the mystery of life is revealed to us.
43. Corporeal: means involving or relating to the physical world rather than the spiritual
world.
48. ‘an eye made quiet’: an eye which sees and understands and not an eye which sees,
reacts, interprets and records accordingly. An eye which sees and becomes at once attuned to
what it sees. There is no difference between the image and the object.

20
 41-49. ‘The serene and blessed mood ... into the life of things’: The poet now achieves a
trance-like state in which all the physical functions which separate man from man and man
from nature are suspended. Only the soul dictates. ‘This living soul’ with ‘an eye made quiet’
can understand and see ‘into the life of things’. The entire green landscape which gets
connected with ‘the quiet of the sky’ in stanza I gets embodied in his ‘living soul” through
the ‘eye made quiet’.
4.3 Stanza III (Lines 50-57)
The Blessed Memory
Stanza III begins with a note of doubt. If this ‘Be but a vain belief that those ‘beauteous
forms could inspire in him a ‘blessed mood’ in which the mystery of the ‘unintelligible
world’ was revealed to him and he could ‘see into the life of things’, then he is grateful to the
memory of the river Wye for many other comforts. He now addresses the river Wye, the
Wanderer of woods as if it were a living person and recalls the various occasions when it
brought relief to his troubled soul. He talks of his frustrated moments of despair and
confusion, his fruitless struggles for existence and the fever which such useless daily worldly
struggles inflict upon his body and mind. His spirit, on all such desperate moments turned to
the memory of river Wye and he felt cured. In stanza I he describes the great cosmic harmony
of the landscape. In stanza 11 he celebrates the memory of this harmony. There is a lingering
doubt whether this memory is also responsible for certain mystical moments in which he
could see into the life of things. That is why the lines 37-48 which describe his great trance-
like experience begin with ‘Nor less. I trust’1! ‘To them 1 may have owed another gift (35-
36). And in stanza III he confirms his suspicion when he says ‘If this/Be but a vain belief”.
He then recalls the numerous ways in which the memory of the river Wye had been helping
him physically in his hours of meaning less distress.
Study Notes
50. vain : empty
52. joyless daylight: It is the daylight (or light) which enables us to see. It becomes a
joyless daylight since we are not pleased to see what we see. Seeing becomes a mechanical
ritual. (See ‘light of the common day’, in The Immortality Ode in stanza V).
51-52. ‘many shapes....daylight’: The various moods of the day from dawn to sunset are
all joyless, since they are all meaningless. Cities express, the same fever from morning till
evening.
52. fretful stir : an unhappy struggle
54. ‘have hung ....heart’: They have weighed upon the free movements of my heart.
They did not allow my heart to pulsate naturally,
56. Sylvan : belonging to woods and trees

21
 56-57 : ‘O Sylvan Wye !.... thee!’: The memory of the Sylvan Wye always came to his
rescue in his moments of meaningless ‘fretful stir’ and ‘the fever of the world’. The lines
contain two signs of exclamations. Remember the earlier signs of exclamations (long winters
! and trees’). The poet finds a solution for his loneliness, caused by the wintery fever of the
cities’ ‘din’ in the memory of Sylvan Wye! and not in the inspired moments in which he sees
into ‘the life of things’. That is why the ‘Sylvan Wye’! and thee ! become more important
inspite of the ‘blessed’ ‘mood’ and ‘living soul’. The natural conclusion is that the blessed
mood did not cure him of the fever of the world and hence his spirit depends once again upon
the memory of the Sylvan Wye.
4.4 Stanza IV (Lines 58-111)
His Loss and His Gain
In this stanza Wordsworth discusses his immediate present - ‘And now’ (58) This ‘now’
is very significant. It is kindled by the gleams of half-extinguished thought, and contains
‘many recognitions but they are dim and faint. The poet’s problem is that he does not know
why and how the thought was half-extinguished. He wants to know what made the
recognitions dim and faint. That is why, the’ now’ is pregnant with a ‘sad perplexity’. The
poet hopefully believes that Nature will continue to be a source of comfort in his future years.
“And so I dare to hope/though changed, no doubt from what I was’ (165-66) But his present
pleasure is only a pleasing thought. The word ‘sad perplexity’ describes the tragic dilemma of
his mood and compels him to contrast his entire past with his present. As a boy his love for
nature was simply physical. He enjoyed nature with the unthinking delight of a healthy child
whose playground she was. The second stage was reached at the time of his first visit to Wye
in 1793 (“Five years have passed”) like a roe he ran along the rivers, across the mountains
wherever Nature could lead him. His efforts were more like that of a man who is seeking
escape from something he fears, rather than those of a person who is finding pleasure in
something he likes. This passionate love for nature which involved only his physical being
was an attempt to run away from something sinister. The sounding cataract, the tall rock, the
mountain, the deep and gloomy wood, all thrilled him with a physical appetite, a feeling that
amounted to sensuous love for all those objects. This physical pleasure never involved his
mind or stirred his imagination. The time of maddening physical raptures and aching joy is
over. He is a changed man and he does not react to Nature the way he used to. But he does
not weep over this loss. This loss has been more than compensated. But the words ‘I would
believe’ (87) remind us of his sad perplexity. The words ‘I would believe’ and ‘I have
learned’ (88) provide us with the reason of his sad perplexity. This uncertainty regarding the
role of Nature was seen earlier also in stanza II, ‘Nor less 1 trust/To them I may have’ (35-
36). Whenever the poet is transported into a ‘blessed mood’ of sense sublime,’ the poet is
perplexed. He has learnt to look upon Nature differently. He has grown out of his thoughtless
youth and hears in Nature the ‘still, sad music of humanity,’ which is not harsh enough to
compel him to revolt but is sufficient to chasten and tone down his physical delight. He does
not attempt to run away from the still sad music of mankind and seek selfish refuge in Nature

22
which he did in his first visit. The healing influence of Nature (i.e. of its memory) during his
hours of darkness and despair before he visits Tintern Abbey again has enlarged his vision
and chastened his pleasures. The poet now feels in Nature the presence of a spirit, a being
which kindles him with the joy of elevated thoughts. Nature is no more a physical
manifestation of certain beautiful objects which inspire sweet sensations. It is a sublime
spirit, a holy being which he feels everywhere in the light of setting suns, the round ocean,
the blue sky and also in the mind of man. The realization of the essential Oneness of mind of
Man and Nature of all living things, all objects of all thought gives a new dimension to his
love for Nature. The poet in this elevated mood reaffirms his love for Nature in all its
manifestations, all that we behold from this green earth, meadows, woods and mountains.
The physical harmony of stanza I of the greenest of the landscape with the ‘quiet of sky’ now
becomes spiritual harmony. The mighty world of eye and ear is always imbibing what it sees.
There is a continuous mating between the senses and the objects of sense. The mighty world
of eye and ear ‘half creates what it perceives. What is half created is recreated when he
transforms his perceptions into thoughts, and nature thus becomes the anchor of his purest
thoughts. In his reaffirmation of his faith in nature, he feels Nature is his nurse, the guide, the
guardian of his heart and the ‘soul of all my moral being.’
There is an unobtrusive correspondence between ‘the sensations’, ‘the feelings’ and ‘the
gift of aspect more sublime’ of stanza II on the one hand and the ‘glad animal movements’,
the ‘passion’ and the ‘other gifts’ of stanza IV on the other.
His sad perplexity anticipates another kind of uncertainty, which is the subject of stanza
IV and which is concerned with his valuation of changes -the losses and the new gifts which
time has wrought in him. In those introductory lines, past, present and future are closely
correlated; so are the sadness and pleasure. The reason for the sadness and perplexity is the
plain fact that his pleasing thoughts : ‘That in this moment there is life and food For future
years’, although deduced from his past experience are less assured than the tranquil, self-
possessed praising might suggest: they are not more than a ‘hope’ which the poet dares to
entertain.
As the poet contrasts what he is with what he was. we again notice the three stage
ascending travel already perceived in stanza II; from ‘the glad animal movements’ of .
his boyhood through the passionate love of natural forms characteristic of his youth
to the more thoughtful attitude of his early maturity. But in this respect too, the
repetition is incremental: the ascending movement, we might say, takes us higher up
in stanza IV than in stanza II. It takes to a more sweeping vision of cosmic unity. In
the former passage, the poet merely ‘sees’ into the life of things; in the latter, man is
included in his vision and the life of things is seen to reside in an all-pervading
presence, which is described in grandiose terms with an animistic or pantheistic
slant.
In the last lines of stanza IV Wordsworth epitomizes the three aspects of the grand
vision that is inspiring him, i.e. (a) his mystical sense of the unity that brings together the
23
multifarious forms of the cosmos (‘all thinking things, all objects of all thought’) (b) his
conviction that the source of man’s moral or spiritual growth is to be found in all the external
forms of nature (‘all that we behold, all the mighty world of eye and ear’) and (c) his
correlative assurance that Nature acts on the whole of man’s personality (‘sense, thoughts,
heart, soul, and moral being’). [Albert S. Gerard, Exploring Tintern Abbey. Critics on
Wordsworth, Universal Book Depot. New Delhi), pp. 62-64].
Study Notes
58. And now : The poet so far has been telling us what the memory of the river Wye has
been doing for him for five years after he first visited Tintern Abbey. When Wordsworth says
‘And now’, he suddenly turns to his immediate present. ‘And now’.... the picture of the mind
revives again’ (61) in the picture retained by his memory which gains new life when
Wordsworth stands once again in the Wye valley.
58. gleams : if an object or surface gleams, it reflects light because it is shining and
clean
58. half-distinguished thoughts : thoughts which have lost half their significance.
59. ‘recognitions dim and faint’.: Wordsworth’s response to landscape especially when
he compares it with its memory, is not very sharp and bright.
60. sad perplexity : the poet is sadly confused and worried. There is a confusion in
stanza I when the poet is not sure of the source of the smoke’s origin. The poet is confused in
stanza II when before talking about the blessed mood he says ‘Nor less, I trust/To them I may
have owed another gift’..... and confusion travels to stanza III when he says ‘If this/Be but a
vain belief.’
In stanza IV when he talks of ‘now,’ the confusion haunts him all the more and acquires
a tragic dimension - this confusion lies in his fear whether nature will continue to inspire him
in the same way, for in lines 111- 14 (‘Nor perchance if I were not thus taught’) the poet
almost confesses that Nature has stopped teaching him.
61. revives again : The use of word ‘again’ is in continuation of stanza I where ‘again I
hear’ once again/ Do I behold’. ‘again repose and ‘once again I see ‘ were used to describe
the landscape. Here it is used to describe his present mental landscape.
63-67. ‘With pleasing thoughts... came among these hills’ : The poet does not allow this
‘sad perplexity’ to destroy his present pleasure. He even becomes optimistic that this present
moment will be good for his future years in the same way as his first visit helped him for five
long years, but he only ‘dares to hope’ so (65) and he confesses that on his second visit he
finds himself a changed person. The significance of this present moment will be more clear in
stanza V, Wordsworth hopes that the scene will provide not only immediate pleasure, ‘but
life and food/for future years’. And this hope is entertained in spite of the knowledge that his
earlier and more spontaneous joy of nature - a joy which was passionate and unreflecting, has
been left behind with the growth of a new mode of feeling.

24
 70. ‘Wherever nature led’ : all his movements and reflexes were controlled by nature.
70. bounded over: frisked about; leaped about.
73. Flying from something: the fear that Nature inspires rather than the love she instils.
74-85. When the poet first came to the valley there was a passionate zeal and intense
desire for the objects of nature. The falling water, the dark forest and the lofty mountains
inspired in him a spontaneous fccling of love. He loved the objects of Nature for their own
sake.
76 coarser pleasures: his delight in the sights and sounds of Nature was dominated by the
animal instinct of physical enjoyment.
75-76. I cannot... I was : Wordsworth is afraid to contrast his present self with what he
was. Perhaps it involves immense pain and is one of the reasons for his sad perplexity (70).
76. the sounding cataract: The cataract was sounding in 1793 and today it is the soft
inland murmur ‘(4)
80-81. ‘remoter charm ..... supplied’ : The physical gratification was so complete and
fulfilling that he never had to resort to spiritual pleasures which are provided by elevated and
inspired thoughts. Read stanza I (7) ‘thoughts of more deep seclusion’ and stanza II (41) ‘that
serene and blessed mood’.
83. unborrowed from eye .... : The physical visual pleasure provided by the beauty of
Nature was consummate and complete and it was never accompanied by elevated thoughts.
There was no need for him to stir his mind.
83. That time is past... dizzy raptures : Wordsworth begins this stanza with the words
‘And now’. His life. not only of ‘the five years” interval about which he talked m stanza II &
III and in which restoration was mixed with some transcendental moods but his entire life-
span gets sandwiched between (58-60) and That time is past ... dizzy raptures (83-85); The
poem has moved through one complete circle of his life which begins with ‘coarser
pleasures’ and moves on to dizzy ‘raptures’ and ends in a ‘sad perplexity.’ The poem does
not grow in such a linear manner or we can say that the timewise growth of the poem is not
chronological or historical. There is double time in the poem, the inner time i.e. the time
which describes the movements of his inward eye and the physical time which says that he is
five years older and different. ‘In counterpoint to this outer time, is the inner time which
makes the experience of the poet’s visit recoverable in the memory. It is a time which is not
homogeneous’.... but is full of ups and downs of ascents and descents.
87. ‘I would believe’ : Wordsworth is not certain of what he is saying. The poet is not
certain whether nature is really responsible for this ‘abundant recompense’. This confusion is
there in the earlier stanza also and perhaps accounts for his sad perplexity.
88. ‘I have learnt’ : Wordsworth does not elaborate this learning process, he does not say
whether nature taught him and therefore he learnt or certain other things made him learn to

25
look upon nature differently from what he used to do. The poem now ushers in a different
phase and acquires a new dimension.
88-93. ‘For I have learnt... chasten and subdue’ : The still sad music of mankind is not
harsh and jarring. It does not make him revolt because this music is the ultimate fate of all
men or Mankind, therefore the music is ‘still,’ (remember the phrase ‘quiet’ of the sky and
Hermit with capital H in stanza I) and it has a chastening effect. This is a mood of resignation
and simultaneously a mood of universal sympathy.
93-99. ‘And I have felt... in the mind of man’ : This is the second ascent of the poet’s
mind - the first ascent is seen in stanza II where he can see into the life of things. In this
second ascent of the mind the things get rarefied. He feels a special ‘presence deeply
interfused’ and its dwelling place is the light of setting suns, the round ocean, the living air
and the ‘blue sky’ and ‘in the mind of man.’ All these places are animated by this special
presence, or a ‘living soul’ but they are living silently (Remember the emphasis on ‘quiet’ in
stanza I and his dislike, for ‘din’ in stanza II) and without any turbulence. The second ascent
of mind in stanza IV is different from that of stanza II in the sense that it includes mankind,
the ‘universal mind of man’ and not the mind of an individual though all this happens in the
mind of an individual, the poet Wordsworth.
100-102. ‘A motion ... all things’ : There is great emphasis on the ‘All( ness)’ of the
universe and this all(ness) is vibrated though a motion and a spirit. “Both motion in the
physical world and spirit in the mental world that which not only prompts the thoughts of
men but also sustains the laws (of gravity) by which all objects move; and which therefore is
doubly present in all experience (rolls through all things).
102. Still : despite the loss and despite his uncertainty regarding the source which
compensates this loss, he still maintains his relationship with nature since it can still animate
his present with his past by activating his memory.
102-106. ‘Therefore I am ... and ear’ : This reminds us of Stanza I, ‘The steep and lofty
cliffs’, ‘the ... cottage ground ‘all clad in one green line’ and ‘the quiet of the sky’ The only
difference is that the great cosmic unity of the stanza I is here invested with a living presence
and includes the mind of man.
106-107. ‘both what they half create and what perceive’ : Take in at once the landscape
of the world ... and half create the wondrous world they see.
109. ‘anchor of my purest thoughts’ : Nature becomes the anchor of his purest thoughts.
111. ‘Soul of all my moral being’ : In Stanza II, III, IV Wordsworth lives on two planes.
He talks of lonely rooms’ and ‘fever of the world’. He also talks of ‘life of things’ of a
presence which unites the ‘life of things’ with the ‘mind of man’. Wordsworth, here, is more
concerned with his moral being, an elevated self which sees beyond his personal problems
into ‘the still sad music of mankind’. Nature is the soul of all his moral being. The word ‘all’
includes world of nature and the world of man.

26
4.5 Stanza V (112-159)
Brother-Sister and Mother Nature
Wordsworth feels obliged that but for the education given to him by Nature the pain
being inflicted by the gradual decay of his genial powers would have been unbearable. The
rest of the poem is addressed to his sister Dorothy who is accompanying him on the present
tour, Wordsworth sees in his sister Dorothy his earlier self. Her voice, the shooting lights of
her eyes, express the same delight that he experienced on his earlier visit He assures her that
Nature never fails a person who is devoted to her. By reliving his past in his sister,
Wordsworth is trying to assure himself that Nature never betrays. Nature continues to teach
and elevate a person to higher levels of happiness. Nature will always help her in her hours of
darkness and despair during the dreary intercourse of daily life and the belief that all we
behold in nature is full of blessings will be more firmly rooted. While talking to his sister.
Wordsworth is again meditating over what he has gained and lost during the five years: the
five years which separate the two visits. The presence of Dorothy (on this second occasion)
who is almost an image of his former self dramatically juxtaposes the two visions and
recreates the tortuous but sacred Pilgrimage which his soul undertook during these five years.
He prays the same benign influence should smile on Dorothy He hopes that for her …
ecstasies should be matured into a sublime-pleasure. Here he again emphasizes the role of
memory which is the ‘sacred’ dwelling place for all sweet sounds of harmonies’ and always
comes to the rescue of a person in his hours of despair and agony and elevates him with the
healing thoughts of tender joy. ‘Wordsworth while exhorting his sister is recapitulating his
personal experience and unconsciously seeking shelter in his love for Dorothy. That is why
the elevated moods of stanza II and IV are suddenly substituted by his dear dear, friend. He
finds his past reflected in her eyes and he wants his present to be Dorothy’s future.
Remember Dorothy was not a child as it appears in this stanza. Dorothy was only two
years younger to him. On his second visit when he finds that his response to the great
landscape is no longer the same, and though he tries to reassure himself that the loss has been
more than compensated, yet his need for her love suddenly becomes more intense. That is
why he wants to share his present mood with her. He wants her to remember that they stood
together on the bank of this delightful stream. (In 1848 when Dorothy was incurably ill
Wordsworth read out this poem to her) And he came back, a worshipper of Nature, never
tired in this service, with a warmer love. This warmth of his love was full of deeper zeal of a
holier love. Dorothy is not merely a companion but also a co-observer of the green pastoral
landscape. She is herself a part of Wordsworth’s sober pleasure in the ‘steep and lofty cliffs’
which are the more precious to him for her sake. The nobility of human heart and its need for
honest love, feed on this green pastoral landscape. The landscape because of this love for
human heart becomes ‘More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!’ Wordsworth
discovers himself in stanza II and IV when he sees into the life of things and celebrates ‘A
motion and spirit, that impels/All thinking objects and all objects of all thought’, and unites
the mind of the man with the motion that governs Nature. All these loftier moments

27
Wordsworth dares to hope (65) and would believe (87) were due to the memory of river Wye.
But these loftier moments do not sustain Wordsworth for long. Wordsworth rediscovers
himself in Stanza V when the landscape becomes dearer to him not for the comfort its
memory always provided him. ‘The gleams of half-distinguished thoughts/ with Many
recognitions dim and faint and somewhat of sad perplexity’ (58-60) is not sufficient. It only
helps him to bear the decay of his genial spirits. The landscape is more dear to him, because
of his love for Dorothy which is real and sustaining. The poem is a journey from loneliness to
human love. The poem is a proclamation of the belief that lonely flights of imagination may
solve the mystery of the unintelligible world, and enable him to ‘see into the life of things and
may unite’ ‘all living things with all objects of all thought’ but do not sustain a man for long.
It is the human love which is real and certain that makes the nature more meaningful.
The wording and structure of stanza III and IV are such as to intimate some diffidence
on the part of Wordsworth as the connection between the beauteous forms’ and the blessed
mood as well as about the mystical significance attributed to the blessed mood. But now
Wordsworth puts forward a far more disquieting suggestion that he might become completely
cut off from Nature, that he might no longer be taught by Nature and the ‘language of sense’.
As J. F. Danby (The Simple Wordsworth, Studies in the Poems, London 1960, pp 94-6) has
observed: ‘the ecstatic harmony is only a phase in a larger moment that passes on in
individual experience, to eventual loss .... Wordsworth had the most Nature could give and
the more, therefore it could take away. He includes the record of bright experience in his
poem but is aware of the inevitability of loss’. And once more he falls on a matter of
ascertained fact as he had done in stanza III. The sudden turning to Dorothy, who has not yet
been mentioned in the poem, may sound unexpected; yet it fits perfectly into the whole
scheme, as should be clear by now. which pulsates between the two poles of Wordsworth’s
inspiration. The matter of fact objectivity of his perception of nature (Stanza I) the deep
certainty of his own psychological experience (Stanza III) and the equally objective and
comforting presence of his sister (Stanza V) on the one hand and his lofty but subjective
aspiration to gain insight into the life of things (Stanza II) and to an intuition of the unity of
the cosmos (Stanza IV) on the other. This systematical pattern with its alternating rhythms of
ascent towards uncommon heights of mystical speculation and descent to the bedrock of
sensory and psychological certainty is fundamental to the total meaning of the poem.
The address to Dorothy is an indirect way for Wordsworth to turn back to his own self
and such assurance as he may have gained so far. Indeed the last, stanza repeats, on a smaller
scale, the ambitious time scheme of the whole poem. In his sister’s present (16-10 and 134-
37) Wordsworth relives his own past as recreated in stanza IV. The imaginary landscape
which surrounds Dorothy, with its misty mountain winds is reminiscent of the picturesque
presentation of Nature in stanza IV rather than the quiet harmony of stanza I. Likewise
Dorothy’s ‘wild eyes’ and wild ecstasies, recall her brother’s past ‘aching joy’s’ and ‘dizzy
raptures’ rather than his present soberly meditative mood. The identification is pushed so far
that Wordsworth projects his own present into his sister’s future (137-146); not only will her
mood be one of sober pleasure, but her memory of nature will play the same restoring role
28
that is assigned to it in very similar terms in the beginning of stanza II and III. ‘lovely forms’
(140) and ‘all sweet sounds and harmonies (142) echo with significant precision the beaute-
ous forms (123) and the sensations sweet (27) of stanza II. They will provide healing
thoughts, (144) analogous to the ‘tranquil restoration (130) to which she will be able to turn
in times of ‘solitude, or fear or pain or grief (143) in the same way as her brother now turns to
his recollections of natural beauty for solace in lovely rooms and ‘mid the din of towns and
cities’ (25-6) in ‘hours of weariness’ (27) when ‘oppressed by the fretful stir unprofitable’
and the ‘fever of the world’ (52-3). Dorothy is thus presented as a sort of duplication of her
brother and the close correspondence of their characters and interests and sensibilities may do
much to account for the feeling that existed between them, But while in -turning to his sister,
Wordsworth is in fact turning imaginatively to his own self and experience, there is, in his
anticipation of Dorothy’s future as identical with his present, an omission which so far as 1
know, has passed unnoticed and is both puzzling and significant.
There is a hardly a line in the last stanza which does not refer to some earlier passage.
But it contains nothing that might be considered as echoing those parts of the poem where,
clearly Wordsworth’s poetic power is at its most intense: the end of stanza II and IV. Nor is
there any reference in it to acts of kindness and love or to the ‘still sad music of humanity’;
indeed human society is invoked in negative terms (128-31) strongly reminiscent of the first
part of stanza II and III. In other words all the elements which carry with them overtones,
however slight, of diffidence or uncertainly, are left out of the concluding stanza. And the last
description of Nature’s benevolence (122-34) is couched in terms as general as those of
stanza III.
‘But the dynamic nucleus which gives the poem its impetus is of course perplexity.
Wordsworth had reached the age when a man pauses to reckon up his losses and his gains for
the first time. What his losses were was quite clear to him; he had lost the intimate emotional
relationship with nature that was his five years before. The gains were less obvious ‘for the
other
gifts’ twice mentioned in the poem are of a less ascertainable nature dealing as they do with
metaphysical intuitions. Twice in the course of this poem Wordsworth’s inspiration gathers
force and soars to mystical heights. But although his poetic eloquence testifies to
the intensity of accompanying emotion, his intellectual honesty prevents him
from presenting as fact what is only conjectural. Hence the perplexity. For if the other gifits
are but vain belief, the loss, obviously is total and irrevocable. (Alberts Gerard: Exploring
Tintern Abbey, Critics on Wordsworth, Universal Book Stall, New Delhi, pp 65-67).
Study Notes
112-119. ‘For thou art with me … may I behold in thee what I once was’ : The poet pays a
glowing tribute to his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth. She lifted him out of the depression and
helped to resolve the mental conflict which afflicted the poet from 1793 to 1797. She not only
restored his faith in life but also facilitated his return to nature. The poet knows that had
Dorothy not helped him, he might have ever remained a frustrated and depressed individual.
29
See, how he is grateful to his sister Dorothy in whose eyes he sees the gleams of his past
existence. In her he finds the same wild exultant delight in nature that he had experienced in
his earlier years.
These lines contain a confession that Nature does not teach him anymore. If he were not ‘thus
taught’ he might seek inspiration in his sister’s less tutored’ sense of nature, which, echoes
that of his own youth when his pleasure was not in ‘the joy/of elevated thoughts’ but a
spontaneous life reflected in her ‘wild eyes’. The beginnings of Stanza IV and Stanza V
reflect Wordsworth’s longing to reject his present and relive in his past. In this stanza
Wordsworth turns from nature to his sister who is not his ‘nurse’, ‘The guide’ ‘the guardian
of my heart” the soul of all my moral being” but only a companion of his heart,’ My dear,
dear friend’. Wordsworth is trying to recreate his past, but not alone through the memory of
those beauteous form but through his dear friend, his sister Dorothy.
122. ‘Knowing that Nature never did betray’ : Wordsworth does not say that nature
never would betray just as he said ‘I would believe’ in Stanza IV (87). Wordsworth in Stanza
IV admits that he is a changed person but he is not very certain that change means growth,
but he knows that his loss is real and his gains are the products of certain inspired moments
which are not enduring. So when he says Nature never did betray he is trying to reassure
himself or even trying to conceal and contain a doubt that though Nature remains the same,
man does not react to it in the same way. Stanza IV does express his longing for the past. He
now wants to relive his past by recreating it in his sister’s innocent self. Nature never did
betray was his experience in the past - but it may betray.
125-134. ‘From joy to... is full of blessings’ : Wordsworth recounts his experiences–
‘from joy to joy, with quietness and beauty, ‘that all which we behold is full of blessings.’
But it is not the joy of elevated thoughts, the quiet is not the quiet of the sky. There is nothing
elevated here, Wordsworth paints in these lines all those factors which are inimical to Nature
and an innocent heart - ‘evil tongues’, ‘sneers of selfish men’ ‘greetings where no kindness
is’; ‘the dreary intercourse of daily life’. The lofty thoughts will not help them by not
allowing these inhuman factors to ‘prevail against’ them. Wordsworth focusses natures’
blessing and their role to a very limited canvas of ‘dreary intercourse of daily life.’ There is
no mention of the ‘blessed mood’, ‘the living soul’ and the ‘presence’ of a sense sublime.
Wordsworth’s doubt, his confusion, his sad perplexity is turning real, he avoids them and
turns to his love for his sister which is real.
134-137. ‘Therefore let the moon... against thee’: Wordsworth imagines these
experiences for his sister.
137-146. ‘in years after... my exhortations’ : Wordsworth says that Dorothy’s mind will
mature in the same way his own mind matured. The memory will play a similar role.
Wordsworth says that the sweet memories will help her in fighting solitude, fear, pain and
grief. He does not mention the still sad music of humanity.

30
 146-155. ‘Nor perchance ... we of holier love’ : The fact we stood together becomes
more significant than everything else. The present scene is not valuable for its actuality but
only for its memory. A time may come when he is incapacitated to read the message in her
eyes but ‘he came again with a ‘warmer love – oh!’ The love is warmer since his sister is also
present. The sign of exclamation carries a special message. The earlier sings of exclamation
were concerned with Wordsworth’s personal loneliness. Now that loneliness is no more, not
because of nature but because of Dorothy therefore ‘a warmer love -oh !’ He is a worshipper
of Nature and he has come untired to perform his duty to pay his tribute, but the moment is of
special significance since the beauty of Nature is reanimated because of Dorothy’s presence.
155-159. ‘Nor... though ... for thy sake’ : The landscape of stanza I which was beautiful,
quiet and serene which spoke of Great Cosmic Harmony now becomes more meaningful
because it is full of human love, the human presence is not the Hermit or the vagrant dwellers
who were remote for him. The human is his sister Dorothy, his ‘dear dear friend.’ The poem
begins with a sign of exclamation ‘the five long winters!’ depicting the misery of a lonely
human heart and ends with a sign of exclamation. The pastoral forms are ‘dear to him both
for themselves and for thy sake ! The poem celebrates the victory of human companionship
of the holy heart. He loves nature but loves man first.
Wordsworth, recognizing in his youth (but thoughtlessly recognizing it) a sacred quality
in Nature, now recognizes a similar sacred quality in man’s subjective response to nature. He
has always loved Nature, but connecting that love now with human affections and obligations
he finds it a ‘holier love’. (G.S. Fraser).
Tintern Abbey, as you have noticed, is not primarily about a place. It is about
Wordsworth revisiting a place and about the change that has come over him in these five
years. Five years ago young Wordsworth was not disillusioned with the French Revolution.
His response to Nature was ecstatic and passionate. “The sounding cataract’ haunted him like
a passion’. But that time is past. All its ‘aching joys’ and ‘dizzy raptures’ are no more. He
now looks on nature with a soberer eye, linking his joy in it with the still sad music of
humanity’.
5. A Critical Review

The entire poem is necessitated by the fact that poet’s response to the landscape in 1978
is not the same as it was in 1793 or as it was before 1793 when he was a small boy. For
Wordsworth the entire landscape is and has been one individual— O. Sylvan wye! wanderer
through the woods.’ Even today the landscape is one individual “clad in one green hue”. So,
the revisit is a meeting between two individuals i.e. the-landscape and Wordsworth which
takes place after a nagging gap ‘of five long summers and five long winters!” Throughout the
period of five years, the individual in the landscape (a beloved one – ‘an appetite, a feeling
and a love’) has been comforting and inspiring him in more than one way. Probably the
fountain of these inspirations is exhausted or inspiration is just not enough to meet
Wordsworth’s immediate predicament that he feels the need to revisit his old beloved for a

31
renewal of strength and for a continuation of the relationship. When an individual revisits his
beloved after a long separation, the revisit is occasioned by a concealed desire for an
immediate reunion. If this reunion does not provide the desired relief, the individual wants to
be certain whether he is meeting the same person or somebody else. He starts looking at his
eyes, lips, at every part of his body from head to foot in order to determine whether the
person is the same or not. That is what Wordsworth does in stanza I. He catalogues
everything “mountain springs’ steep and lofty cliffs’ ‘the quiet of the sky’ the orchards tufts”
and the “pastoral farms green to the very door’. The entire person is the same, it breathes the
same spirit and yet the same reciprocity is not established. ‘The poem opens with a cry like
that of a man awaking distressed from a bad dream’.
‘Five years have passed: five summers, with the length of five long winters!’
Wordsworth’s hope of life beginning to flow once more from a spring that has been
stopped, is not immediately rewarded and as yet remains a hope betrayed. Though the
relationship is not continued or established in the same way as he expected but there is a sigh
of relief that he is at least away from a culture which inhibits all relationship, deadens feeling,
swamps the sensibility and promotes selfishness. That is why inspite of the fact that
Wordsworth’s expectations do not find a desired result, he is not desperate, he is not
frustrated. The unsatisfied hope lands him into a mood of wistfulness. The poet imagines that
the woods are entertaining a human activity and the Sylvan Wye is participating in this
activity: ‘the wreaths of smoke/Sent up in silence from among the trees!’ The entire stanza
speaks of wistfulness and a sense of longing.
Notice especially the motion towards the ‘Hermit’ at the end of the first paragraph: from
the actual through the imaginative to the “imaginary”. Imaginatively the woods, take on
human activity: dressed up in themselves and set free metaphorically, they seem to enjoy
being there. But the exclamation seems to be prompted by the wish : imagine ! “Vagrant
dwellers!” “houseless woods!” These are people wishfully imagined by Wordsworth to be
living in Nature, and living no doubt in contentment that Wordsworth associated with Nature
rather than the actual destitution one associates with vagrancy. The Hermit unlike the
imaginary vagrant community that proceeds him, is completely alone. He is the man who has
renounced the world and the human community. The passage ends with the present indicative
replacing the conditional: ‘The Hermit sits alone”. (Richard J. Onorato, The Character of the
Poet, Princeton University Press. 1971, pp. 45-46)
It is a wild secluded scene which no more invites Wordsworth to join it rather sends
Wordsworth away to ‘thoughts of more deep seclusion’. The Hermit thus becomes a bridge
between the ‘wild secluded scene’ and the thoughts of more deep seclusion’. The imaginary
solitary figure of the Hermit is the purest form of human mind religiously unwilling to be
polluted by the ‘fever of the world’, conveys Wordsworth’s concealed desire for a similar
escape. The Hermits’ escape we shall see becomes Wordsworth’s chief concern in this poem.
This wishfully projected figure of the Hermit does more than one thing. It tells us that the
Hermit’s philosophical escape of this world is different from young Wordsworth’s escape
32
into nature (in 1793). It also tells us about Wordsworth’s tragic and agonising fatigue of this
world and his wishful desire to be there (in the valley of the Wye) as a Hermit and his
incapacity to do so. and it also tells us of his conflict to decide whether this Hermit’s
renunciation which refuses to accept mankind permanently is better than his earlier escape
wherein he ran away from mankind only temporarily. The Hermit is thus an imaginary figure
projected into a real landscape, but it is also real figure projected into the imaginary
landscape of Wordsworth’s mind.
The fact which the poet does not want to confront just now is that on this physical revisit
the desired physical and emotional reunion does not take place “The Hermit, and “the
thoughts of more deep seclusion” taken together, suggest that Wordsworth’s visiting this
particular landscape cannot satisfy the inner needs that give rise to this visit. Wordsworth
now shuts his eye to the immediate present and takes shelter in his memory of the landscape.
‘The wishful quality of his recollections of these beauteous forms’ tells us what they have
been to him in the interim since his last visit. How often, Wordsworth says, his spirit has
turned to Sylvan Wye and these ‘beauteous forms’ when “amid the many shapes of joyless
daylight”, his heart has been oppressed by the “fever of the world”. (The Character of the
Poet, p. 48)
Wordsworth’s present compels him to activate his past to the extent that it becomes a
living present for him and be starts moving away from the actual landscape into the memory
of the landscape. Wordsworth now lives in the melting pot of a reanimated past, (here is an
aroma of spiritual ascents, vaporous moments which lift him heavenwards, make him see
“into the life of things”. There are crystals of concrete physical happiness, ‘of sensations
sweet’, of “aching joys” and “dizzy raptures” and there are vast deserts of ‘fret and fever’, of
dreary intercourse of daily life’, ultimately the whole place vibrates with the still sad music of
humanity. Wordsworth while articulating his remembered self is deliberately denying voice
to his immediate present.
Perhaps the poet travels into his past and his sweet associations of the landscape through
the agency of the memory to regain strength to confront his agonising present. First he travels
into his immediate past in which his mind celebrates the memory of these ‘beauteous forms’
and then he travels back to 1793 when his fevered mind needed an escape from the world of
men and his entire pleasure in nature was physical alone.
When the revisit does not consummate into a reunion Tintern Abbey becomes an attempt
by Wordsworth to escape from the ‘heavy and weary’ weight of this ‘unintelligible world’
into a mood sublime’ and become a living soul: ‘A motion and a spirit, that impels/All
thinking objects/All objects of all thoughts/ And rolls through all things’. This escape unites
the soul of his being with the spirit of the landscape. The physical self of the Landscape is
given a mind which through Wordsworth’s mind plays the music of entire mankind. This
escape also unites his past with his present, a desired reunion which in reality has been denied
to him. His wishes for a renewal of his relationship with Nature which may continue to feed

33
his future years is also granted by this escape. But this escape does not sustain him for long
since the Hermit -like attainment achieved in this escape is not enduring. Wordsworth
becomes more sensitively aware of his miserable ‘now’ of his “sad perplexity” and of “the
still sad music of humanity’.
The imaginary ‘Hermit’ of the landscape becomes the real Hermit of Wordsworth’s
imaginary mental landscape. The meditations of this real Hermit help Wordsworth to
transcend his body and see into the life of things and seek oneness with the spirit of all
objects but this achievement is only momentary and therefore the hermit now loses his capital
H since it was meditating on an imaginary plane and not on the bed-rock of reality.
Wordsworth is a ‘changed man’ whether this change is gain and therefore a mental growth or
a loss and a decay- is ‘Wordsworth’s sad perplexity. But one thing is certain Wordsworth
rejects the Hermit with capital H. He renounces his renunciation and becomes a hermit who
feels that Nature also ‘sees’ into the still sad music of humanity. The same thing we shall see
happening in The Immortality Ode The entire process is reversed, Hermit renounces mankind
to attain the harmony of Nature. Now Nature denounces Hermit’s withdrawal and starts
living with the still sad music of humanity A wishfully imagined Hermit, Hermitises
Wordsworth when he tries to relive his past with the memory of those “beauteous forms’ only
to de-hermitise him into a man who is aware of the universal and eternal misery of mankind.
The view of the universe as a great machine, in which life is fostered only to be
inexorably and permanently destroyed, is one of Wordsworth’s great preoccupations. The
“Lucy’ poems are, for example, centrally concerned with this aspect of nature. The peace that
nature inspires in Tintern Abbey is possible only in moments of great intellectual detachment,
when the grand pattern can be enjoyed with the kind of pleasure that is given by mathematics.
But when the poet applies his mind more closely to the situation of actual men and women in
a world so constructed he is inevitably confronted with
the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
(old, pain and labour, and all fleshly ills.
And mighty poets in their misery dead. (Resolution and Independence 113-16)
This is not to deny the validity of Tintern Abbey but to remind ourselves that by its elevated
detachment it is an expression of the ‘heart that lives alone’. (Geoffrey Durant, Wordsworth
and the Great System, Cambridge University Press, p. 106).
The last stanza celebrates the need of human love and human relationship. Nature only
becomes a living language through which this relationship can flourish peacefully.
Wordsworth becomes united with his past and aspires to a living continuity with his future
through his love for Dorothy. The entire process of ‘Hermitization’ of escape into spiritual or
mystical flights is deliberately avoided. Although man’s world is dehumanized and
dehumanizing, yet it has to be born with through human love which feeds upon the memory of
‘the beauteous forms’,

34
 Nor wilt thou then forget
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake :
The revisit to the landscape is an abrupt shock, it makes him realise that he is a changed
man, that he has lost his capacity to respond to nature and to live with nature as he used to do.
Wordsworth cannot withstand this shock, he moves away from the landscape, and retires into
the world of his memory, but cannot stay there for long. Wordsworth returns to his immediate
present, sad and perplexed. He is disconnected with his past, he is disunited with the
landscape. The landscape does not revive him. But when he relives his past in his sister’s
eyes, he gets revived he gets Reconnected with his past, he get Re-united with the landscape.
Wordsworth’s belief, that a preferred relationship with Nature is renewable “through all the
years of this our life “is maintained not by the landscape but by Dorothy, his love for Dorothy
and Dorothy’s love for him.
Wordsworth’s testament to nature in Tintern Abbey reveals the fortitude of a stoic; it
erects a defence against the assaults of existence:
Oh ! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear Sister ! and this prayer! make,
knowing that Nature never did betray,
................................
is full of blessings.
It can be instructive to analyze the statement that “nature never did betray/The heart that
loved her.’ One remarks the feminine personification; also the attribution of human agency.
Most of all, however, the note of protestation is the striking feature of this passage. It is not
necessary to say that one will not be betrayed unless fear of the betrayal does in fact exist.
(Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin, Princeton University Press, pp
159-60.)
‘In Tintern Abbey’ Wordsworth is adjusting his disturbed feelings about past and present
to each other. The artist composing the elements of his personal experience to present a
continuous sense of himself in time, seems to achieve a feeling of composure. The
complexity of the process is awesome; and one submits willingly to control of the person
attempting it. It is difficult even to master the several senses of self, time, and place as they
are adjusted to each other; and this is not only the case by the time the poem ends, but after
one has read it several times. When one begins to think about the argument, however, the
spell of the poem is broken, and begins to see the man who needs order beneath the artist
who attempts to impose it. (Richard J. Onorato, The Character of the Poet, Princeton
University Press 1971, p.87).

35
6. Check your Understanding
1. Point out lines that show/describe the following:
(a) Wordsworth’s belief that the Universal Spirit pervades every object of nature.
(b) his love of nature in his boyhood.
(c) the mystical experience that enables him to see into the life of things.
2. What is the ‘loss’ the poet refers to in line 89?
3. Describe briefly the three stages in the development of the poet’s attitude to Nature.
4. Explain the following phrases /lines:
(i) sensations sweet
(ii) that serene and blessed mood
(iii) life of things
(iv) fretful stir
(v) fever of the world
(vi) still sad music of humanity
5. “Nor less I trust./To them I may have owed another gift” What is this other gift the
poet is referring to ?
6. Explain the following lines with reference to the context :
(a) These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and’ mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
(b) The picture of the mind revives again;
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

36
7. Ode : Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

“The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural Piety”
I
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight.
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore:-
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which 1 have seen 1 now can see no more.
II
The Rainbow comes and goes.
And love is the Rose.
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare.
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair:
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
III
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief;
A timely utterance gave that thought relief.
And 1 again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
1 hear the Echoes through the mountains throng.
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep.
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea

37
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;--
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
IV
Ye blessed Creatures, 1 have heard the call
Ye to each other make; 1 see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss. I feel —I feel it all.
Oh evil day ! If I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning.
This sweet May-morning.
And the Children are culling
On every side.
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers: while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm:-
I hear. I hear, with joy I hear! 50
-- But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
V
One birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God who is our home :
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
38
Upon the growing Boy.
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy; 70
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ,
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
VI
Earth fills her lap with pleasure of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim, 80
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
VII
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses.
A six year’s Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where ’mid work of his own hand he lies.
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 90
Some fragment from his dream of human life.
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And up to this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his “humorous stage”
with all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
39
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
VIII
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul’s immensity.
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by; 120
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life !
IX
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 130
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast
Not for these I raise 140
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
40
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections.
Those shadowy recollections.
Which, be they what they may, 150
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisv years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be. 160
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
X
Then sing, ye Birds sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound 170
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour,
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower:
We will grieve not, rather find 180
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
41
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves.
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in My heart of hearts I feel your might; 190
I only have relinquished one delight;
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
1 love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they:
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; 200
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

42
8. The Immortality Ode: A Detailed Analysis

The poem begins with a declaration in the form of an epigram. The declaration says that the
‘Child’ is the father of’ Man” and the entire poem is an elaboration of this statement. Both the
words ‘The Child and the ‘Man’ begin with capital letters since they represent different states
of the soul in the evolutionary growth of life. The declaration that the ‘Child’ is the father of
Man leads him into a wish for a natural piety’ which should make his entire life a continuum,
cementing each moment with the other, not allowing his days to be isolated events of joys or
grief’s, of listlessness or mad endeavors. The poet does not want the harsh realities of life
should disrupt the flow of childhood blossoming into a man as a person grows. The music
and power of natural piety should condense the entire process of growth into one celestial
experience. This is possible only when the natural piety which a child possesses remains,
undiluted, unwrinkled and unalloyed. The first line of this epigram states a gospel and the
next two lines contain a wish that essence of the gospel should flow throughout his life fusing
one moment with the other without any fracture. A truth is announced and wish is prayed for.
The entire poem is an answer to this prayer. That is why the epigram is given within inverted
commas.
8.1 Stanza–1
The Loss - Earth
These lines announce the loss of a “celestial light’ which could endow upon earth and all
its aspects, the glory of heaven, the fall of man from Eden is not easily accepted by the child
and the memory of heaven with all its freshness and glory is still retained by him like a
dream. This dream he projects on every common sight he comes across. The child’s vision
has nothing to do with man’s physical power of seeing. Be it day or night, everything puts on
a heavenly robe, the child’s vision celebrates Wordsworth’s theme of wholeness of life in
man and nature. The child carries this sense of wholeness but the process of growth snatches
this vision. The elusive quality of child’s vision is suggested by its dream-like freshness and
glory. Dreams reflect the objects not as they are but as one desires them to be, The
ambiguous character of the child’s vision as remembered by the man is implicit therefore in
the first stanza of the poem. What the speaker has lost, it is suggested, something which is
fleeting, shadowy and strange, but something which possesses a quality of insight and
wholeness which no amount of other will duplicate. It is visionary; that is , like a vision a
revelation. (Cleanth Brooks. The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen University, London, p. 104)
Study Notes
4. appareled: especially dressed up for an occasion
4. Celestial light: light coming from sky or heaven, here it may mean ‘something
different from ordinary, earthly, scientific light; it is a light of the mind, shining even in
darkness– “by night or day” and “it is perhaps similar to the light which is praised in the

43
invocation to the third book of Paradise Lost” (Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, p.
126).
8.2 Stanza II
The Loss-The Sky
In this stanza Wordsworth further moans his loss. He moves from earth to sky. There was a
time when common things were glorious, but now even the glorious things are common. The
moon and the sun, celebrate their birth in the sky, the way the child does in the Stanza 1, by
clothing the earth with celestial light. The rainbow participates in this cosmic dance and like a
dream it comes and goes. In this Stanza, the earth or ‘lovely Rose’ and, the waters on a starry
night, acquire their beauty, not from the Child, but from the moon and the sun. The Stanza
begins with the birth of the moon when the skies are bare, the night then ages into stars, and
ends in the glorious birth of sun. The quality of the child’s vision is extended to the moon and
the sun. But the poet cannot share their pleasure, since he no longer possesses the vision of a
child. In both these stanzas, the light, whether it comes from Child’s visionary powers or
from moon and sun, plays an important role. The rainbow phenomenon, the divine splitting
of common light into a heavenly spectrum, is symbolic of Child’s visionary powers. The poet
knows that Nature is as beautiful as it once used to be, but he cannot perceive this beauty,
since his mind is not as perceptive as it used to be. The stanza also contrasts the aging of man
with the immortal freshness of life in Nature with which the child at once attunes his mind by
establishing, a relationship. The Rainbow, the transfigured light, symbolic of Child’s
transfiguring celestial light, the Rose, symbolic of earth’s beauty and the Moon a source of
light which destroys darkness on the earth, all, start with capital letters, proclaiming a
wholeness of life which the poet cannot feel anymore.
Wordsworth says that the rainbow and the rose are beautiful. We expect him to go on to
say the same of the moon. But here, with one of the nicest touches in the poem, he reverses
the pattern to say : “The Moon doth with delight/Look round her when the heavens are bare”.
The moon is treated as if she were the speaker himself in his childhood, seeing the visionary
gleam as she looks round her with joy. The poet cannot see the gleam, but he implies that the
moon can see it, and suggests how she can; she sheds the gleam herself; she lights up and
thus creates her world. This seems to me a hint which Wordsworth is to develop later more
explicitly, that it is the child, looking round him with joy, who is at once both the source and
recipient of the vision. (Ibid. pp. 104-105).
Study Notes
3-4 : The moon is celebrating its birth: When the moon rises the sky is bare, there are
no stars. It is a source of light and it lights up its world. The moon does the same thing which
a child does at the time of birth.
7. : The sun also celebrates its birth the way the Child and the Moon do.
9. : The earth has lost its heavenly splendour. The Child’s mind unites the earth with
heaven by dressing it up in a celestial light. This glory is gone when a person grows up.

44
8.3 Stanza III
From Sight to Sound - The Loss
The poet moves from sight to sound. Wordsworth knowing that he can no longer experience
the celestial light, or join the Moon and the Sun in their glorious splendour closes his eyes
and tries to feel the beauty of Nature the way a blind man would do. In stanza II, the Rose
(i.e. flowers or plants) acquires a special significance since it is a willing participant in the
celebrations of Nature as compared to the poet who is not even a passive sharer. The poet is
only an inert spectator. Stanza III now includes animals also. The poet listens to the music of
birds and lambs gambolling to the music of tabor. A thought of grief isolates the poet from
other animals. The poet’s hearing of the music of birds and lambs is interrupted when he is
compelled to listen to a thought of personal grief. (It is this personal thought of grief or joy
which divides the poet or man from other men, and from Nature in its many manifestations
and breaks the thread of natural piety, the poet wished for in the epigram). A timely utterance
saves the poet and the season of personal grief is not allowed to spoil the season of ‘the heart
of May’; the season of joyful creation. This timely utterance according to Professor Garrod is
the Rainbow poem and according to Lionel Trilling is the utterance of the leech-gatherer in
the poem ‘Resolution and Independence’. The sound of cataracts is an announcement of their
victory and poet’s defeat. The victory of ‘blow their trumpets’ marks the poet’s defeat who is
no more an active participant in Nature’s celebrations on a holiday and only listens to the
Echoes. The ‘Child of Joy’, ‘the Shepherd boy’ ‘the heart of May’ the Beast’, ‘the Echoes
and the winds’ all enjoy the celebrations of nature on a holiday. Wordsworth deliberately
chooses a capital letter for all these agencies of Nature, since they are gaily participating
while the poet is only a passive listener who is requesting an invitation from the shepherd boy
“let me hear thy shouts’. Shepherd boy is the only human being in the entire scene, that is the
reason for the exclamation of the poet. We have moved from pure celestial light to pure
celestial music (sound). The shepherd boy also, like the wind, or the Echoes, shouts, and does
not speak the language of men.
With Stanza III the emphasis is shifted from sight to sound. It is a very cunning touch. The
poet has lamented the passing of a glory from the earth. But he can, he suggests, at least hear
the mirth of the blessed creatures for whom the earth still wears that glory.
Stanza III is dominated by sound : the birds’ song, the trumpet of the Cataract, Echoes,
the winds, presumably their sounds— one cannot see them, Even the gambolling of lambs is
associated with a strong auditory image — ‘as to the tabor’s sound’ (Cleanth Brooks, The
Well Wrought Urn, p. 109),
Study Notes
5. A timely utterance ...: ‘’Professor Garrod believes that this timely ‘utterance” is
from the rainbow poem “My heart leaps up when 1 behold” which was written the day before
the Ode was begun. Certainly this poem is most intimately related to the Ode- its theme the
legacy left by the Child to the man. Is the dominant theme of the Ode, and Wordsworth used
45
its last lines as the Ode’s epigraph. In line 43 of ‘Resolution and Independence’ Wordsworth
says, “Oh evil day ! If I were sullen” and the world “Sullen” leaps out at us as a strikingly
carefully chosen word. Now there is one poem in which Wordsworth says that he was Sullen;
it is “Resolution and Independence”. It seems to me more likely that it, rather than the
Rainbow poem, of which the Ode speaks because in it and not in the Rainbow poem, a sullen
feeling occurs and is relieved. (Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination p. 131 and 133)
The Cataracts ... steep : to blow your trumpet means to boast about something. The noise
of the cataracts as they fall down the steep announces their superiority over the poet in the
sense that Nature includes them in their celebration but the poet is excluded.
8. grief of mine : grief is considered to be a mental season which tries to influence the
Natural season.
9. Echoes ... throng : The sound of the cataracts is multiplied in the echoes produced by
the mountains.
10. The winds... sleep : In stanza V Wordsworth says , “Our birth is but sleep and
forgetting”. Therefore here Wordsworth feels that by breathing, in an atmosphere which
marked his birth the poet acquires the strength of his Childhood. The timely utterance and the
‘winds’ coming from the ‘fields of sleep’ energise the poet’s mind to fight his depression and
be a passive spectator of the jollity of nature with which the ‘heart of May’ “gives itself up to
jollity’.
11-18. And all... shepherd boy : Nature and man i.e. the ‘Shepherd-boy’ join together
as one soul in the festivity. Shepherd boy is the Child of joy, and therefore has the joy of the
Child which can perceive nature ‘appareled in Celestial light’. The shepherd boy always lives
in close intimacy with Nature and therefore his mind is not corrupted by the customs of
mankind.
8.4 Stanza IV
An Attempt to Forget and the Thematic Question
In stanza III the poet requests the shepherd boy to invite him to ‘hear thy shouts’. Stanza
IV finds the poet in the world of the blessed creatures who can, like the child share the glory
of the earth. The poet can hear them in a wordless but not soundless communication with
each other. All intense and pure emotions are expressed and shared through wordless sounds.
The poet can hear the heavens laughing with them. In Stanza I a heavenly glory is endowed
upon natural objects by the Child because he still retains the dream of heaven, now the
heavens join nature in its celebration. The poet’s head is provided with an antenna which
allows his heart to join the festival. The earth and heaven laugh together. The poet is happy
that he is not sullen and can listen to timely utterance which enables him to join this festival
of sweet May-morning. This morning is announced at the end of stanza I but the poet then
was not capable of enjoying its visual beauty. The visual beauty is still denied to him, but he
can hear the music of the earth, and heaven and feel its full bliss. The poet now lands himself

46
in the valleys of children who are culling flowers in the warm sun shine. The poet is so
intensely absorbed in the musical symphony that he can hear the babe ‘leaps up in his
Mother’s arm. The babe feels so secure in mother’s arm that he can afford to leap away from
it, knowing, perhaps unconsciously that he will not fall. The tragedy begins when he tries to
move away from the security of these arms, or when he grows up. He allows himself to fail.
The poet’s eyes don’t cooperate with his ears for long. The auditory pleasure is abruptly
stopped by a visual object. The solitary tree, the remaining off-spring of a solitary field and a
“Pansy” at his feet remind him of his disastrous loss. The sense of solitude, of forced
deprivation, of being removed away from the wholeness of life, or earth and heaven, brings
him back to reality and he cries where is the ‘visionary gleam’, ‘where is the glory and the
dream’ which accompany a child when he comes to this earth. These four stanzas remind us
of the stanza I and IV of Tintern Abbey. The landscape is the same, only the poet is a changed
person.
The effect is that of a blind man trying to enter the joyful world of dawn. He can hear
the blessed creatures as they rejoice in the world but he himself is shut out from it. ..... one
sees a smile... but the laughter is vocal. The heavens are laughing with the children. The poet
does in a sense enter into the scene; certainly he is trying very hard to enter into it. But what I
notice is that the poet seems to be trying to work up a gaiety that isn’t there. If his heart is at
the children’s festival, it is their festival, after all, not his.
The poet under the influence of a morning scene, feeling the winds that blow from the
fields of sleep, tries to relive the dream. He fails. (Ibid, pp. 109-110)
Study Notes
1. ye blessed Creatures : The children of joy.
2. heavens laugh : heaven’s participate in Children’s festivity on the May -morning of
which the poet is an auditory spectator. The poet listens to the laughter. Laughter can be
heard and a smile can be seen.
5. Coronal : decoration of head; the head is decorated: means it is so thrilled that it
refuses to think and analyse. It is captured by its decoration.
8-9. Earth - May-morning : Earth as an aspect of Nature is personified.
10, Culling : Choosing the best, only the fresh, the newly born flowers. The emphasis is
on the birth, whether it is Child, The Moon, the Sun. or the flowers.
13. the sun-warms : The newly born sun, spreads its warmth of affection. It provides
the same warmth and security which the “Mother provides to her “baby”.
16-19. at tree... feet: the tree, the field, and the pansy are symbols of solitude. They
remind the poet that he is an outsider and he does not belong here.

47
 21. visionary gleam : gleam which was there at the time of birth, which could dress up
the common things in a celestial light. Wordsworth, whenever he has a moment of insight or
happiness talks about it in the language of light.
Note : This stanza articulates moments of ultimate happiness when the mind is fitted
with the universe and the universe with the mind. This stanza reminds us of Tintern Abbey’s
stanza II and IV.
8.5 Stanza V
The Growth or Decay?
The first four stanzas build up a question which is formulated in a cry at the end of
stanza IV. ‘Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?’
Stanza I describes the numinous joy of the child when it adorns the earth with a celestial
light. Stanza II carries this joy to the moon and the sun and announces the birth of a glorious
dawn but the poet is kept away from it. In stanza III the poet gets himself invited into this
May-dawn festival and in stanza IV he tries to feel and live the ecstasy of this morning but
his dream vanishes abruptly at the sight a solitary tree and he wakes up with the questions
lamenting the loss of this visionary gleam. The rest of the poem tries to answer this question
and the answer begins in stanza V. The poet is using the Platonic belief in the pre-existence
of soul as a myth to suit his poetic design. Our birth announces the separation of our soul
from its original home i.e. God. The memory of this home is retained by the Child as a
visionary gleam or a dream which is still capable of perceiving the wholeness of life. The
child inherits the glory of God ‘trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God.’ The entire
process of living is forgetting the origin of our soul as we grow. Life’s journey is compared
with the Sun’s journey moving away from its origin in the east. ‘Heaven lies about us in our
infancy’ !. The child lights up the world transforming it into a heaven just as the moon and
the sun do at the time of their birth in stanza II. But as soon as we are separated from our
mother’s arms and its security and try to stand on our own feet, ‘shades of prison-house begin
to close’. The process of a child learning the ways of the world involves a gradual forgetting
of the origin of his life. (Every expression in this poem, that reminds the poet of his gradual
divide or alienation from God, the soul’s original home ends in a sign of exclamation). Both
the sun and the child, as they grow become stranger to themselves, to their origin, to the
visionary gleam, which marks their birth. The child grows into Man through two intervening
stages i.e. ‘Boy’ and ‘Youth’ who still retain the memory of childhood vision but when the
child grows into a man this vision completely dies. The sun unlike the morning sun of stanza
II which enjoys its birth, becomes an ordinary sun that simply performs its duty, of lending
visibility to other objects. The journey is from celestial light, which makes the earthly objects
look heaven-like, to ordinary light, which makes the objects visible as common things. The
entire process of growth involves a gradual dying of celestial light into common light. The
child like the sun travels away from east, i.e., its heaven, not towards darkness, but towards
complete forgetfulness of its home and his vision which was once visionary now becomes an

48
ordinary vision, i.e. the eye’s physical capacity to see objects simply as they are. The birth of
human life means forgetting the divine vision in order to learn mortal man’s customs.
The basic metaphor from line 67 onward has to do with the child’s moving away from
heaven, his home — the shades of the prison house closing about him, the youth’s progress
further and further from the day-spring in the east. We should, however, if the figure were
worked out with thorough consistency, expectt him to arrive at darkness, or near darkness,
the shades of prison house having closed round the boy all but completely — the youth
having travelled into some darkened and dismal west. Yet the tantalising ambiguity in the
symbol which we have noticed earlier continues. The Climax of the process is not darkness
but full daylight: ‘At length the Man perceives it die away/ And fade into the light of the
common day.’ We have contrast then, a contrast between kinds of light, not between light and
darkness. There is a further ambiguity in the symbolising, the sunlight, which in stanza II was
a glorious birth, has here becomes the symbol for the prosaic and the common and the mortal.
(Ibid, pp. 105-106)
Indeed it is very easy to read the whole stanza as based on a submerged metaphor of the
sun’s progress: the soul is like our life’s star, which has had elsewhere its setting. It rises
upon its world, not in utter nakedness. The trailing clouds of glory suggest the sun rise. The
youth is like the sun, which as it travels further from the east leaves the glory behind it, and
approaches prosaic daylight. But it is the sun itself which projects the prosaic daylight, just as
the man projects the common day which surrounds him, and upon which he now looks
without joy. (Ibid: p. 106)
We expect the poet to say that the child, in being born, is waking up, deserting sleep and
the realm of dream. But instead, our birth he says, is a sleep and forgetting. Reality and
unreality, learning and forgetting, ironically change places. (Ibid; p. 111)
The soul enters human life at our birth as an episode in its immortal life. It is exiled for a
time from its divine home or the divine light which is its source. Only gradually does the
world narrow down into a prison, the vision clouds, the light fails ... The light of the soul that
we inherit transfigures all we see ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy”, not transcendentally
remote. Our first world is actual, divine and true. The joy of Childhood is a strain of the
Earth’s sweet being in the beginning, in Eden garden’. Only the compelling need to grow into
human maturity narrows and shadows this divine largeness. We grow into the prison of our
days, as we grow up, and the fresh transfiguring light of the dawn of human life revealing all
things to our awakened senses is gradually changed by us into a common light that
illuminates mere objects.
Imaginatively read as Wordsworth invites us to read it, this stanza is not in the least like
a statement of belief in pre-existence. It is the account of our universal human experience, in
terms of myth. And it relates itself, as it must to the whole meaning of incarnation. (Alec
King, Critics on Wordsworth, Universal Book Stall, New Delhi, pp. 93-94).

49
 ...tells us where the visionary gleam has gone by telling us where it came from. It is a
remnant of pre-existence in which we enjoyed a way of seeing and knowing now almost
wholly , gone from us. We come into the world not with minds that are merely tabulae rasae
(clean slates) but with a kind of attendant light, the vestige of an existence otherwise
obliterated from our memories. In infancy and childhood the recollection is relatively strong,
but it fades as we move forward into earthly life. Maturity with its habits and its cares and its
increase of distance from our celestial origin, wears away the light of recollection. (Lionel
Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, Oxford University Press, p. 135).
Study Notes
11. Our... forgetting : literally it means, the soul enters human body at our birth and
forgets its heavenly abode and therefore it sleeps and forgets it divine origin. Wordsworth is
using the Platonic belief in Pre-existence as a myth only for poetic reasons.
5-6. Not... nakedness : It has not completely forgotten its divine origin. It still has
vestiges of its heavenly home which lend celestial light to common sight. Not only the soul is
not in “utter nakedness, but the objects it sees are not in ‘utter nakedness’ too.
7-9. trailing ... infancy : Soul’s descent from heaven to earth is on the wings of glory so
that when it enters life, heaven is not something remote, it lies about us in our immediate
surroundings. The glory of the soul, of its trailing clouds is so powerful that it makes the
common earth also celestial.
10-17. Shades of prison-house ... common day : the gradual decrease in the strength of
celestial light, slowly removes the child away and away from his divine source as it grows or
as the sun moves towards west away from its day-spring in the east. The apparels of celestial
light are removed bit by bit, or the earth is derobed of its heavenly light in stages till it
becomes ordinary earth. The transformation of glorious earth into a prison is described in
stages. The glory lives in the Boy and in the Youth but dies in the Man.
8.6 Stanza VI
The Role of Earth
Earth performs her motherly duty and helps man in forgetting his imperial palace, his
divine origin. The earth as a kindly foster mother entices the child with its earthly pleasures
and the man becomes an inmate of the prison-house. The Child makes the earth celestial in
stanza I and here the earth makes the child un-celestial. The Earth here stands not as an
aspect of Nature but as something antithetical to heaven : ‘there hath passed away a glory
from earth.’
In trying to make the child forget the unearthly or supernatural glory, the Earth is acting
out of kindness. The poet cannot find it in him to blame her. She wants the child to be at
home. Here we come close upon a Wordsworthian pun, though doubtless an unpremeditated
pun. In calling the earth, the homely Nurse’, there seems a flicker of this suggestion: the earth
wants the child to be at home. Yet ‘homely’ must surely mean also ‘unattractive, plain. She is
the drudging common earth after all, homely, perhaps a little stupid, but sympathetic and

50
kind. Yet it is precisely this earth, which was once glorious to the poet, ‘Apparelled in
celestial light.’
First, the stanza definitely insists that the human soul is not merely natural. We do not of
course, as Wordsworth himself suggested, have to take literally the doctrine about pre-
existence, but the stanza makes it quite clear, I think, that man’s soul brings an alien element
into nature, a supernatural element. The child is of royal birth - ‘that imperial palace whence
he came’ - the Earth, for all her motherly affection, is only his foster mother after all. The
submerged metaphor at work here is that of foundling prince reared by peasants, though the
phrase ‘her inmate-man’ suggests an even more sinister relation: Inmate can only mean
inmate of the prison-house of the previous stanza.
The second implication is thus: since the earth is really homely, the stanza underlies
what has been hinted earlier: namely, that it is the child who confers the radiance the morning
world upon which he looks with delight, the irony is that if the child looks long enough at
that world, becomes deeply involved in its beauties, the celestial radiance itself disappears.
Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen, London, p.113).
This stanza is the second of the four stanzas in which Wordsworth states and develops
the theme of the reminiscence of the light of heaven and its gradual evanescence through the
maturing years.
Wordsworth who spoke of the notion of imperial pre-existence as being adumbrated by
Adams fall, uses the words, “earth” and “earthly” in the common quasi-religious sense to
refer to the things of this world. He does not make earth synonymous with Nature for
although man is the true child of Nature, he is the foster-child of Earth. (Lionel Trilling,
p.143)
Study Notes
1. Earth : the de-robed earth, as we see it at end of stanza V. The celestially appareled
earth at the time of birth is heaven, but the de-robed earth is a prison. The earth here stands
for something antithetical to heaven and not to the earth as an aspect of Nature.
2. Natural kind : kindly feelings, the earth, the foster-mother does not want the exiled
child to live as a stranger, therefore it entices the Child with all the pleasures it has in her lap
in order to domesticate him as an Inmate of her prison.
Imperial palace : His home, the heaven. “From God, who is our home” (Stanza V.8)
8.7 Stanza VII
Growth or Decay? An Analysis-I
The stanza describes, the child’s growth, very delicately. The child is unconsciously but
willingly learning the customs of life. He takes pleasure in it. The learning involves
unconscious forgetting of his visionary gleam. He is not sorry about it that is the big sad irony
of human life. The leaning and the forgetting are coalesced into each other. He takes pleasure

51
in it since at this stage it is the coalescence of the ‘living’ soul into “not merely things but
‘life of things’. Everything that the child learns, every skill that he acquires gets attired in his
childlike innocence. That is why the learning at this stage is not an earthly freight or a dead
custom, but new-born blisses for the ‘Darling of a pigmy size ‘daring to embrace the whole
life, the entire universe. The entire growth at this stage is two-directional, one direction is
given by ‘some fragment of his dream of human life. His dream of human life is entirely
different from the one that is imposed upon him by his mother’s affection and his father’s
guidance. The child imitates everything, be it a wedding, a festival, a funeral, a dialogue of
business, of love of strife. ‘He imitates all the stages of life, the childhood, youth, middle age,
life in all its forms right up to death before a man gets palsied as if his whole vocation were
endless imitation.’ His pleasure is that of the imitator, his involvement is that of the actor. He
plays one role, forgets it and jumps on to the other. And every role or every person he plays,
he imparts his own heart, his own dream to it. Everything he does gels unconsciously
subsumed into ‘the child’s ‘fragment of a dream of human life.
The child is learning to live away from the imperial palace. The earth his foster mother
is trying to domesticate him. The entire process is a clash between two lights, ‘light upon him
from his father’s eyes ‘, and the light that still comes from without his heart. The child is
being baptised into a religion he does not understand’ but can very well imitate. The child is
gradually losing his memory of his divine origin (‘our birth is but a sleep and forgetting’) and
the vacuum thus created is being gradually filled by his duplication or imitation of everything
that he has seen of this earthly life. His memory of his divine origin is being replaced by his
memory of human life in all its forms and aspects.
Wordsworth is obviously trying to establish his own attitude towards the child’s insight.
In the earlier stanzas, he has attempted to define the quality of the visionary gleam and to
account for its inevitable loss. Now he attempts to establish more definitely his attitude
towards the whole experience. One finds him here, as a consequence, no longer trying to
recapture the childhood joy or lamenting its loss, but withdrawing to a more objective and
neutral position. (Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen : London, p. 114).
In a well-known essay “Stages in the Development of the sense of reality. The
distinguished psychoanalyst Ferenczi speaks of the child’s reluctance to distinguish
between himself and the world and of the slow growth of objectivity which differentiates the
self from external things And Freud himself, dealing with the “Oceanic” sensation of being at
one with the universe” which a literary friend had supposed to be the source of religious
emotions, conjectures that it is a vestige of the infant’s state of feeling before he has learned
to distinguish between the stimuli of his own sensations and those of the world outside.
(Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, Oxford University Press, p. 137).
Study Notes
1. new-born blisses : it includes birth: the memories of heaven and the pleasures of earth.

52
 2. pigmy size : it emphasizes the contrast between his physical size and his visionary
powers. It also emphasizes the innocent efforts made by the pigmy size to learn everything
about ‘Man and his customs”.
4-5. Some fragment.... art : Child’s idea of human life is ‘his’ dream, it means his idea
of human life is envisioned by the celestial light that he still possess. He translates this en\
isioned idea of human life with the skills which are taught to him, or which he learns and
which are not sufficient. But the child does not knwo that his skills are not adequate enough
to express his envisioned idea or his dream of human life. That is why the paintings or
drawings made by the Children are unique in their own ways.
15-16. But it..... pride : but nothing occupies his mind or heart for long, sicne nothing
on this earth can contain the energy or the glory he possesses.
18. Cons another part: the allusion, in this line and the next, is to the speech in
Shakespeare’s As you Like It (11.7) in which Jacques compares man to an act or who plays in
turn each of the seven roles that take him from his cradle to grave. ‘Humorous state’ is a
quotation from a poem by Samuel Daniel (1562-] 619).
8.8 Stanza VIII
Growth or Decay? An Analysis–II
The poet exalts the immensity of the “Pigmy’ child’s soul. The poet calls the child the
best philosopher, “an eye among the blind’/ That deaf and silent reads the eternal
deep/Haunted forever by the eternal mind”. You have just read about Freud’s “Oceanic”’
“sensations” of being at one with the universe”. To be ‘at one with the universe’ is according
to Wordsworth, man’s sole concern in life. It is the only condition of mind which can bring
happiness in a man’s life. The child possesses this power, because of his soul and its
attendant light, and he can therefore see the universe appareled in celestial light. He is not
afraid of the eternal deep sea of life, since he is being inspired by an eternal mind (God
himself) can read and understand the sea of life. His soul can unconsciously see through the
mystery of this universe. He is therefore the best philosopher. His philosophy is not a
medicine, a means or a solution for certain problems in life, since he knows of no problems,
he is perfect or complete in himself since he has inherited a sense of Oneness with the
universe. He is an eye among the blind, he is a visionary. He has attained what others will
give their life to achieve. The poet cannot understand why this immortal child wants to grow
into a mortal man. The poet is at a loss to know why the mighty immortal soul struggles so
earnestly to survive and live only to become a mortal and bear the burden of dead customs.
The immense (giant) soul of the pigmy child wants to grow only to be dwarfed. The poet
cannot understand the eagerness of the celestial light to decay into ordinary common sight.
The names for the child, ‘Philosopher’ ‘prophet’, ‘seer’, are deliberately an outrage on
our understanding...But the names, by their very un-childlikeness of tone, point at the
meaning of what was given with the gift of life to a new creature, of what we are trying
always to remember; the immensity of grace, absoluteness of being whose strength and
53
freedom we only understand when we have lost the first positive innocence which is its
proper channel.
Wordsworth’s idea of splendid power is his protest against all views of the mind that
would limit and debase it. By conceiving as he does, an intimate connection between mind
and universe, by seeing the universe fitted to the mind and the mind to the universe, he
bestows upon man a dignity which cannot be derived by looking at him in the actualities of
common life from seeing him engaged in business, in morality and politics. (Lionel Trilling,
The Liberal Imagination, Oxford University Press, p. 142).
“The Child who sees does not know that he sees and is not even aware that others are
blind. Indeed he is trying his best (or soon will try his best) to become blind like others. Yet
in this most extravagant passage in the poem, Wordsworth keeps the balance. In the child we
are dealing with the isolated fact of vision. The eye, taken as an organ of sense, is naturally
deaf and silent. The child cannot tell what he reads in the eternal deep, nor can he hear the
poets’ naming that he is actually... trying to castaway his vision. If the passage seems the high
point of extravagance, it is also a high point of ironic qualification. (Cleanth Brooks, The
Well Wrought Urn, Methuen : London. pp. 108-109).
Study Notes
1. exterior semblance : the external appearance which has a pigmy size.
4. Thy heritage : The glory or the celestial light which the Child inherits from God, or
which the Soul brings from its divine home.
5. Eye-blind : eye which perceives the wholeness of life in this universe, the eye which
unites the mind with the life of things.
5, deaf and silent : cannot speak, or express what he knows and cannot listen to the
poet’s warning to the Child that he is inviting his own doom.
8-13. On whom .... put by : The child knows the meaning of this universe which we
forget in our self created grave-like darkness and are trying our best to arrive at certain truths
(and we may not always succeed) which are natural to the Child, The immortality of Child’s
vision which incorporates these truths is a presence which cannot be destroyed. We read of
similar presence in Tintern Abbey (stanza IV 95-102.)
16-21. The poet does not understand the Child’s desire to grow from immortality to
mortality. Why does the Child take pains to invite the Yoke of lifeless existence. ‘“How to
hold the ‘Child’ within ourselves, to remember it as an always- potentially-present state of
being, as our own immortality - to hold this within ourselves even while we are hauling and
pushing our visible Childhood with the help and the examples of our elders into the
prescribed patterns of our adult life ? This is what the poem asks and asks” Alec King, Critics
on Wordsworth, Universal Book Depot. New Delhi p.95.

54
8.9 Stanza IX
The Role of Memory
The entire stanza celebrates the power of memory to recreate the divine loss or loss of
divinity of the celestial light or visionary gleam. ‘The nature yet remembers/What was so
fugitive!’ Man living close to nature, and not the mechanized man living in the din of cities
remembers or nature helps a man to remember what was so fugitive or so eager to leave the
earthly environments where it simply cannot survive. Nature can still rekindle the celestial
light (so fugitive) by lifting it out of the embers of ‘earthly freight’ and customs heavy as
frost which smother it. This stanza reminds us of what happens to Wordsworth in stanza II
and IV in Tintern Abbey. The poet earlier tried to relive the child’s world of ‘sweet May-
morning’ in stanza IV but had failed. Now he does the same thing with the help of Nature
which activates his memory.
The poet now prays to bless not the child who is a symbol of delight, liberty and a ‘new-
fledged hope’. The Child, the ‘best philosopher’, ‘glorious in the might’ does not need any
blessings. The poet seeks a blessing for those efforts made helplessly and innocently to fight
with the falling ‘shades of prison-house’, to fight with foster-mother and her pleasures -
‘Fallings from us, vanishings;/Blank misgivings of a creature/ moving about in world not
realized.’ The poet seeks benedictions for the child’s obstinate questionings, before he is
made to accept his new dwelling place. The child unconsciously struggles against the walls of
the ‘prison-house’ being imposed upon him by us and desires to withdraw into his celestial
world. The poet is all praise for these high instincts before which ‘our mortal Nature/Did
tremble like a guilty thing surprised.’ The poet also seeks benedictions for those moments (of
memory) which first united him with the celestial light, after he was deprived of it by the
efforts of his ‘foster-mother’. ‘The song of thanks and praise’ is ‘for those first
affections/Those shadowy recollections.’ Those first affections have now become the
‘fountain light’, the light that comes from the source, the light that inspires and the master
light, the light that guides and directs our course to universal truths which are immortal and
unite us with the eternal silence. The first affections take us nearer our soul, ‘that rises with
us, our life’s star’. In Tintern Abbey also Wordsworth tells us of ‘a ... blessed mood/In which
the affections gently lead us on’ (40-41), ‘And I have felt/A presence that disturbs me with a
joy’ (93-94). This humanized joy animated by ‘first affections’ and ‘shadowy recollections’
can never be dehumanized. And ‘though inland far we be’; we may be withdrawn far away
from ‘the celestial light’ , from ‘the visionary gleam’ into the shadows of prison-house, our
souls can always return to the shores of immortal sea where the immortal children are
playing, quite in tune with its rhythm, understanding its meaning. A child like ‘The Ancient
Mariner’ does not need a voyage to understand the meanings of the mystery of the immortal
sea.
Wordsworth has said that the child as the best philosopher ‘read’st the eternal deep’ and
here for the time in the poem we have the children brought into explicit juxtaposition with the
deep. And how, according to the poem, are these best philosophers reading it ? By sporting
55
on the shore ... The lines are great poetry. They are great poetry because, although the sea is
the sea of eternity, and the mighty waters ... rolling ever-more, the children are not terrified
— are at home — are filled with innocent joy. The children, exemplify the attitude towards
eternity (which the other -philosopher, the mature philosopher, wins with difficulty, if he
wins at all. For the children are those on whom these truths do rest, Which we are toiling all
our lives to find. ( Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen : London, p. 117).
... it was Wordsworth’s deep wisdom that he saw how we must remember our invisible
childhood as we grow older, since we cannot preserve it, and the mystery of childhood is that
we do not know the blessedness we were born into until we remember it after it has been lost,
and in remembering it we remake our lives, we recreate ourselves through imagination and
memory ... When we have been matured by living, we may if we are wise, not look away
from the immortality of our own life, nor look back at it through the mists of years in longing,
but look inward to find it again, and to love it even more than when we belonged to it in
unconscious childhood... Our invisible (immortal) childhood is fugitive, it dies away, but
remains a perpetual possibility, as a light which has gone out in fires still stays to be reborn
from the embers. Light is not born from embers by its own will but by a breath from outside:
it is not we but nature that remembers what was so fugitive ... Our visible childhood is
‘delight’ and ‘liberty’, active ‘hope’; the transfiguring of all objects in the light of the mind
which nature encourages in us is felt by the visible child with misgivings and bewilderment.
The falling and vanishing into ‘thought’ of the solid world, the child’s sense that what he is
looking at is becoming insubstantial, a part of his own mind, so that like the child
Wordsworth himself grasps at a well or tree to recall himself to the solid earth- The
ambiguity of Eden is always a perplexity; for the children who really live there do not know
they want it and are always ‘trying to leave;, and the adults who dream of its effortless joy do
so from human fatigue and confusion... Adam and Eve, in their unfallen state, would have
painted pictures like children. Only after their expulsion from Eden would they have been
able to create great works (‘Truth that wake/To perish never’) knowing then the terrible
liveliness (Eternal Silence) of God which they had lost and were trying to find again. (Alec
King, Critics on Wordsworth, Universal Book Stall, New Delhi, pp. 96-98).
...the Ode tells us again what has happened to the ‘visionary gleam’: it has not wholly fled for
it is still remembered. The possession of childhood has been passed on as a legacy to the
child’s heir, the adult man; for the mind, as the rainbow epigraph also says, is one and
continuous, and what was so-intense a light in childhood becomes the fountain light of all our
day and master light of all our seeing, that is, of our adult day and our mature seeing. The
child’s recollection of his heavenly home exists in the recollection of the adult. (Lionel
Trilling, The Liberal Imagination Oxford University Press, p. 135).
Compare these lines of Stanza X (1-7) ‘Then, sing... May’ with the first ten lines of stanza III.
In stanza III the poet feels depressed since he cannot participate in this world. Here the poet
after being blessed by the envisioned memory of the child is happy with their song. He still

56
cannot participate in this world of the Nature. Though he cannot physically participate he can
participate in thought.
The lines remind us of Tintern Abbey where the poet remembers his physical delight in
nature and knows that he is no more capable of it since he is a changed man (Stanza IV of the
poem).
Study Notes
1. embers : The embers of a fire or small pieces of partly burnt coal, wood etc. that
remain and glow with heat after the fire has finished burning. Here it means the glow of the
celestial light is buried under the heaps of earthly freight or the weight of the customs which
are heavy as frost.
3. nature yet remembers : it is nature which enlivens the mind of the man with the
memory of the celestial light. Cleanth Brooks thinks of this poem as a celebration of the
influence of Nature on the developing mind. (The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen : London, p. 1
12).
4. fugitive : here it means, eager to return. lasting for a short time, mark the emphasis on
the word ‘so’ it reminds us of celestial light and gleam of stanza I and IV respectively.
6. benediction : is a prayer asking God to bless someone.
6-9. not indeed ...... Childhood : The poet is not seeking blessings for Childhood of
stanza I, IV and VII. since it does not need his blessings. (It is the poet or the Man who needs
being blessed by the Child who is a symbol of delight and liberty).
13-16. Obstinate questionings... vanishings : a persistent probe to seek legitimacy for
earth and its objects, and what the child is taught by his elders. The more he tries to grapple
with the earthly objects, the more they keep on disappearing. The lines correspond with
Wordsworth’s personal experiences in his own childhood after his mother’s death. The earth
is the foster-mother of stanza 6 which is trying to entice the Child into her prison and not the
earth of stanza I which the Child transforms into heaven.
17-18. Blank misgivings .... realised : meaningless fears which a Child encounters
when the tries to comprehend the reality of this world. Lionel Trilling writes , “Inevitably we
resist change and turn back with passionate nostalgia to the stage we are leaving still, we
fulfill ourselves by choosing what is painful and difficult and necessary, and we develop by
moving toward death. (The Liberal Imagination, p 141)
18-19. High ... surprised : Compared with the Child’s innate power and the basic
innocence of this power, his mortal frame trembles as it feels guilty about what it is doing i.e.
criminally pushing itself from immortality to mortality.
20. first affections : The affection of the Child for nature (stanza I) which transforms
the earth into heaven by virtue of his celestial light.
21. Shadowy recollection : dim memories brought to us by nature.
57
 23. fountain light: the source of our inspiration.
24. master light: The light which guides us.
25-28. upholds... to perish never : The memory, or the shadowy recollections of
Childhood, unfolds in us certain visions, which are immortal and which carry us through the
meaningless noise of earthly life and keep us united with the eternal silence which belongs to
God and hence our home.
29-32. listlessness ... destroy : listlessness and mad endeavour remind us of stanza IV
where the poet is happy that he is not sullen and then he makes a mad endeavour to enter the
world of Child only to be disillusioned and come back with the questions whither is fled the
visionary gleam.’ The words Boy and Man take us back to stanza V which says the very
growth of Child into ‘Boy’, ‘Youth’ and ‘man’ means his gradual decay towards death, since
growth means his moving away from his divine home. So all the forces which tempt the
Child to grow are enemies of his joy which we see in him in stanza IV where the children are
culling flowers or in the last lines of this stanza where the Children sport upon the shore of
the immortal sea. The memory of Childhood creates for the poet some visionary truths which
are more immortal than the immortality of the Child. It is the development from ‘best
philosopher’ of stanza VIII to ‘philosophic mind’ of stanza X.
34. Though inland far we be : removed farther away from our childhood, its celestial
light and visionary gleam.
35. Our souls : our life’s star of stanza V can take us back to immortal sea, the source of
our origin to see the immortal children playing on its shore.
8.10 Stanza X
How Memory Blessed By Nature Fights the Loss
The world of ‘sweet May-morning’ of stanza III and IV (19-50) is revisited, but only in
thought with the help of remembered ‘fugitive’. In stanza III, the poet was unhappy that he
was mentally incapacitated to enjoy, the beauty of the “heart of May”. In stanza IV his
auditory participation in the celebrations of May-dawn is short-lived and the realisation of his
loss and consequent alienation from this may-world of children culling fresh-flowers, comes
as an abrupt shock in the form of questions ‘Where is fled the visionary gleam ? Where is it
now, the glory and the dream?’ The questions are answered in stanza IX when he says that
‘Nature yet remembers/What was so fugitive.’ Stanza X and XI further elaborate
Wordsworth’s mood which changes from complain and despair to that of a philosophic
strength. The poet is not sad that he will never be able to feel the celestial light; ‘Be now
forever taken from my sight/Though nothing can bring back the hour/Of splendour in the
grass, of glory in the flower’. Although the loss is as great as it was in stanza III and IV yet
the poet is not depressed. That is why ‘Birds’ and ‘Lambs’ now begin with capital letters.
Since now they are animated and defined in a different way by his memory of the fugitive.
The poet therefore ‘grieves not’ since the visionary gleam is now replaced by a primal

58
sympathy which gives him a philosophic understanding of human suffering and provides a
new strength to live with it. This primal sympathy which grows out of sensitive perception of
human suffering alone can make mankind survive. The stanza reminds us of stanza IV of
Tintern Abbey wherein he talks of the ‘still sad music of humanity.’
The immortality of the childhood vision gives birth to a new vision of human life and
this vision is rooted in primal sympathy. In a general sense we know what Wordsworth is
doing here: the Childhood vision is only one aspect of the primal sympathy; this vision has
been lost— is, as the earlier stanzas show, inevitably lost, but the primal sympathy remains. It
is the faculty by which we live. The continuity between the child and the man is actually
unbroken. (Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen, p.l21).
The child hands on to the hampered adult the imperial nature, ‘the primal sympathy/
which having been must ever be,’ the mind fitted to the universe, the universe to the mind.
The sympathy is not so pure and intense in maturity as in childhood, but only because another
relation grows up beside the relation of man to Nature- the relation of man of his fellows in
the moral world of difficulty and pain. Given Wordsworth’s epistemology the new relation is
bound to change the very aspect of Nature itself: the clouds will take a sober colouring from
an eye that hath kept watch over man’s mortality but a sober color is a color still. (Lionel
Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, Oxford University Press, p. 143).
The deepest paradox of all. revealed so dramatically in the Ode, is that the wisdom of
life compels the child away from his beatitude of innocence to reach a more difficult and
fuller beatitude if he can. (Alec King, Critics on Wordsworth, Universal Book Stall, New
Delhi, p. 100).
Study notes
8-11 Radiance ...: The celestial light of stanza I will never he restored to the poet.
14. Primal: The word primal is used to describe something that relates to the causes or
origin of things. Here it means the primal sympathy with which the child was born which
appareled the earth and common sight with a celestial light.
12-19. We will... philosophic mind : The memory of the celestial light provides the
poet with a new strength and a vision which restores in the poet a primal sympathy which is
of greater significance. Child’s sympathy embraced only nature but the poet’s primal
sympathy in which Nature, no doubt plays a very crucial role (Stanza 1X,3) also includes
human suffering. The loss of ‘best philosopher’ is no longer regretted, since the philosophic
mind that the best philosopher has given birth to, can cope with earthly freight and the threat
of mortality.
8.11 Stanza XI
The New Vision
The new vision which is rooted in primal sympathy and takes into reckoning the human
sufferings gives a new dimension to ‘Fountain Meadows, Hills and Groves’. All therefore
begin with capital letters as compared to stanza I where the Child with a capital C apparels
59
them with a celestial light. No, the relation of love is not broken but he can no longer be a
passive receiver of the pleasure which their majestic beauty used to impart. He loves them
even more than he used to when he was young. The new born day is as lovely as it used to be
in stanzas III and IV. In fact the depth of his relationship with Nature, and the immensity of
his love for Nature have acquired a new dimension. Therefore it is not the rainbow dancing
now, but it is the clouds who receive a sober colour from the ‘eye’ which has kept a watch
over man’s mortality. The suffering humanity receives strength and comfort from the primal
sympathy that nature inspires, in man. Nature also is alive to man’s misery and mortality. The
relationship of Nature with the mighty Child lies in their sharing of immortal bliss, a celestial
light, the relationship of nature with the mature man lies in their sharing the mortal misery of
helpless mankind. The poem ends in a tribute, not to Nature, not to the immortal child, but to
human heart and its primal sympathy (which it acquires as a legacy from the Child, by its
remembrance of the fugitive). This heart, is grateful to Nature for the role it plays in
rekindling the fire in the embers. Therefore ‘the meanest flower that blows can give/Thoughts
that often lie too deep for tears.’
The poem is about the human heart- its growth, its nature, its development...... Theology,
ethics, education are touched upon. But the emphasis is not upon these .... The greatness of
the Ode 1ies in the fact that Wordsworth is going about the poet’s business here and is not
trying to inculcate anything. It is with this theme that the poem closes. Thanks are given not
to God, at least in this poem, but to human heart ‘by which we live’..... It is because of the
nature of human heart that the meanest flower can give, if not the joy of the celestial light,
something which the poet says is not sorrow and which he implies is deeper than joy
‘Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears’ ... if we say that celestial light is the flame
which is beautiful but which must inevitably burn itself out, the primal sympathy is still-
glowing ... we are forced to realise that such extension is over-ingenious. (Cleanth Brooks,
The Well Wrought Urn, Methuen : London, p. 120-22).
“There is a sorrow in the Ode, the inevitable sorrow of giving up an old habit of vision
for a new one. In shifting the centre of his interest from Nature to man in the field of morality
Wordsworth is fulfilling his own conception of the three ages of man.” (Lionel Trilling, The
Liberal Imagination, Oxford University Press, p. 144).
Study Notes
1-2 ‘And O. ,. Loves’ : read stanza one, meadow grove, stream begin with small letters, stand
as they do before the celestial light of the Child. Here Fountains Meadows, Hills and Groves
all begin with capital letters. Since it is they who inspire a philosophic mind in the poet by
reminding him of ‘what was so fugitive ‘. This philosophic mind includes in its vision the
suffering humanity. But the inclusion of man does not mean that the poet will severe his
relations with Nature.

60
4-5 I ... sway : The poet is no more the priest of nature as he was in his youth, or cannot
perceive habitual joy in nature as he did when he was a boy, Now he is aware of the suffering
of mankind, so he has given up those selfish pleasures.
6-12 :1 love Nature even more today since I am aware of man’s mortality. Nature
though it is as lovely as it used to be, is also sympathetic with me in my grief. The clouds
therefore take a sober colouring from the ‘eye’ which has been watching man’s mortality.
The poem begins with the ‘glorious birth of sun-shine and ends with sober clouds round the
setting sun ‘that has kept a watch over man’s mortality’. The glorious birth of sun-shine and
nature in stanza II celebrates the birth of Childhood. Now the setting sun and the sympathetic
and sobered clouds mourn his mortality. The only thing that is immortal is the vision of the
poet which though inherited from the Child includes in it not only Nature and the poet’s love
for Nature but also the poet’s concern and love for the suffering humanity.
13. Another race... palms are won : Wordsworth is looking back over his Childhood
days and decides that the challenges accepted then (in what he now sees to have been another
race) and the victories won (other palms) are firmly in the past, but fresh challenges and the
hope of new victories greet the mature man.
14-17 Thanks to human heart... deep for tears : Read stanza X (4-7) ‘we in thought...
through your hearts today/Feel the gladness,’ of the poet’s thought or the growth of mind
from the child’s heart (which apparels the earth with a celestial light) to human heart which
can feel the suffering of mankind (while it is still in love with Nature). So it is not only the
growth of mind but there is corresponding, more humane growth. It is the growth of human
heart which loves life in all its forms. Therefore in this enlightened mood even the meanest
flower can inspire in him thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’

9. A CRITICAL REVIEW
G. Wilson Knight writes:
The Ode on Intimations of Immortality is probably Wordsworth’s most finally
satisfying human work. Here he houses many favourite intuitions in majestic light;
marries his dearest inward feelings to a highly charged impressionism pastoral and
royalistic; and faces the intoxication of a sunlight creation. It is his only poem at once
human, happy and powerful. The Ode stands the test of his description of great poetry
in The Prelude; in it that ‘host of shadowy things’ (shadow is an important word for
Coleridge too) finds its proper home; all mysterial ‘substances’ are suffused with
‘light divine’, the ‘turnings of intricate verse’, a phrase peculiarly apt to this poem,
aiding poetic mastery. Though the subject still be childhood, the poem is more
technically erotic than most, a symbolic union with the child-symbol performing a
central and most important resolution of dynamic immediacy; poetic excitement
locked imperishably to live a tranquil yet pulsing memorial of creative joy. Technical
and formal elaboration, whether in symbolism or rhyme-scheme forces the poet into
an especially condensed precision. Art is born from a jerking of consciousness outside

61
 and above itself, throwing responsibility on to a higher centre, and the technical
strictures are the medium through which this other domination is conjured into
existence. That sense of young joy so often mentioned in The Prelude now very
subtly possesses the reader too; we are inside Wordsworth’s own ecstasy. In The
Prelude a very personal feeling tends, except in the great numinous passages, to
suffuse bare narration of objective fact. Though the central experience of The Prelude
is directly included, its method is here dramatically reversed: a subjective experience
is through a clear technique, perfectly objectified. (G. Wilson Knight, The Starlit
Dome, Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 38-39).
This poem, G. Wilson Knight says, celebrates the poet’s ecstasy, But some critics
believe that it mourns a loss.
Geoffrey Durant writes :
...how it is possible for Wordsworth to regard ‘the mighty world of eye and ear’ is a
prison house, in which the only illumination comes to us fitfully in memories of the
transcendental world. This is possible only by an inversion of thought, or by a
transposition of terms, in which the process of growing is no longer what it was in
‘Three years she grew’ – a harmonious awakening of the mind by the complex
influences of nature, but the progressive enslavement of Child by the world of sense. In
the Immortality Ode :
‘nature and the language of sense’.
(‘Tintern Abbey, 108)
are no longer the
‘guide the guardian of my heart, and soul
of all my moral being’.
(‘Tintern Abbey 110-11)
but drugs with which we are lulled into forgetfulness of the transcendental
brightness. (Geoffrey Durant, Wordsworth And the Great System, Cambridge University
Press, pp 110-11).
It is a fact that Wordsworth included this poem among Epitaphs and Elegiac
Pieces: When Wordsworth arranged his poems in groups for a collective edition in
1815, he included his Ode : Intimation of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood (1807) among The Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces along with ‘Elegiac
Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castel” (1807) rather than among poems of
the Imagination along with Tintern Abbey or even among Poems Referring to the
period of Childhood along with the Idle Shepherds’(1800). This decision and the title
of the Ode itself are useful hints that although celebration of Childhood are
characteristics of Wordsworth, he was prepared at times to use them as means rather
than end. A conventional elegy mourns the death of an individual, meditates upon the
unhappy condition of mankind, and finds comfort in the realization that the dead
person must be happier in Heaven. Intimations omits the occasion of a particular
62
 death, begins with an aspect of unhappy conditions of man, and develops an ingenious
relationship between it and the happiness of heaven and attempts to reconcile us to the
inevitability of growing old and dying. (J. R. Jackson, Poetry of the Romantic Period,
Routledge Kegan Paul, London, p. 188).
We have by now three views of ‘The Ode’. G. Wilson Knight believes that it drives us within
the corridors of Wordsworth’s ecstasy, Durrant believes, it denies Wordsworth’s basic vision
of nature and Jackson believes that this poem, is a means to an end, an end which
simultaneously brings us nearer immortality and death.
Wordsworth in his notes about this poem says :
This was composed during my residence at Town end, Grasmere. Two years at least
passed between the writing of the first stanzas (1803) and the remaining part (1806). To the
attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself, but there is no harm in
referring here to particular feelings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure of
the poem rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in Childhood than to admit the action of
death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere :
A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death :
But it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my difficulty came as from
a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of
Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I
should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling congenial to
this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I
commuted with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in my own immaterial
nature. Many time while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from
this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time, I was afraid of such processes. In later
periods of life I have developed as we have all reason to do a subjugation of an opposite
character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines-
Obstinate questions,
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ! etc.
To the dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in Childhood.
Every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon
it here : but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of
existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given pain to some good
and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be
recommended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear
in mind that, though the idea not advanced in our ‘revelation’, there is nothing to contradict it
63
and the fall of Man presents an analogy in its favour. Accordingly, pre-existent state has
entered into the popular creeds of many nations; and among all persons acquainted with
classic literature, is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he
could move the world if he had a point where on to rest his machine. Who has not felt the
same aspiration as regards the world of his own mind ? Having to wield some of its elements
when I was impelled to write this poem on the Immortality of Soul, I took hold of the notion
of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorising me to make for
my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet. (The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth
edited by Ernest De Selin Court , Oxford, 1940-5, IV, p. 463).
If the soul is immortal, it cannot have a beginning, it cannot have an end. Immortality
does not simply mean ‘death negated’ or that the soul after death goes to heaven. The big
question is where does this soul come from ? Is the immortal soul a creation of human life, of
mortals ? The very concept of immortality cannot accommodate this absurd idea. The soul
must have its origin in heaven whether we believe in Platonic philosophy or Adam’s fall. But
Wordsworth here is unconsciously fighting with the shock of his brother’s death which
perhaps reminded him of his mother’s death also. This also may be the reason why he placed
this poem among ‘The Epitaphs and Elegiac Stanza’s.’. His brother’s death reminds him of
his own childhood when he was not prepared to accept death as his own personal fate. This
reminds him of the Child’s view of Nature and Man’s view of Nature. The Child’s view of
Nature is given in the first four stanza’s of the poem. Child does not find any otherness in
Nature. The stanza III and IV describe the Child participating in the festival of May-morning
along with flowers, birds, lambs and Nature in all its aspects. The soul of the Child finds the
same life breathing in all these forms of existence. But Man is incapable of feeling the same
pleasure in Nature. Earth which is appareled in Celestial light now becomes the foster
mother. It is the foster mother which drugs the Child away from his Celestial heaven. Earth is
not described here as an aspect of Nature but as something antithetical to heaven. Earth here
is foster mother but a kind mother who wants to help the Child in his exile.
G. Wilson Knight says :
Yet the poet confuses us with more uses of ‘nature’. One is the nature transfigured
indistinguishable from antenatal glory, indeed itself the essential life of which the glory is an
intellectual aspect. But we also have quite another ‘nature;. Earth is a kindly foster-mother to
the divine life born to her arms: ‘yearning she hath in her own natural kind’.
In this passage (stanza VT) ‘natural’ and ‘earth’ are to be contrasted with ‘divine.’ This,
then, is rather the nature of clouded visions : The nature of Wordsworth’s manhood. Now
after the great central invocation, which I inspect later, the poem again returns to this
secondary nature, joying
That nature yet remembers,
What was fugitive ! (The Starlit Dome, p.41)

64
So this foster-mother although drugs the man away from his divine origin also reminds him
of this origin.
A little further he says :
This mortal nature, once the vision is gone, is truly a thing of meanness; and indeed a
whole universe separates the one nature from the other. So these recollected life glimmerings,
vague and fitful though they may be, have yet tremendous authority, and are indeed in this
poem given a fine and concrete expression:
But for those first affections,
..................................................
..................................................
.........................truths that wake
To perish never...........
The lights of that death-in-life which we live. They perish never; not subject to mortal-
ity, because though ‘recollections’, they are yet ‘shadows’ of some transcendent victory,
existing with immortal power, and so time itself, ‘Our noisy years’, becomes but a passing
moment in the one vast immediacy of the eternal. (The Starlit Dome, pp 41-44).
The poem is a journey of the soul from the ‘best philosopher’ to the philosophic mind. The
Child’s unconscious recollection of his heavenly home exists in the conscious recollection of
the adult. The adult is doing consciously what the Child was doing unconsciously.
Geoffrey Thurley writes:
What Wordsworth does, is, to take over from Coleridge’s analysis (the wearing away of
inward capacity with experience and adversity) and incorporate it into a greater design. That
numinous joy-which unnamed, informed the opening four stanzas of ‘Intimations of
Immortality’- is absorbed into the dialectic, as it has been articulated by Coleridge, is
recapitulated at a higher level of comprehension and generality: innocence breeds experience,
and experience in turn, breeds the new synthesis of the ‘Thoughts that do often lie too deep
for tears’. ( Geoffrey Thurley, The Romantic Predicament, Macmillan Press, London, p. 125).

The child symbol thus becomes ‘a means to an end’. The end is a mature vision of mankind
and nature.
Lionel Trilling says :
“It is a poem, about growing; some say it is a poem about growing old, but I believe it is
about growing up. It is incidentally a poem about optics, and then, inevitably about
epistemology; it is concerned with ways of seeing and then with ways of knowing ultimately
it is concerned with ways of acting, for as usual with Wordsworth knowledge implies liberty
and power.” (Liberal Imagination, p. 125) .

65
Though it is a poem about growing up, it cannot suppress the pain of aging, the pain of
growing away from Childhood as Thomas McFarland believes :
“Indeed Wordsworth’s philosophy of joy almost always seems to be at least in part a product
of the mechanism of denial ... The pattern is recurrent in Wordsworth. For example the
strongest embodiment of the philosophy of joy is in the ‘sing, ye Birds/sing, sing a joyous
song/And let the young lambs bound/As to the tabor’s sound!’ of the Intimations Ode but this
is a conclusion reached not as an apex of ascending gladness, but as a recompense to the
dismal sense that ‘there hath past away a glory from the earth.’ The exclamation, ‘O joy!’ is
engendered not by the sense of life’s fullness, but by the diminished thought ‘that in our
embers/is something that doth live.’ (Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of
Ruin, Princeton University Press), p. 160).
“Wordsworth offers a great hymn of acceptance in which knowledge of human suffering is
conceived as adequate compensation for the loss of that inward joy which, he now accepts as
inevitably wearing out with growth. ... The main point is that gleam is still fled,
whether conferred on things by us or merely apprehended by us. Coleridge’s Dejection
shows that he knew too well the condition Wordsworth has described so beautifully. The
power had failed -the power does fail -and the poet is left with ‘ordinary’ reality, the weight
of custom that lies upon us, ‘Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life” (Geoffrey Thurley, The
Romantic Predicament, Macmillan Press, p. 125)
“The pain of moving away from Childhood and its heavenly vision is not denied by
Wordsworth. He only says his new awareness of human suffering which unites man with man
and man with nature in one ‘sentiment of being’ is now dearer to him than even the Child and
his ‘gifted’ vision.
The poem reminds us of Eppie, the Child in George Eliot’s ‘Silas Marner’.
In Silas Marner the arrival of Eppie inaugurates a process of revolutionary change in
Silas’ life. Eppie brings a new kind of religious experience in Silas’ life.
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away
from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away
from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth towards a calm
and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and that hand may be a little child’s.
(Silas Marner, Chap. 14)
The ‘first recollections’ of ‘The Immortality Ode’ and the memory of ‘beauteous forms’
in Tintern Abbey are no different from Eppie’s little hand.
The relationship that develops in the novel is something symbolic and legendary. The
Child inspires something divine in the life of Silas, just as Wordsworth’s Child is inspired by
its pre-existent Celestial light. Wordsworth uses the Platonic belief only as a myth for his
poetic purpose to invoke the innocence of Childhood which combines all life and living
things into one living soul.

66
 “Only after a lifetime have I come to understand that even a real event may be the
enactment of a myth, and from that take on supernatural meaning and power. In such cases
myth is the truth of the fact, not fact the truth of the myth.” (Kathleen Raine, Defending
Ancient Springs, pp. 123-4).

10. Select Bibliography

Herbet Read, Wordsworth (Faber And Faber, 1975),
John Puriks ‘A Preface to Wordsworth (Longman, 1970).
Helen Darbishire, The Poet Wordsworth (Oxford University Press, 1966).
Ernest de Selincourt, The Poetical Works of Wordsworth (Ox ford University Press
1961)
R. L. Bret and A. R. Jones, Lyrical Ballads (Methuen, 1968).
E.W. Parker and S. H. Burton. A Pageant of Longer Poems (Longmans, 1961).
W. Graham. The Prelude, Books I & II (Basil Blackville Oxford 1968).
Alun R. Jones and William Tydeman, Wordsworth Lyrical Ballads: A Case Book
(Macmillan Education, 1987).
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1981).
J. R. Watson, William Wordsworth’s Vital Soul (Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1982).
Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn (Methuen London, 1968).
Geoffrey Durant, Wordsworth And The Great System (Cambridge University Press,
1970).
P. H. Parry William Wordsworth : Selected Poems (Longman, York Press, 1982).
G. Wilson Knight, The Starlit Dome (Oxford University Press, 1971).
Richard J. Onorato, The Character of the Poet: Wordsworth (Princeton University Press,
1971).
Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin (Princeton University Press,
1981).
Raymond Cowell, Critics on Wordsworth (Universal Book Stall, New Delhi, 1989).
Geoffrey Thurley, The Romantic Predicament (Macmillan, 1983).
J. R. Jackson. Poetry of the Romantic Period (Routledge Kegan Paul, 1980).

67
11. Some Questions
1. These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blindman’s eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms and mid the din Of towns and cities,
I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood and felt along the heart,
(a) Identify the passage.
(b) What does the poet mean by ‘sensations sweet’?
(c) What ‘beauteous forms’ is the poet referring to?
2. What is the theme of Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode and how is it developed?
3. . . . that serene and blessed mood,/ In which the affections gently lead us on,/-Until,
the breath of this corporeal frame,/ And even the motion of our human blood/
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep /In body, and become a living soul:
(a) Identity the passage and relate it to its context.
(b) Comment on the significance of the phrases : ‘serene and blessed mood’ and ‘a
living soul’.
4. The Immortality Ode records “A very individual kind of depression and a very
individual solution”. Discuss.
5. ...those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
(a) Identify the passage and relate it to its context.
(b) Explain the last two lines.
6. “In the renewed presence of a remembered scene, Wordsworth comes to a full
understanding of his poetic—self.” Discuss this view of Tintern Abbey.
7. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:

68
 Not in entire forgetfulness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come,
From God, who is our home.
i. Restate briefly the notion of pre-existence with the help of the passage.
ii. Is this compatible with Christian belief?
8. Write a note on the following topics:
(i) The French Revolution and Romantic Poetry.
(ii) Imagination and Romantics.
9. ... nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
is full of blessings.
(i) Identify the passage. What, according to the poet, is the dreary intercourse of
life?
(ii) Comment on the last two lines of the passage quoted above.
10. ‘The things which I have seen I now can see no more’, says Wordsworth in the
Immortality Ode. Critically examine what the poet has lost and what he has gained with
age.
11. But oft, in lonely rooms and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration.
(i) Identify the lines and relate these to their context.
(ii) What do the given lines say about poetic experience
12. Write a note on the following :
(i) The French Revolution and Romantic Poetry.
(ii) Romanticism.
(iii) The Ode in the Romantic Age.

69
13. Discuss Tintern Abbey as a poem that concerns itself with the ‘still, sad music of
humanity”.
14. The Immortality Ode is ‘Wordsworth’s conscious farewell to his art, a dirge sung over
his departing powers.’ Discuss.
15. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened :- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
(i) Analyze this passage and relate it to its context.
(ii) Elucidate briefly these phrases : “The burthen of the mystery” and “an eye made
quiet by the power of harmony”.
16. How does Wordsworth view his growth and development in the Immortality Ode? Give
a reasoned answer.
17. ...That neither evil tongues,
Rash judgement, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all,
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against as, or disturb
Our Cheerful faith, that all which we behold
is full of blessings.
(a) Analyze the lines and place them in their context.
(b) Does the poet place Dorothy and himself against the rest of mankind? If so, why?
What is that ‘cheerful faith’ which he believes (morally) belongs to them alone.
70
18. But for those first affections
Those shadowy recollections,
which, be what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our, day
And yet a master light of all our seeing
(a) Analyze the lines and place them in the context.
(b) Elucidate briefly the phrases : ‘Those first affections’, ‘Shadowy recollections’,
fountain light,’ and ‘master light.’
19. Tintern Abbey is ‘a sensitive man’s intellectual escape into Nature’. Discuss.
20. Wordsworth’s escape into Nature in Tintern Abbey is short-lived. The last stanza of the
poem is “a fatigued attempt to convert his loss into a negative triumph”. Discuss.
21. Compare and Contrast Tintern Abbey with The Immortality Ode.
22. The Immortality Ode is a mature version of Tintern Abbey. Discuss

71
72
 Unit-2(b)
‘Kubla Khan’
&
‘Dejection : An Ode’
S.T. Coleridge

Contents
1. About the Poet
2. A Brief Note on the Characteristics of Romantic Poetry
3. Kubla Khan : The Poem
4. Kubla Khan : An Analysis
5. Dejection : An Ode: The Poem
6. Dejection : An Ode: An Analysis
7. Concepts of Imagination
8. Suggested Reading
9. Some Questions

Prepared by:
P. S. Nindra

73
74
1. About The Poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October, 1772, in the town of Ottrey,
Devonshire. His father was a simple-minded clergyman. The poet, the youngest of thirteen
children, displayed from his earliest years great fondness for reading, and entered the
Grammar school when six years of age. We have a full account of his early years, which truly
proves how in his case the child was father to the man. It is important to note, in the light of
his later tastes and of his writings, that the book which above all others fascinated and
impressed him was the Arabian Nights Entertainments. As he says “I took no pleasure in
boyish sports, but read incessantly. So I became a dreamer. Alas ! I had all the simplicity, all
the docility of the little child, but none of the child’s habits. I never thought as a child, never
had the language of a child”1.
When he was eight years old, according to his own account, he ran away from home
after a quarrel with his brother who had provoked him, and slept that night on the bank of a
stream, an adventure which he dated as the beginning of his continuous later ill-health.
In 1782, Coleridge’s father died, and a place was found for him at Christ’s Hospital, the
London charity school, where Charles Lamb was his junior. Lamb describes Coleridge as the
“Poor, friendless boy.”
At school he was an omnivorous reader: he was interested in metaphysics, in theology,
and especially in Neo-Platonism. During the last two years at school, he was interested in
poetry, especially the sonnets of Bowles, which, by their spontaneous and fresh simplicity,
and genuine love of nature, exercised a great influence upon him. His own verse written
during these years, though often above the average, requires no special comment.
In 1791, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. His University career was passed in
stirring and stormy times. He firmly embraced democratic and communistic views, and had
deep sympathy with the French Revolution of 1789. In religion, as in politics, his views were
strongly radical. An interesting development took place at this time : owing to debt, and
disappointment in love, Coleridge disappeared in December 1793 and enlisted in the Light
Dragoons at Reading under the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache (Coleridge retained the
initials). In April 1794, he was discharged after his family and friends intervened on his
behalf, and he returned to Cambridge.
On a Vacation walking tour, he met Robert Southey, poet and ‘sturdy Republican’, at
Oxford in June. Soon a friendship was formed, and during the following three weeks or so
Coleridge outlined a plan to establish (in a remote part of America) a communistic settlement
which was called Pantisocracy. Twelve gentlemen were to sail with twelve ladies; two or
three hours’ work a day suffice for their support giving ample leisure for study and poetry.
But the project did not make any headway, and the scheme was slowly and silently dropped.
The only practical consequence of the American scheme was Coleridge’s marriage on
October 4, 1795. at Bristol to Sara, sister of Edith Fricker, whom Robert Southey was to
marry. The Coleridges settled in a cottage in Clevendon in Somerset. In September, 1796
their first child Hartley as born.
Coleridge had no means of supporting a home, beyond an offer of payment, for a verse
he might write, made by a publisher named Cottle. He tried several schemes for gaining a
livelihood : delivered lectures on various topics, literary and political, preached in ‘Unitarian
churches’2, published his first volume of poems, wrote for the press, and finally started The
75
Watchman, a magazine devoted to politics and literature. But with the tenth number, the
publication of the magazine came to an end.
On the marriage front, Coleridge did not enjoy domestic harmony. In fact there was no
real sympathy and understanding between him and his wife. Thus domestic anxieties and
depression of spirits brought on attacks of neuralgia and it was probably at this time that he
began the use of opium as a relief, a habit which was to mar his best years, and indeed the
whole of his life. In fact, Coleridge suffered long spells of appalling ill-health, and his
addiction to opium only served to complicate the problems.
In 1797, began his famous friendship with William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy.
Coleridge moved to Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, and shortly afterwards the
Wordsworths settled in the neighbouring village in a mansion called Alfoxden. “Our
principal inducement,” writes Dorothy Wordsworth, “was Coleridge’s society”. Each had
seen, and admired, a little of the other’s work, but they had only recently become personally
acquainted. The friendship between the two poets stands as one of the most famous and most
fruitful in the annals of English literature. And we cannot forget Dorothy also. As Coleridge
says : “We were three people, but only one soul”. The stimulus of Wordsworth’s
companionship helped to mature his poetic genius, and the sympathetic, intelligence of
Dorothy Wordsworth also had the happiest effect upon Coleridge’s imagination. Free for a
time from domestic anxiety, and happy in the new company, Coleridge rose to the zenith of
his poetical career. Their walks together on the Quantock hills resulted in the epoch-making
volume of poems called The Lyrical Ballads. (1798). The Ancient Mariner formed part of the
Ballads. Indeed during, the short time-from June, 1797 to September, 1798 — that this close
friendship lasted, Coleridge wrote almost all his best poetry,—The Ancient Mariner. The
Nightingale, the first part of Christabel, The Dark Ladle, the Ode to France, Fears in
Solitude. Frost at Midnight, Kubla Khan, and so on.
This brief and fruitful period also marks the completion of Coleridge’s poetical career.
Two poems alone of later date can claim to rank with those just mentioned; the second part of
Christabel (1800) and the melancholy Ode on Dejection (1802). Walter Pater in his
Appreciations observes. “What shapes itself for criticism in Coleridge’s poetic life is not. as
with most true poets, the gradual development of a poetic gift, determined, enriched, retarded,
by the actual circumstances of the poet’s life, but the sudden blossoming, through one short
season, of such a gift, already perfect in its kind, which thereafter deteriorates as suddenly
with something like premature old age. “Henceforward Coleridge is the critic and the
Philosopher, rarely the poet. The tyranny of opium had spread its dark shadow over his life,
and we find an excellent account of his state of mind at this time in all its bitter sadness in the
pathetic Dejection Ode, from which a few lines may be quoted here :
There was a time when though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness.
...............................................................
...............................................................

But now afflictions bow me down to earth;

Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ;
But O, each visitation
76
 Suspends What Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination”.
Dejection Ode is indeed his pathetic farewell to poetry, as sincere as it is sad.
After the publications of Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge started for a tour through Germany
with Wordsworth and Dorothy, to learn the language and study contemporary philosophy and
science. German philosophy and literature peculiarly fascinated Coleridge.
On his return to England in 1800, Coleridge aimlessly moved from place to place. When
Wordsworth married and settled at Grasmere in the Lake district, Coleridge and his family
followed in July 1800, where they, in turn, were followed by the Southeys who shared their
house, Greta Hall near Keswick.
Relations with his wife grew worse and worse, and Coleridge plunged into depths of
misery. He fell in love with Wordsworth’s sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, a woman of deep
sympathy and understanding. He even toyed with the idea of taking a separation from his
wife.
Failing health induced him to try the effect of warmer climates. So he left for Malta in
June 1804, where he was very well received by the English Colony. He was appointed there
as the temporary secretary to the governor Sir Alexander.. From this time onwards, the
Southeys took more or less full responsibility for maintaining Coleridge’s family. But there
was no improvement in his health. Cut off from friends and congenial intellectual
environment, he found life unbearable there, and returned to England after two years.
He wandered from place to place, ill and self-reproachful, and finally went to live with
the Wordsworths for two years and produced another periodical, “The Friend”, his second
attempt at periodical editing, of which twenty-seven numbers appeared. Sara Hutchinson,
who had copied the manuscripts for the printer, left to live with a brother in Wales. Coleridge
missed her immensely, his life and work falling to pieces. He left for London, and soon got
involved in a miserable quarrel with Wordsworth which was never completely patched up.
Still, however, his wonderful powers continued to find new admirers, and his lectures on
Shakespeare and Milton in London were “a sort of rage.” Since these lectures were delivered
extemporaneously, only fragmentary records exist of them.
Separation from his wife took place at this time, and this was followed by estrangement
from many-old friends too. Continued ill-health at last forced him to place himself in the
hands of a sympathetic doctor from Highgate, in the year 1816. He lived in the doctor’s house
until his death, eighteen years later, and under his care he gradually overcame the craving for
opium, and regained some measure of restored health. He renewed old friendships, formed
new ones and showed occasional flashes of genius. During this period he produced the Lay
Sermons, Biographia Literaria, with its invaluable analysis of the principles and language of
poetry, The Aids to Reflection, and the Notes on Shakespeare.
Coleridge had extraordinary powers of conversation, and it was as a talker....a marvelous
talker that he is noted during the last ten years of his life. His reputation and his attractive
personality brought to Highgate some of the finest minds of the day. In fact he became the
sage of Highgate, and the house a place of pilgrimage for writers and thinkers.
He died on 25 July, 1834 and was buried in Highgate churchyard. A few months
previously he had composed his own epitaph :
Stop, Christian passer—by ! -stop, child of God.
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
77
 A Poet lies, or that which once seemed he,
O, lift one thought in Prayer for S.T.C, :
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life a death !
Mercy for praise-to be forgiven for fame
He asked, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same !
Coleridge planned much, but achieved little. Carlyle, a well-known critic, wrote : “His
cardinal sin is that he wants will. He has no resolution.” Coleridge was incapable of sustained
effort. On this aspect, let us note the opinion of two or three famous critics. Oliver Elton
observes in his A Survey of English Literature : ‘”The history of his life is largely one of
designs unfulfilled—mere broken arcs—and of surmises thrown out rather than worked out.
His life is a record of dissipated energies, wasted manhood unfulfilled promises and pre-
mature decay.”
Hudson points out in An Outline History of English Literature : “A man of gigantic
genius, he was absolutely wanting in will power, and his slavery to opium, which lasted many
years, helped still further to paralyze his energies. So the divinely-gifted Coleridge shambled
through life, dreaming great dreams and projecting great books, but the dreams were never
realized and the books were never written. All his work is fragmentary; yet his was so
original and seminal a mind that in theology, philosophy and literary criticism (to which he
gave much time in later years) he exercised an influence out of all proportion to the bulk and
apparent importance of his writings.
What is best in Coleridge’s poetry is very small in amount, but that little is of rare
excellence. His personal poems like Dejection : an ode, and Work without Hope, have
pathetic interest in connection with the tragedy of ineffectiveness which made up so much of
his life. But his historical importance is due mainly to such poems as The Ancient Mariner
and Christabel which represent the triumph of romanticism as fully as Wordsworth’s
narrative poems represent the triumph of naturalism.........Coleridge took the supernatural as
his particular province, and far beyond any writer before him he treated the supernatural in a
purely poetic way. It will be remembered that Wordsworth saved naturalism from the hard
literature to which it was tending by touching fact with imagination. Coleridge saved
supernaturalism from the coarse sensationalism then in vogue by linking it with
psychological truth”.
Another notable critic, 1. A. Richards, is also worth quoting : “He is the Great
Disappointment’; the man who might have but didn’t; the waster of unparalleled talents; ‘the
type specimen of self-frustrating genius ; the procrastinator, the alibi fabricator and the idler.”

1. Supplement to “Biog. Lt.”

2. Unitarian : member of a Christian church which rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and
believes that God is one person.

78
2. A Brief Note on the Characteristics
of Romantic Poetry
Before coming specifically to romantic poetry we will first give a very brief survey of
English Poetry. Of course you must supplement this account with a reading from any good
History of English Literature.
Modern English Poetry is about six hundred years old. It can be conveniently discussed
under the following headings.
1. Age of Chaucer.
2. The Elizabethan Age.
3. The Puritan Period.
4. Restoration Period.
5. The Classical Period.
6. The Romantic Revival.
7. The Victorian Age.
Now follows a brief estimate of all these periods.
2.1 Age of Chaucer (1340-1400) :
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) has rightly been called the father of modern English poetry.
He was a many-sided genius. He adopted an eleven syllable line as his favourite verse-form
from the Italian poet Boccaccio.
Chaucer’s most important and endearing work is Canterbury Tales. This poem is the finest
narrative in English literature, abounding as it does in story-interest, humour and 79
haracterization.
The Age of Chaucer is notable for the development of the popular ballad, metrical
romance, dream allegories and satire.
2.2 The Elizabethan Age :
Broadly speaking the period (1580-1620) may be regarded as the Elizabethan Age. It is
one of the greatest periods in English literary history. Its two main characteristics were :
(i) Growth of Nationalism.
(ii) The influence of Renaissance learning.
Both these tendencies are reflected in contemporary literature. Amongst the foreign
influences. Italian, French and Spanish were more pronounced.
In poetry, new verse forms like the “sonnet” and “blank verse” were introduced and
experimented with. Songs, pastoral poems, and sonnets were extremely popular. Spenser was
the greatest Elizabethan poet, and his masterpiece, The Faery Queen was written during
1589-96. The sonnets of Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare were quite popular. The
Elizabethan Age was primarily the age of drama. Shakespeare wrote all of his famous dramas
between 1591 and 1611.
The general trend of Elizabethan literature was “Romantic”. Display of imagery and
emotion were two marked traits of poetic diction.

79
2.3 The Puritan Period :
This period covers the years (1625-1660). This is also known as the Age of Milton as he
was the most prominent poet of this period. This age was characterised by a reaction against
earlier Elizabethan extravagance and imaginative enthusiasm. The poetic pendulum swung
towards sober intellectuality and controlled emotion. Milton perfected blank verse as an
instrument of poetic expression.
This period was one of gradual transition from the vigour, gaiety and imaginative freedom of
the Elizabethan to that of artificial cheer, philosophic melancholy, and Puritan sobriety.
2.4 Restoration Period:
Also known as the Age of Dryden, it extends over the years 1660-1700. John Dryden
was the greatest poet of this age. Poetry was marked by intellectual vigour, wit and polish,
and dominated by classical traits—balance, exactness and elegance. It lacked emotion and
high imagination: and it was largely didactic (moralistic) or satirical in intention. The ode
was also a favourite form. Blank verse was replaced by the heroic couplet.
2.5 The Classical Period (1700-1750) :
It is also known as the Age of Pope or the Augustan Age. Alexander Pope was the
greatest poet of this period. Classicism dominated English Poetry almost throughout the
greater part of the eighteenth century. Main characteristics of classicism were as follows :
(a) Reason and common sense were preferred to ‘emotion and imagination’.
(b) Nature or supernaturalism were seldom or never treated in poetry.
(c) Most of the time it was the poetry of the town rather than of the country side.
(d) Poetry was chiefly written in Heroic couplet.
(e) Poetry was largely satirical or didactic in intention.
(f) Diction and imagery were conventional.
(g) Poetry abided by rules which were practiced by the Age of Dryden and the
contemporary French poets.
(h) Metrical regularity was strictly adhered to.
(i) Epigrammatic quality and didactic spirit were widely cultivated by poets.
(j) Elizabethan qualities of rhetoric, eloquence, conceit and bombast were discarded. In
their place ‘classical’ qualities of balance, exactness and polish were encouraged.
Pope’s contribution to the development of classicism in England was the largest. He
perfected the heroic couplet. He also laid down rules for writing poetry by publishing his
famous “Essay on criticism”. He taught his contemporaries to “Follow Nature”— but in a
different sense. What he meant was an exact reproduction!! of everyday life and manners, as
opposed to anything wild or extravagant. It was not to describe flowers and the trees and the
changes of season,—it was to copy the men and manners of polite society. Pope was the
author of numerous well-known epigrams, (short, pithy saying).
2.6 Romantic Revival and Romantic Revolt (1798-1832):
In English this period was ushered in by Wordsworth and Coleridge in the Lyrical
Ballads of 1798, as a protest and revolt against the so-called classicism of the previous
century. The movement started as a conscious reaction against the Neo-classical poetry of the

80
18th Century. In this sense, the movement was known as the Romantic Revolt. But the
movement is also known as the Romantic Revival, in the sense that the romantic qualities,
which were suppressed by the Age of Pope, were revived during this period. Interest in
Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton was revived. Since the spirit of the Romantic poetry was
akin to that of the Elizabethan age, the Elizabethan literary forms and subjects were revived
again—the sonnet, the lyric, the pastoral, the blank verse, the Spenserian stanza, the ballad,
and so on. The same fullness of imagination, richness of language, vastness of conception,
lyricism and picturesqueness which pervaded the great Elizabethan works are to be found in
Romantic Poetry. In Coleridge and Byron, Shelley and Keats was revived that
passionateness, restlessness and curiosity, that sense of wonder and mystery, which marked
the age of Elizabeth.
We can sum up the main characteristics of the Romantic poetry as follows :
(i) Emotion and Imagination were once again preferred to reason and common sense.
(ii) ‘Individualism’ as opposed to obedience to ‘Authority’ was revived. The poet was
not bound to follow “Ancients” or “fixed rules”. He was free to write as he pleased.
(iii)Interest in Nature and Supernatural was revived.
(iv) Interest in the common man—the peasant, the labourer, the shepherd—was revived,
(v) Interest in the Past, the Middle Ages, was a marked feature of Romantic poetry,
(vi) Interest in Greek art, myth and literature was another characteristic feature.
The Romantic Revival was the “second great creative period” in English Poetry—the
first being the Elizabethan Age. Great poets flourished during this period, who enriched the
romantic tradition by making significant contributions. Thus Wordsworth revived interest in
Nature by writing such poems as Tintern Abbey. He struck a democratic note by publishing
his short lyric. The Solitary Reaper. Coleridge revived the elements of wonder and mystery
by writing The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel. Shelley enriched lyricism by
writing such immortal lyrics as Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, etc. Keats’s contribution
was no less outstanding. He revived interest in the Middle Ages in his, The Eve of St. Agnes
and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Besides, he was a great Hellenist (a lover of Greek art and
literature), as is evident from his Ode on the Grecian Urn. Byron popularized the qualities of
romantic sadness by creating the Byronic Hero. All these great poets were lovers of nature,
although they appreciated it in their own individualistic manners.
2.7 The Victorian Age (1832-1870)
Romantic rather than classical spirit prevailed during this period. It was, however,
modified to reflect current attitudes in science, religion, politics and philosophy.
The two great poets of this period were Tennyson and Browning. Poetry of this period
was romantic in so far as :
(i) It was dominated by imaginative and emotional elements,
(ii) It experimented with new verse forms.
(iii)It was dedicated to the worship of beauty.
The Victorian Poetry differed from the poetry of the Romantic Revival in three
important aspects :
(i) It was more intellectual in tone,
(ii) It treated serious problems of society,
81
 (iii)It evinced higher degree of technical perfection.
The lyric remained a favourite form during this period. Robert Browning developed a
new type of lyric known as the ‘dramatic monologue’.
You must read at least one good History of English Literature. You may consult “A
History of English Literature” by A. Compton-Rickett, or The Cambridge History of English
Literature Vol. XI. You may also consult, if you can get, A Critical History of English
Literature by David Daiches.
Coleridge’s name, in the history of English poetry, is always associated with those of
Wordsworth. Keats, Shelley, and Byron; for all these poets were subject to the same
influences, and present such characteristics as link them together into a group. The tendencies
that they show and the qualities which they impart to their poetry have won for them the
name of Romantics, and the movement which they represented has come to be known in
English literature as the Romantic Movement. Coleridge’s poetry reveals that he had a
marvelous power of imagination. This imagination helped him to dream great dreams and see
great visions. He possessed also the power of translating into vivid symbols for the eye and
the ear the beauty which he saw in his dreams and visions. His poetry also reveals the
remarkable gift which he had for presenting romantic pictures and images of rare beauty. His
poetry indeed is always full of Romantic elements, and these arise from his study of the
medieval part and from his bringing into his poems mystic and supernatural elements. Indeed,
the supernatural, the marvelous, the Romantic, these seemed to Coleridge, fit subjects for a
poet, not so much on their own account, as for the sense of an abiding mystery in things
which they awaken in contemplative minds. The Rime, Kubla Khan and Christabel are the
greatest poetic achievements, where the poet with his supreme powers of poetic vision,
feeling and expression, has captured for man’s enjoyment the subtlest and the most wonderful
fancies”.

82
3. Kubla Khan : The Poem
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! That deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! As holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny measure—dome with caves of rice!

83
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song.
To such a deep delight ’twould win me.
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry. Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread.
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

84
4. Kubla Khan: An Analysis
Kubla Khan presents certain serious problems for the readers as well as critics. On the
first reading, especially without any background knowledge, everyone is bound to ask the
question: what is it all about? Is there any connection between the first and the second part?
Is it merely a fragment?
These questions are not easy to answer. But it definitely stirs up an old argument:
Should we enjoy the poem as it is —as a self-contained independent unit ? Or should we seek
background knowledge— poet’s life, his other interests and preoccupations, and so on.
Votaries of the former belief, no doubt, have some point. But Kubla Khan presumably
supports the latter view—that we do need some background knowledge to understand and
appreciate this poem.
This poem, though written probably in 1797-98, was published for the first time in 1816.
Along with a Preface in which Coleridge calls it a fragment and tells us about his source and
method of composition, which we quote in full :
In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely
farm-house between Porlock and Lynton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and
Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed,
from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading
the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas’s Pilgrimage : ‘Here
the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And
thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall’. The Author continued for
about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time
he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to
three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose
up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions,
without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself
to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen ink, and paper, instantly
and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was
unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him
above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and
mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the
general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines
and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into
which a stone has been cast, but, alas without the after restoration of the latter.”
Modern critics do not give much credit to the Preface that Coleridge wrote much after
the composition of the poem. They hold the Preface responsible for much of the confusion
and mystery that the poem has given rise to over the years.
What is the position of the modern criticism? For one, it does not consider the poem as a
‘fragment’, as claimed by Coleridge. For another, it detects an essential unity between the
two parts (Lines 1-35, and Lines 36-54). Further, regarding its theme, there is also a measure
of consensus that the poem is about “the act of poetic creation’’ (Humphry House); Kubla
Khan is a poem about poetry (George Watson). In fact Watson claims it with an
assertiveness: “What is Kubla Khan about ? This is. Or ought to be, an established fact of
criticism : Kubla Khan is a poem about poetry. It is probably the most original poem about

85
poetry in English”. For Graham Hough (The Romantic Poets), what underlies the poem is the
theme of Poetic inspiration.
Earlier critics like Livingstone Lowes (The Road to Xanadu), tracing out the references
that Coleridge gathered from his immensely wide reading of these months, comes to the
conclusion that the poem is meaningless. He treats the relation between the parts as
‘inconsequential’. He also talks of the ‘’vivid incoherence’ of the second part. All this is
indeed the result of having been told beforehand that the poem was a dream, or the result of a
dream. And Humphry House’s pertinent questions acquire an added force when he asks:
”If Coleridge had never published his Preface, who would have thought of Kubla Khan
as a fragment? Who would have guessed it as a dream? Who, without the confession, would
have supposed that “in consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been
prescribed”?
Be that as it may. The fact remains that the Preface had stirred up a great deal of critical
activity. What is the best course open for us then? Obviously, to steer clear of some of the
confusing, difficult and in-depth studies of the poem, and adhere to somewhat simpler and
easily accepted approaches.
We proceed with the premise, then, that Kubla Khan is not a fragment; it is a complete
whole, with the two parts having a basic unity. What is this basic unity ? It is this point which
remains to be discussed.
We know one thing for certain that this poem contains echoes and reminiscences of a
number of other books which were sub-consciously influencing his thoughts and fancies. The
elements of the remote, of the distant in time and space, of luxury and extravagance, of art
and music and dance, of incredible sweetness and glamour are all suggested at once.
All these are facts, established facts, but can lead us nowhere in so far as the basic
question is concerned: what is the poem about ? Medical evidence ‘discounts the notion that
opium produces either dreams in sleep or waking hallucinations’. Of course, this poem may
have been written in great speed, but it does not follow that it was written ‘in waking’ up
after dreaming a dream. It seems to have been written deliberately, consciously, with a lot of
preparation (reading etc.) and a definite critical theory about poetry.
Let us take the poem as it is and see what it offers. The fifty-four lines of the poem
divide clearly at line 36. The first section, often in coldly literal detail, describes the Khan’s
‘rare device’. Purchas’s Pilgrimage (1613) tells hardly more than that the Khan built a
movable palace in a beautifully enclosed park. Coleridge is much more specific, and
concentrates many of Purchas’s details, and some others, into a closely consistent picture.
But, to begin with the beginning: what do we find in the first thirty-five lines ?
Somebody (Kubla Khan, in fact) did something specific—decreed the erection of a pleasure
dome; its shadow ‘Floated midway on the waves’”; and it was a “miracle of rare device”
since, though it was “sunny” it contained “caves of ice”. But right in the beginning, the
importance of river Alph is emphasized: the pleasure-dome is ordered to be built where the
river Alph ran, and it is ‘sacred’.
The “so” of line 6 conveys the impression that the location was chosen deliberately by
the Khan: because the sacred river ran here, so he ordered the pleasure-dome to be built here.
Then follows a detailed description of the setting: the size of the tract of fertile ground
that Kubla had walled as an immense garden, with walls and towers, gardens and rills;

86
flowers borne by the plants and trees were fragrant like incense; there were sunny spots of
green lawn amidst thick forests—a place of paradisal happiness.
But most of all, the description deals with the sacred river with special reference to the
chasm from which the river issued, the fountain hurling up the huge fragments, and the
disappearance of the river into the “caverns measureless to man”.
You will notice that the impression that we get is that the setting is more important than the
pleasure dome itself.
Besides, what sort of atmosphere is sought to be evoked through these images? (12-30).
Well, an atmosphere of fear, enchantment, violent and uncontrollable energy, oblivion and
death, and forebodings of strife and struggle.
Thus, this work of art. So to speak, is not set down just anywhere in nature but has been
very carefully accommodated to its natural setting. It crowns nature.
The place indeed is special: it is dominated by the sacred river; it is carefully walled off and
set apart, a kind of earthly paradise, walled off like Milton’s paradise.
But we must pay attention to the opening of line 12, which presents a curious
grammatical problem. What is the force of “But” ? in the opening of the line ? Does it mean:
but how unlike the rest of the garden was the chasm? Or: In what sharp contrast to the
enfolded sunny spots of greenery was that awesome chasm? The landscape is cleft by the
chasm and it makes the place “savage”.
At any rate, the “But oh” signals a shift in mood, from sunlight to shadow, or from
sunlight to moonlight.
The place is savage, holy and enchanted, and the appropriateness of the spot as one in
which a woman might wail for her demon lover connects the place with the darker aspects of
the supernatural. The more sunlit and paradisiacal aspects of its sacred character have been
emphasized in the first eleven lines. The description of the chasm completes the picture of a
place which we should today call numinous. (Pertaining to a divinity ; suffused with feeling
of a divinity.)
It is sacred in all the senses of that word—-not merely the divine but including the
demonic—-in short, the numinous as primitive man apprehends it.
The river Alph participates in this quality. If it waters the blossoming garden of the
incense-bearing trees and sparkles in the sun, it is also violent and darkly mysterious. The
river is associated with both past and future. In its tempestuous descent Kubla Khan can hear
the voices of the past (”ancestral voice”) predicting the future (”prophesying war”). The river
Alph has other significance too. (See Study Notes).
The pleasure dome as a thing of art, then, is imposed upon a very special portion of
nature. It is located very precisely in the enclosed tract. Its shadow is reflected in the waves
of the river at a point midway between the bursting forth of the river and its disappearance—
at a point, at least, where the sound of the source fountain and of the waterfall into the abyss
can both be heard as a “mingled measure”.
The dome is a work of art imposed upon a particular nature; it crowns and dominates
that nature; but it also incorporates some of the polarities’ of nature. The sunny dome imitates
the heavens, but it imitates the earth as well with its ice caves. Its holding together in one
artifact such extremes is referred to as miraculous:
“It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure – dome with caves of ice.”

87
 Indeed, harmony and reconciliation are the essential features of the dome. Or should we
say reconciliation of opposites, which makes it a ‘miracle of rare device”.
But the walled garden, reminding one of an earthly Paradise, contains knowledge of the
threat of its own possible destruction. Kubla Khan’s fortune is precarious. According to the
prophecy, he faces war. The earthly paradise is not held as a permanent gift, it is subject to
change, subject to destruction. In other words, the ideal life is always open to forces of evil.
Now we come to the real problem-the last eighteen lines of the poem. Here is the most
characteristic dream-feature of the poem-the sudden switch from Kubla and the Xanadu
landscape.
As we stated earlier, many scholars who regard this poem as a fragment, do not see any
logical connection between the first thirty-six and the last eighteen lines. But we can argue
that the last eighteen lines actually complete the poem, and that the break between the two
parts is a ‘meaningful’ break.
No doubt, with the second part, we come to a new topic, and the poet now speaks in his
own person and has a vision of an Abyssinian maid singing of Mount Abora. If the first
section of the poem might have been read from a book or presented in a dream or sketched in
reverie, suddenly we now have a person speaking. “I once saw a damsel with a dulcimer in a
vision.”
The damsel is from a far-away land, playing a music of unutterable melody and
sweetness. And now comes the crucial line “Could I revive within me.” As Humphry House
points out, this line can be interpreted in two ways. If a strong emphasis (and therefore
necessarily also a strong metrical stress) is put upon “could”, the word can be taken to imply
“If only I could, but I can’t,” and the whole poem can be made to appear to be about the
failure and frustration of the creative power. But if the emphasis on “could” is slight, then the
condition is an “open” condition, like “Could You make it Wednesday instead of Thursday, it
would be easier for me”, then it would imply that there is every possibility of creative
achievement.
The second interpretation, of course, seems to be more appropriate because, as House
says: “not only is it biographically relevant to point out that in 1797-98 Coleridge, so far from
bemoaning the loss of creative power, was only just discovering its strength; but also the
whole rhythmic character of the paragraph requires this view”.
Coming back to our discussion of the poem, we observe that the “I” of this poem will
not, of course, build the dome as Kubla did, He will build it with music. But he sets a
condition: if he could revive in himself the music of the maid in the vision, it would so stir
him to joy, that he would become truly creative and could himself produce a musical
recreation of the Khan’s pleasure dome. Or, we can say, he will build that dome in words, in
poetry. But, if the speaker could indeed recover the vision and build the dome for us, he
would pass beyond the bounds of poetry as we know it and become himself a numinous
thing-a creature to be held in awe and dread as one who had indeed been in paradise and
tasted its milk and honey-dew. Poetry reaches beyond itself and aspires to vision so intense,
that the poet becomes seer and prophet, the teller of truth. In proportion as the poet succeeds,
he becomes the man set apart from his fellows, to be viewed, perhaps, with superstitious
dread.
Notice that in the line “I would build that dome in air”, the speaker seems to be
challenging comparison with the Khan. Of course, the Khan is an oriental despot-all

88
powerful—who has merely to decree and Lo! There is this pleasure—dome. But the poet
seems to say something to this effect: ‘I will build what Kubla built’. But his mode of
building sets him at the other extreme from the great Khan. He becomes not emperor or ruler,
(in order to bring into existence a miracle of rare device’, a person has to be no less than an
all-powerful ruler), but a poet who needs nothing but divine inspiration; he needs to be in a
state of poetic frenzy. He becomes a man cut off from his fellows by a magic circle and of
whom all cry, “Beware, beware”. If the shudder of awe and the warning whispered by those
listening to his song are a compliment and a testimony to his power, they also mark his exile
and his isolation. In other words, to recover the joy excited by the revived visionary music
would involve its penalties as well as its triumph.
By now, perhaps, the relationship between the two parts is somewhat clear to you. It is
just because the first part presents the dome and the river with all its setting so completely,
beautifully and finally, that we accept the authenticity of the creative impulse in the second
part and find in the last word “Paradise” a fact, not a forlorn hope. “Kubla Khan”, observes
Humphry House, ‘is a triumphant positive statement of the potentialities of poetry. How great
those potentialities are is revealed partly in the description of its effects at the ending of the
second part and partly in the very substance and content of the first.”
To reinforce the argument that Kubla Khan is a poem about poetry, let us quote George
Watson here (Coleridge the Poet):” Anyone who objects that there is not a word about poetry
in it should be sent at once to the conclusion and asked, even if he has never read any Plato,
what in English poetry this is like:
“Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise”.
There are dozens of parallels in Renaissance English to this account of poetic
inspiration, all based—though rarely at first hand—on Plato’s view of poetic madness in the
Ion or the Phaedrus— The ‘flashing eyes’ and ‘floating hair’ of Coleridge’s poem belong to a
poet in the fury of creation. Verbal resemblances to the text of Plato itself confirm that the
last paragraph of the poem is a prolonged Platonic allusion. Socrates, in the Ion compares
lyric poets to ‘Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when under the
influence of Dionysus’ and adds that poets ‘gather their strains from honied fountains out of
the gardens and dells of the Muses. ..Ion himself, describing the effects of poetic recitation,
confesses that when I speak of horrors, my hair stands on end...The very phrase ‘holy dread’
is Platonic (Laws 67 ID). That Kubla Khan is in some sense a comment on Plato’s theory of
poetry Is not really in doubt. (Note : Students are familiar with Plato, It may be worth-
mentioning here that his dialogues fall into three groups : the first group consisting of the
Euthyphro and the Crito, the second and the most famous consisting of the Phaedo, the
Symposium, and the Republic, and the third group consisting of Timaeus and the Laws).
4.1 Study Notes
Xanadu : province of Tartary; the name of a town said to be not far from Pekin, the
ancient capital of the Chinese Empire and the summer capital of the emperors. Its Chinese
form is Shangtu. Kubla Khan : (1216-1294), was the founder of the Mongol Dynasty in
China, and one of its greatest rulers. He conquered China in 1267, and thus overthrew the
Ling dynasty, which had ruled for 319 years. The Chinese capital of Peking was built by him;

89
also grandson of Genghis Khan, the notorious world conqueror, who made an inroad into
India also. Kubla lived in great style and grandeur. Marco Polo spent seventeen years at his
court.
These two names —Xanadu, Kubla Khan — sound the note of remoteness and romance
arising from unfamiliar objects and names.
Pleasure-dome : a palace for pleasure or holiday enjoyment
dome : rounded top of a building. Here dome stands for a grand, magnificent structure
with all the usual architectural features.
Decree : order to be built.
Alph: a legendary river. Rivers and springs are commonly associated with poetry in
classical and Renaissance poetry, “The very name ‘Alph’ offers an easy clue in its
resemblance to the Alpheus of Milton’s Lycidas, where it is associated with the Sicilian
Muse of pastoral poetry. And the river of poetry was a preoccupation of some
Romantics too… The sacred river is the most traditional element in a poem otherwise
evasive in its sophistication” (Watson).
Why the river was sacred has not been made clear. This idea is particularly Hindu or
Eastern, for only in the East do people treat rivers as holy. For example, the Ganges is a
sacred river in India.
Caverns : Caves, underground gorges. One of the widespread beliefs about rivers is that
they run underground for some distance.
Measureless to man : the depth of which cannot be ascertained by man.
L.5. Sunless Sea : not exposed to the rays of the sun. Some dark, subterranean lake. This
is another detail which is hard to imagine but which makes for the
picturesqueness of the description.
L.6. twice five mile: an archaic form of saying ten miles.
L.7. girdled: encircled.
L.8. sinuous rills : streams winding in and out like serpents; tortuous rivulets.
L.9. incense-bearing tree: Trees laden with fragrant blossoms. (A sensuous phrase)
This is an echo of Shakespeare’s description of Arabian trees yielding gums which
are fragrant like incense.
L.11 sunny spots : ground exposed to the warm rays of the sun.
L.12. But oh ! etc. : Suddenly, the poet rivets his attention on a different scene which he
views with awe and wonder, as shown by the exclamation.
Romantic chasm: a narrow ravine, gorge or deep hollow is called romantic in the
sense of its being mysterious and fearful to look into.
L.13. athwart: across
Cedarn cover: through a wood of cedar trees; the cedar is an evergreen tree,
L.14. Savage place: the place was strange, primitive and fearful. Why fearful? Because it
held unknown terrors of magic and witchcraft. The words holy and enchanted
reinforce an atmosphere of vague fears and magic associations.
L.I5. a waning moon : The waxing and waning moons are ascribed different powers and
virtues in magic and witchcraft.

90
L.16. demon-lover: ghastly lover; those who claim that the poem achieves its effect
mainly by “far-reaching suggestiveness” cite particularly lines 12-16 as an
example. Other lines being 29-30. Furthermore, the proper names used are also
highly emotive and suggestive: Xanandu, Kubla Khan, Alph, Abyssinian and
Mount Abora, even Paradise. These names undoubtedly add to the total effect of
the poem.
About demon-lover: it is important to point out that this is a reference to Eastern
legends where a woman, after falling in love, discovers that her lover is a demon
(or a supernatural spirit), and thereafter seeks for him in places such as this chasm.
L.17. seething: coming up with a hissing or bubbling noise; bursting forth.
L.18. The whole line stands for one word: ‘earthquake’, when the earth seems to pant and
feel suffocated and bursts out in cracks and other fearful noises.
L.I 9. Momently : every moment, always; this is a peculiar use of the word. Was forced :
gushed forcefully.
L.20. half-intermitted burst: the bursting of the current being but now and then.
L.21. vaulted: made a circular motion or somersault; in other words, huge fragments
leapt up, and then fell down in a semi-circular movement.
Rebounding hail: like hailstones leaping up after striking the earth; a picturesque
simile and the result of close observation: as hail falls and is shattered, it flies in
fragments. So did the objects thrown up by the current inside the cavern.
L.22. again an apt simile from day to day life; the flying pieces of rock were like the
grains flying up when struck with a flail by a farmer.
Thresher, person who threshes grain that is, one who separates grain from chaff
with an instrument known as flail.
L.23. at once and ever: continuously; the water intermittently threw up pieces of rock.
L.24. If: the fountain.
L.25. meandering: winding with a mazy motion: the river Alph followed a tortuous,
bewildering course. Note the musical effect of this line; it is onomatopoeic—the
sound echoes the sense; alliteration leads to the musical effect.
L.28. sank in tumult: flowed tumultuously, noisily, only to become silent afterwards.
Lifeless ocean: This can mean that the sea was calm, with no waves in it. Or,
perhaps there were no living creatures in it.
L.29. Ancestral voices …war: highly suggestive and elusive line; much is left to our
imagination. The impending war can only mean that Kubla’s earthly paradise is
under threat of destruction. It is claimed by some critics that the line, like others in
the poem is of value for its sonority and suggestiveness rather than for its
“meaning.”
L.31. dome of pleasure: the dome is a characteristic feature of Islamic architecture, and is
appropriate to the Khan referred to as the emperor of China in the poem.
L.32. since the pleasure-dome stood on the banks of river Alph, the shadow of that
magnificent luxury-palace fell in the middle of the river.
L.33. mingled measure: mingled sounds of the gushing waters of the fountain and the
swift current of the river Alph flowing through deep hollows.
91
 L.35. It was the work of cunning artists and designers. Rare and marvellous human skill
had gone into its construction; “it was most wonderfully planned”; the rarity
consisted partly in the contrast between the sunny dome and the caves of ice. Line
36: A sunny…ice: Note the contrast between the sun at one end and ice at the other.
The contradiction promotes wonder instead of incredulity.
L.35-36. On these lines, Humphry House comments as follows:
The “Caves of Ice” need special attention. Some discussions of the poem seem to
imply that they belong with the “caverns measureless to man”; but there surely can
be no doubt that in the poem they belong closely and necessarily with the dome…
The very line shows the closeness by the antithesis, the convex against the concave, the
warm against the cold. It is not necessary to invoke Coleridge’s own statement of the theory
of the reconciliation of opposites in art (”the heat in ice” is even one of his examples) to see
that it is the holding together of these two different elements in which the miracle consists.
They are repeated together, also within the single line, 47, in Part Two. Lowes shows clearly
how in Coleridge’s memory the caves of ice came to be associated with the sacred river; and
in his sources the ice does not indicate terror or torment or death (as Miss Bodkin seems to
think Coleridge’s ice does here), but rather the marvellous, and the delight which
accompanies the marvellous; the ice is linked specifically to the fountains sacred to the moon.
This marvelousness is present also in Kubla Khan, but there is more: ice is shining, clear,
crystalline, hard: and here it adds greater strength and austerity to what would be otherwise
the lush, soft, even sentimental, core of the poem. As it is, the miracle of rare device consists
in the combination of these softer and harder elements. And when this is seen in relation to
the act of poetic creation, . . . its function is still plainer: such creation has this element of
austerity in it.
For this is a vision of the ideal human life as the poetic imagination can create it. Part
one only exists in the light of Part Two. There may be other Paradises…but this is the
creation of the poet in his frenzy. And it is because he can create it that he deserves the ritual
dread”.
Line 37. An abrupt transition, but we have already established the basic connection between
the two parts. Dulcimer : a musical instrument; a kind of primitive piano; the word has an
archaic and musical appeal.
L.39. An Abyssinian maid; a girl belonging to Abyssinia (in Ethiopia); introduced
apparently as another element of romance.
L.41. Mount Abora : seems to be reminiscent of “Mount Amara’” in Milton’s Paradise
Lost (Book IV, L.218)
Mount Amara : was a high mountain, said to be near the source of the river Nile.
The children of Abyssinian Kings were brought up in beautiful garden palaces on
the top of this mountain, lest they should rebel. The place enjoyed perpetual spring,
and was claimed by many to be the true Paradise. The girl of Coleridge’s dream
probably sang in praise of Mount Abora. What sort of praise ? Probably she sang in
praise of its exotic splendour, eternal charm and exquisite beauty.
L.42-47. The lines depict the power of poetic imagination. The poet needs only ‘inspiration’
to emulate Kubla’s feat; he does not need to be a tyrant with full authority over his
surroundings.
L.43. Symphony and song: melody and music of her song.
92
 L.44. could win me: enrapture, enthuse, enchant me.
L.45. that music…long: the inspired poet would also come out with such impassioned
verse, may be sung to the accompaniment of some musical instrument, that those
who ‘heard’ him would be able to visualize clearly that ‘sunny pleasure-dome’ and
those caves of ice in their imagination; i.e. his poetry would call up in the
imagination so vivid a picture that the hearers would think they saw the real objects
(The power of music is well-known. Remember Tansen and his feats).
L.49-54. Beware ! Beware \ etc. Why ? Because people would take him to be a magician.
Only a magician can attempt such a feat.
L.51. Weave…thrice: i.e. perform magic incantations for protection from him, since his
ability to call up this vision proves that he possesses occult powers.
An inspired poet is almost like a magician with glittering eyes and disheveled hair.
He radiates a mysterious and uncanny power and has to be contained within a circle, so that
others may not be affected by him. (a common practice in magic; you are already familiar
with the importance of the word “thrice”). He is nearly divine in his inspiration, for he is
brought up on the food of the gods. His exaltations, ardours and enthusiasms are the result of
poetic inspiration: and poetic inspiration is sustained by divine visions and immortal
longings. He is on the earth, but his mind and soul are lost in heavenly pursuits.
Such a poet can produce the illusion of reality in the minds of listeners.
Notice that Lines 49 to the end mark a further transition in the poem: from the lady with
a dulcimer to the poet inspired by magic powers.
L.50. His flashing…hair: the typical signs of one under the influence of supernatural
powers; poets are supposed to be under such an influence when visions come to
them.
Flashing eyes: ‘the seeing eyes’ as Carlyle puts it, of the poet.
Floating hair: poets are usually found growing their hair long.
L.53-54. These are the signs of his being a favoured or immortal creature. He is not a man
like other men.
According to Coleridge, the poet is specially gifted, being endowed with special
susceptibilities and sustained by food which comes to him direct from heaven. That
is, he lives on divine impulses and inspirations more than other men.
Holy dread: the sacred idea of divine awe and reverence which is due to the poet.
For he…Paradise: for the poet has partaken of the same divine food as was
dropped from Heaven to save the hungry Israelites.
Honey-dew: in this word the allusion is to the book of Exodus of the Old Testament
of the Holy Bible: God Almighty appeared before Moses in a dream and
commanded him to lead the Israelites, the chosen people of God, out of Egypt and
added that He himself would appear before them in the form of a cloud by day and
the Pillar of Fire by night to show them the way in the wilderness and He showered
Manna or Divine Food upon the hungry Israelites and the milk of Paradise to
quench their thirst.
All this means that the poet had received the gift of divine inspiration by reviving
the song of the Abyssinian maid.

93
 L.54. Paradise : What is this Paradise ?
Critics differ in their interpretation of this word too. We will quote Humphry House
here. At this point we must caution you that sometimes you may get confused and wonder
which interpretation to believe in. At this level you have to wrestle with such problems. You
have to, so to speak, ‘meander’ your way through a ‘maze’ of differing, sometimes confusing
critical opinions, and arrive at your destination. What destination? Not the ‘sunless sea’ or
‘ocean’, but a considered, definite and a bold formulation of your own opinion, supported
closely by the text.
Here is what House has to say :
‘Positively, it causes a distortion of the poem if we try to approximate this Paradise
either to the earthly Paradise of Eden before the Fall or to the Heavenly Paradise which is the
ultimate abode of the blest. It may take its imagery from Eden, but it is not Eden because
Kubla Khan is not Adam. Kubla Khan himself is literally an oriental Prince with his name
adapted from Purchas. We may, if we persist in hankering after formal equations, incline to
say he is the Representative Man, or Mankind in general: but what matters is not his
supposed fixed and antecedent symbolic character, so much as his activity. Within the
landscape treated as literal he must be of princely scope, in order to decree the dome and
gardens : and it is this decree that matters, for it images the power of man over his
environment and the fact that man makes his Paradise for himself. Just as the whole poem is
about poetic creation at the imaginative level, so, within the work of the imagination, occurs
the creativeness of man at the ethical and practical levels. This is what the poet, of all men, is
capable of 94ealizing… the name of Kubla is repeated only once after the first line, and the
place of its repetition is significant:
‘And’ mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war’.
This is essential to the full unity of the conception: the Paradise contains knowledge of
the threat of its own possible destruction. It is not held as a permanent gift; the ideal life is
always open to forces of evil; it must be not only created by man for himself, but also
defended by him. It is not of the essence of this paradise that it must be lost; but there is a.
risk that it may be lost.” (Coleridge).
Towards the end, we quote Allan Grant:
”Many of the features of the landscape of Kubla Khan are referable to specific sources in
books of oriental travel and history. One could not, however, even if one wanted to, map out
or diagrammatize the relationship of the river, plain and caverns. Yet within the poem they
seem to suggest very powerfully a sense of the surging up of the river of life, Alph (or Alpha,
the first letter of the Greek alphabet), and the fertilizing of the garden of life before it sinks
into an unfathomable sea of death.” (A Preface to Coleridge).

94
5. Dejection : An Ode: The Poem

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,

With the old Moon in her arms;
And 1 fear, 1 fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
(Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.)

WELE ! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made

The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Aeolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For io! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light
(With swimming phantom light o’erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap. foretelling
The coming-on of rain and squally blast.
And oh! that even now the gust were swelling,
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief.
In word, or sigh, or tear-
O Lady ! in this wan and heartless mood.
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze-and with how blank an eye!
95
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
O Lady ! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud !
And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth-
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element !
O pure of heart ! thou need’st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Joy, virtuous Lady ! Joy that ne’er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower, Joy,
Lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
96
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.
There was a time when, though my path was rough.
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream!
1 turn from you, and listen to the wind, .
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth ! Thou Wind, that rav’st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tarn, or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held witches’ home,
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and a peeping flowers,
Mak’st Devils’ yule, with worse than wintry song,
97
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds !
Thou mighty Poet, e’en to frenzy bold !
What tell’st thou now about ?
‘Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,
With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds –
At once they groan with pain, and shudder with cold !
But hush ! there is a pause of deepest silence !
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,
With groans, and tremulous shudderings -all is over-
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!
A tale of less affright
And tempered with delight,
As Otway’s self had framed the tender lay,-
‘Tis of a little child
Upon a lonesome wild,
Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:
And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.
‘Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep:
Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep !
Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing.
And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth !
With light heart may she rise,
Gay fancy, cheerful eyes.
Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;
To her may all things live, from pole to pole,
Their life the eddying of her living soul!
O simple spirit, guided from above,
Dear Lady ! friend devoutest of my choice,
Thus mayest thou ever, ever more rejoice.

98
6. Dejection : An Ode: An Analysis
This poem describes the feeling of apathy and despair which was at once a cause and a
result of Coleridge’s indulgence in drugs and which finally destroyed the best part of his
poetic career. Before we take up the poem for discussion, it would be appropriate if we tell
you what is meant by the term ‘Ode’.
6.1 The Ode
The Ode is a form of a Lyric poem, characterized by its length, intricate stanza forms,
grandeur of style and seriousness of purpose, with a long and venerable history in classical
and post-Renaissance poetry. It is often written in celebration of some special event.
The Greek poet Pindar (518-438 B.C.) established this form. His odes were written to
glorify the winners of the Olympic and other games. His poetry is marked-by elevated
thought, bold metaphor, and the free use of myths. He modelled his stanzas on the dramatic
chorus, using a threefold pattern like the dance rhythm of strophe (moving to left),
antistrophe (moving to right), and epode (standing still); the rhyme scheme is fixed.
Some English poets like Gray in “The Progress of Poesy” (1754) followed the regular or
Pindaric ode. Others, like Cowley, came out with the modified form of the Pindaric Ode,
called the irregular ode: each stanza follows its own pattern with varied line lengths, rhyme
schemes and numbers of lines.
Cowley’s modified version of the Pindaric ode, with its freedom to alter the form in
accordance with changing argument, subject matter and feeling, has proved very-influential.
Coleridge and Wordsworth use irregular ode form for their Dejection (1802) and
Intimations of Immortality (1807) poems respectively.
6.2 Ode to Dejection
With this brief introduction to an ode, we can now take up Dejection. This poem is
considered to be the most extended of the conversation poems.1 It was first written as a
poetical letter of 340 lines, dated 4 April, 1802, and sent to Sara Hutchinson. An intermediate
version-shortened and with considerable revisions, and this time addressed to Wordsworth,
appears in a letter sent to a friend, William Sotheby, on 19 July, 1802. The final version was
published for the first time in The Morning Post of October 1802. Where ‘Edmund’ is
substituted for the’ Sara’ of the first version. In his collected works of 1817, Sibylline Leaves,
Coleridge uses the word ‘Lady !’, and is addressed to his wife Sara.
Watson sums up the position thus: ‘It seems best to think of the first version of 1802 as a
conversation poem which, by some vagary, has been cast into the form of a rough-and-ready
ode. In the ensuing months it was trimmed to less than half its original length, purged of most
of its private reference, and set forth upon the world as one of the oddest compromises in
English poetry: an intensely, bitterly, almost indecently private poem of an unhappily married
poet, cast into that most public of all forms, the neoclassical Pindaric. The language swirls
upwards and downwards from a studiously conversational opening (‘Well! If the Bard was
weather-wise…’) to passages of a grave sublimity that Coleridge had scarcely ever
achieved.... It is by this startling contrast of the formal and the informal that the poem lives,
and for just this reason there can be no doubt of the superiority of the final version, where the
original 340 lines have been reduced to a tight-packed 139. Coleridge is so exuberant a poet,
and so little self-critical in his creative moments, that it is exceptional to watch him at work,
as here, with the pruning-hook...... On the whole, it is surely clear, the reduction of the ode to

99
its familiar form is a continuous triumph of critical acumen,” (George Watson: Coleridge the
Poet).
Dejection is one of a number of poems written in the early months of 1802 by Coleridge
and Wordsworth. They include Wordsworth’s Resolution and Independence, and Intimations
of Immortality ode. Each of them is a response to a sense of irreparable loss, and the phrase
“There was a time” from Dejection becomes the opening line of the Immortality Ode. Each
poet seems to be suffering a crisis of confidence in his poetic gift, fearing the loss of his
creative imagination; and each uses the word dejection to describe the accompanying mood.
Each poet conceived of and responded to the crisis in his own way and the paradoxical result
was the creation of three Romantic poems on the subject of the loss of the poetic imagination.
The paradox is most clearly stated and felt in the final Dejection which had by now become a
poem about the inability to make poetry.
An interesting point about this poem is that in it we find a change in Coleridge’s attitude
to Nature. And you can understand this change better if you read two of his earlier poems :
The Eolian Harp (1795) and Frost at Midnight (1798) In the first poem the poet expresses the
idea that the same Divine Spirit pervades the entire universe. The poet thinks that one cannot
help loving all things in a world which is so permeated by the Divine spirit. The poet shows
his keen sensitivity to Nature and to every object of Nature. Wordsworth, you should
remember, firmly believed in this idea.
Frost at Midnight shows Coleridge’s attitude to Nature much more clearly, and
Wordsworth’s complete and overwhelming influence is quite evident. In the third stanza of
the poem, the poet says that God speaks through Nature and that Nature will educate and
mould his child. Nature exercises a great educative influence.
This is one attitude to Nature. But in the first stanza of this poem itself, we find the poet
expressing the belief that outward objects merely reflect or mirror our own thoughts and
moods. This idea provides us with a clue to Coleridge’s later view of Nature. It is in
Dejection Ode that we find the above belief fully developed :
O Lady ! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud !
He now believes that Nature can give no joy to those who have no joy already in their
hearts. Bitter failures and disappointments in life led Coleridge to lose faith in Nature as a
healing power.
The final version of the Ode is often compared with the original verse letter addressed to Sara
Huchinson. Many critics feel that the original version is more personal and painful and
therefore more ‘sincere’. That may be the case, but we must guard ourselves against giving
undue importance to Coleridge’s private griefs during the period preceding the composition
of the original version. For, it was not for nothing that he reworked the poem so as to cut out
all the associations that had occasioned the poem originally, wanted to bring before the public
a finished work of art, and not a mere rambling sort of piece. But does the Ode convey a
sense of completeness and unity? Humphry House on this point observes : ‘I think it is the
opinion of many readers of the Ode, that brilliantly successful as most of it is, as parts, yet it
fails to achieve complete artistic unity. By comparison with “Frost at Midnight” or “The
Ancient Mariner” or “l Khan” it is not a whole poem.” (We will discuss this statement in our
study Notes, when we come to stanza VII).

100
 One more point needs your careful attention. The poem will make complete sense only
if you do not forget that after cutting and pruning the original version, it was brought forth as
an Ode addressed to William Wordsworth. It was only after some estrangement with his
friend that Coleridge substituted “Lady” for “Edmund” and the poem was altered so as to
erase al1 allusions to their friendship. But that does not alter the fact that Wordsworth’s
personality is all pervading in the Ode. What is more, as we mentioned earlier also, the
Dejection Ode and Immortality Ode have interesting points of comparison and contrast. In
the VI stanza, Coleridge refers to his past joy and describe his present mood of grief.
Wordsworth, in the opening stanza of his Ode, expresses the same idea : ‘It is not now as it
hath been of yore.’ But in Wordsworth’s Ode grief finds relief and ends in joy ; in
Coleridge’s poem grief finds no relief and ends in dejection.
Both poems reveal the irregular rhyme pattern and the interspersing of long and short
lines. (See Bowra’s The Romantic Imagination for a discussion of the two Odes).
1. Conversation poems: Between August 1795 and April 1798, Coleridge composed
the group of poems popularly known as the ‘conversation Poems’ — like “The Eolian
Harp, ‘This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison’, ‘Frost at Midnight’. ‘Fears in Solitude’,
and ‘Dejection’. These poems, displaying a distinctive style, have been called
‘meditations in blank verse’. Strictly, a conversation is an exchange between two
persons. But these poems are rather monologues, being addressed to wife, son, a
ioved one or a friend.
6.2 Study Notes
Motto : The stanza forms part of the ballad from “Percy's Reliques – ‘Ballad of Sir
Patrick Spence.’ In this ballad, Sir Patrick Spence has superstitious fear of “new Moon/with
the old Moon in her arms”, as it portends a “deadly storm,” Coleridge incorporates this idea
in his poem. Thomas Percy's collection of ballads Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765)
made a great impression on the Romantic poets.
Well : The conversational tone of the opening gives the poet the opportunity to make his
whole poem a gradual crescendo.
6.2.1 Stanza I
Bard : The poet who wrote the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, which describes the wrecking of
Sir Patrick's ship off Aberdeen shire in a violent storm, Sir Patrick had correctly foreseen the
advent of a 'storm.
Weather-wise: having the ability to speak wisely about the weather.
that......trade : winds which are more busy, i.e. more rough and stormy.
lazy flakes : mild wind, as compared with active wind, breaks the cloud in pieces or
fragments which move about in the sky lazily.
dull....draft: dull, melancholy breeze
rakes upon : touches gently
Aeolian lute : While discussing the poem The Eolian Harp, Allan Grant Comments :
The aeolian or wind-harp was a German invention of the early seventeenth century consisting
of a sounding board designed to amplify, as in any stringed instrument, the vibrations of the
strings stretched over it. Lying near an open window it would produce a thin 'ethereal' sound
in response to the wind blowing over it. producing a ‘natural’ music. Its appropriateness as a

101
metaphor for Romantic poetry is obvious. Compare its appearance in Dejection : an ode .....
Wordsworth used it in his verse.... (Prelude, 1805. Book I)... Shelley and Hazlitt both
referred to it explicitly when attempting to define the nature of poetry. (Allan Grant: A
Preface to Coleridge, p.106).
(Aeolus in ancient mythology was the god of the wind).
For lo ! : The poet now gives reasons for the lute to remain silent (the preceding line).
Winter-bright: as bright as in winter.
I see ....lap : The new moon is covered with an unearthly light and is thus encircled by a
thread-like circular line producing the impression that the old Moon is in the lap of the new.
(There was a superstition that if the old moon was seen in the lap of the new, there would be
heavy rains and furious storms. Coleridge takes this idea from Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.)
Ind oh !. so far the poet has only stated the possibility of the coming of a furious storm.
But now, in these lines, the poet already notices the wind developing into a storm and rain
falling in a slanting direction.
those sounds... and live : There was a time when natural objects moved him deeply. But
is not so now. The poet’s heart is benumbed by .pain; so he welcomes the approaching storm,
hoping that it would ‘shake’ him out of his paralysing pain. It may not relieve his pain, but
certainly it will at least give some life to that pain and break the sluggish monotony of that
pain.
6.2.2 Stanza II
The first four lines of this stanza give expression to Coleridge’s grief. But these are not
ordinary lines. Sadder lines than these were never perhaps written by any poet in description
of his own grief. What actually occasioned this feeling of intense dissatisfaction, sense of
utter dejection and hopelessness? A large part of it was occasioned by an increasing
awareness of the fact that his inborn gift of imagination was decaying and that his interest
was shifting to philosophy and metaphysics, or ‘abstruse research’—as he calls in this “Ode”.
In other words he was becoming more and more of a philosopher or thinker and less and less
of a poet. The ‘shaping spirit of Imagination’ was deserting him. This change greatly
distressed him, and finds expression in this heart-rending and deeply pathetic poem.
A pang : a deep-rooted sense of pain
Void : empty
Drear : desolate, dull and monotonous.
Stifled : suppressed unimpassioned grief; grief which manifests no deep feeling, no
sense of total involvement.
A grief.... or tear : Intensely moving lines, expressing the poet’s dilemma and pathos in
the choicest of words.
O Lady : This may be considered as the second part of the stanza. Originally, in the
manuscript, the expression was ‘O William”, i.e. William Wordsworth, You will realise that
this makes far more sense.
The poet now gives a beautiful picture of the skyscraper late in the evening. But he
views everything with a ‘blank’ gaze. He cannot feel the beauty of the sky and the stars.
Wan : pale, cheerless
heartless : joyless
102
 throstle : a kind of singing bird.
woo’d : induced, persuaded. The song of the bird persuades the poet to forget his grief
and think of other things—things which can give him some relief.
blank an eye : with a vacant eye ; without any expression in the eyes ; without reacting
to the scene in anyway ; empty of emotion and intelligence.
Crescent Moon : semi-circular moon.
I see them... they are : The poet can ‘see’, but cannot ‘feel’. Coleridge here gives
expression to an experience of double consciousness. His sense perceptions are vivid and in
part agreeable ; his inner state is faint, blurred, unhappy. The power of ‘feeling” has been
paralysed by metaphysical or abstract investigations. The power of ‘seeing’, less dependent
upon bodily health, stands aloof, somewhat indifferent, and yet mournful and critical. By
‘seeing’ he means perceiving and judging; by ‘feeling’ he means that which induces one to
react. We can call these as Coleridge’s different modes of perception. But, as Humphry
House insists, this is “not primarily a poem about modes of perception. It is a poem about
unhappiness and about love and about joy. Of the later autobiographical poems there is least
of self-pity in it, the self-analysis being all the clearer and more mature therefore, because the
sense of love and of joy is so strong. This idea of joy was a guiding principal of Coleridge’s
life.” (Humphry House: Coleridge)
Humphry House is of the view that in our zeal to find some sort of philosophy reflected
in his poems, we should not overlook the presence of affections and feelings in them.
6.2.3 Stanza III
The mood, in this stanza as well as the previous one. is peculiarly modern, recognizable as
free-floating anxiety to the psychoanalyst or as existential dread to the existentialist
philosopher. Its chief characteristic is that it is a generalized and inexplicable feeling which
cannot be located in any particular source,
(Existentialism is a philosophical trend which stresses the importance of existence, as
opposed to the view held by most philosophies and theologies that man’s actual existence in
the world is less significant than some pre-existing essence. In general, existentialism takes
the view that the universe is an inexplicable, meaningless and dangerous theatre for the
individual’s being, his existence. Everyone has to assume the responsibility of making
choices that determine the nature of this existence. This freedom puts man into a state of
anxiety, surrounded as he is by infinite possibilities, while remaining ignorant of the future,
except for the fact that his life is finite, and will finish, just as it began in nothingness.)
genial spirits : sympathetic, sociable; or happy, cheerful spirits.
smothering weight: pressing, crushing burden.
passion : stirring of feelings ; excitement.
whose.... within ; whose real source of joy, happiness and creativity lie in the heart
itself. (The metaphor of the fountain is, like the aeolian lute, an important Romantic image. It
appears in Kubla Khan and in Wordsworth’s definition of poetry in the 1800 Preface as ‘the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’ Fountain is used as a metaphor of creativity).
I may not .....within : We can also explain it like this : ‘I cannot hope to derive from
external Nature the life and depth of emotion which have their source in the soul.’

103
6.2.4 Stanza IV
An important stanza, depicting Coleridge’s changed attitude to Nature, contradicting his own
earlier stand, and also Wordsworth’s philosophy of Nature—the belief that Nature has a life
of its own, that a Divine spirit passes through all objects of Nature, and so on.
In this stanza, the poet says that Nature has no life of its own, and that we transfer to it
our own moods and our own feelings.
O Lady ! : The poet addresses, Sara, his wife.
We receive...give : We find in Nature whatever we have transferred to it from our own
hearts. In other words, we see things according to our own moods.
And in...live : Nature lives only in our imagination. It has no life of its own. If it seems
full of life, it is because we have endowed it with life.
Ours.... shroud : Wedding garments symbolize festivity, joy and happiness. Shroud is
cloth in which a dead body is wrapped. Hence it is a symbol of grief or mourning. What the
poet wants to convey is that it is our thoughts which make Nature bright and attractive or
dark and gloomy, as the case may be. If we are happy, Nature too seems to be joyous, as
though celebrating a festival. But if we are sad, Nature too seems to be in mourning. In other
words, it is our thoughts which make Nature seem happy like a bride or wretched like a dead
man. Thus. Coleridge here is contending against the Wordsworthian doctrine of the influence
of Nature. (Recall here The Ancient Mariner, Lines 244-247 ; then lines 313-317, depicting a
close affinity between outside world and mental states of mind. This is what links the two
poems together.)
And would....Earth : If we wish to see anything of high and noble quality in nature, so
that it may give some solace to the wretched, ever-worried mankind, then from our own souls
some light should come forth and envelop the whole Earth. We pretend to read a deep
significance in Nature (as Wordsworth did. and Coleridge himself did in his earlier poems
like The Eolian Harp). But in fact the cold and lifeless objects of Nature do not lend any
inspiration to care-worn mankind, nor can they teach us moral or spiritual lessons. The light
which illumines dark Nature comes from our own hearts and minds.
And from, . . . element: The soul of a human being must itself send forth a sweet and
powerful voice which will endow the varied sounds of Nature with sweetness.
Of Us own birth : having its origin in the soul itself and not in any external object.
Of all....element: a sweet and powerful voice, coming out of the soul itself, gives life
and cheerfulness to all the sweet sounds of Nature. Thus, the joy, the radiance, the inspiration
to stir and stimulate a man come from his inner self and not from Nature.
The above stanza shows Coleridge’s complete disillusionment with Nature and as we
said earlier, contradicts Wordsworth’s view of Nature as expressed in the following lines in
Tintern Abbey :
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
104
6.2.5 Stanza V
In this stanza, the poet touches upon the source of the ‘light’, the radiance, the bright
mist which pervades all objects of nature. The source lies in the joy in one’s heart. And it is
this joy which leads to acts of poetic creation.
What is this ‘joy’ anyway? According to Humphry House, “the joy of Dejection must be
understood as involving the ‘deep delight’ which Kubla Khan shows at the centre of creative
happiness.” It is a special kind of joy, a solemn joy, a state of being when the emotional and
intellectual faculties are in equipoise. It is closely related to the ‘shaping spirit of
imagination’—something which activates the poet’s imagination, which in turn ‘creates’ and
‘forms’.
This beautiful...power: The power of the soul, or the mental light, is not only beautiful
in itself but is also capable of creating beautiful things. In other words, the poet, with his
fertile imagination, can make beautiful objects.
Life...and shower : “Joy is at once life and the thoughts and feelings which arise from
life; joy is at once that cloud which pours forth the shower and the shower itself
Joy...Heaven : in other words, if we ally or unite ourselves with Nature, i.e., open our
hearts and minds to the influences of Nature, then it is joy, and joy only, in our hearts which
enables us to view the Earth and the Heaven in a new light.
We...rejoice : It is because of the joy in our own hearts that we feel happy,
We thence...sight: From there flows all that delights our eyes or ears.
All melodies...light : All the sweet sounds of the external world are echoes of that sweet
and powerful voice, and all the beautiful colours that we see in the external world are a
reflection of that light (which flows from the joy in our own hearts). In other words, an
artist’s main source of inspiration is the joy in his own heart. External nature cannot help him
at all if there is gloom or distress in his heart. (This was the case with Coleridge, and hence
his dejection).
6.2.6 Stanza VI
The opening line should remind you of some other poem—also by a Romantic poet.
Which poem?
This stanza throws light on the real cause of the poet’s sense of dejection and grief. This
joy,..,distress : The joy within me enabled me to make light of my sufferings.
And all happiness : ‘All misfortunes served merely as material for my Fancy’ to weave
new visions of happiness.’
For hope, . . . . seemed mine : a beautiful simile, merging into a metaphor. Hope is
compared to a climbing plant which twines round a tree. Just as the fruits and leaves of a
plant growing around a tree seem to belong to the tree itself, similarly many bright prospects,
spawned by hope, seemed to belong to the poet, even though they belonged to someone else.
But now...birth : Earlier, hope kept his spirits high, but now sufferings and misfortunes
have almost crushed him ; the poet doesn’t care if these sufferings have robbed him of his
native joy.
But Oh!...Imagination : Now comes the real crush. What galls him most is that every fit
of mental dejection obstructs the operation of that faculty which enabled him to ‘create’ and

105
‘form’, and which he was endowed with by nature at the time of his birth. In other words, his
sorrows and misfortunes have weakened his inborn creative imagination.
my shaping...Imagination : “my imagination, which creates and forms”.
For not ...all I can ; Coleridge says that his only resource against his increasing
melancholy was deliberately to divert his mind from his feelings, to cultivate a quiet mode of
life, and to immerse himself in deep metaphysical studies, in the hope of changing his nature
and conquering his excessive sensitiveness.
Till that...my soul: the metaphysical speculations which at one time formed only one
small part of his nature, gradually took possession of his whole being ; with the result that
speculative and philosophical strain in him has become the ‘habit’ of his ‘soul’, weakening
thereby his creative faculty. In other words, abstract or metaphysical investigations, which he
began as a bulwark against ‘afflictions’, have completely taken possession of his soul. It is
this fact which he regrets, for it has led to a complete drying up of his creative powers.
6.2.7 Stanza VII
We said in the beginning that some critics claim that the Ode fails to ‘achieve complete
artistic unity’, and is brilliantly successful only in parts. And it is Stanza VII which primarily
comes in the way of accepting the Ode as a whole. Let us see what Humphry House has to
say on this point.
”In the received text, the opening of stanza VII especially, and its placing and relevance,
are serious obstacles to accepting the poem as a whole. The stanza opens with a sudden twist
of thought, in very awkward language :
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream!
1 turn from you, and listen to the wind, .
Which long has raved unnoticed.
And the “Viper thoughts” against which this revulsion occurs are the famous meditative
stanza about the loss of his “shaping spirit of imagination”, ending with the lines :
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.
The phrase “reality’s dark dream’’ then applies to the firm, sad honesty of self-analysis
which make the greatness of that stanza”. (Humphry House: Coleridge.) The purpose of
quoting House’s views at length is to enable you to form your own opinion also. Let it also be
remembered that House’s analysis of the poem is based on his close comparison between the
published Ode and the original version. If we forget the original version, then perhaps we can
find coherence and unity in the poem.
Viper thoughts : poisonous thoughts ; a viper is a kind of poisonous snake.
that coil...mind: ‘poisonous thought which wind about my mind just as a snake coils
itself round its victim’. The bite of a viper is deadly. Similarly, the poet seems to say, if he
remains engrossed in thoughts of dejection and sorrow, and if he continues to mourn the loss
of his ‘shaping spirit of ‘Imagination’, then his own will and mind would be totally paralysed
and benumbed.
‘Viper thoughts’, perhaps, can also be applied to the ideas expressed in the previous
stanzas. For, even though the thought-process is somewhat rambling and loose, a clear theme
106
emerges—the poet’s intense pain and a sense of desolation. And in this stanza he wants to get
away from all this— ‘reality’s dark dream’. Reality is too cruel, and makes life appear like a
frightening dream.
turn, . . . unnoticed : During all these thoughts, the wind has been raging furiously for a
long time. It is as though the poet suddenly remembers the wind which he mentioned in the
first stanza.
What . . . forth : (The place of the lute in this poem is in sharp contrast to the
speculations it gives rise to in The Eolian Harp.) Beginning in a ‘sobbing moan” the kite
sends out a scream of agony by torture lengthened out at the wind’s height. In other words, to
the poet, the sound of wind playing upon the lute seems to be the lengthened scream of one
who is being tortured and who cannot bear the pain. (In “The Eolian Harp”, the lute gives rise
to different speculations.)
The verse gathers momentum here
Crag : rock
mountain-tarn : small mountain lake.
clomb : the old past tense of climb.
peeping flowers : flowers peeping from amongst the leaves.
Mad Lutanist : The wind is called a frenzied, reckless lute-player because of’ Devils’
‘Yule’ that it makes.
Devils’ Yule : Christmas weather, with wild revelry fit for devils. Yule : Christmas.. The
wind is supposed to be celebrating Devils’ Christmas, hence, an unholy Christmas.
The idea is that if Devils were to celebrate Christmas, (which can’t be a happy occasion
for them) they would scream and shriek and make a terrible noise—the like of which was
being made by the wind at present.
With worse...song : The wind is making sounds which are even worse than those which
are heard during the bleak months of winter. (There is more of howling and shrieking of the
wind—storms etc.—in the winter season.)
Thou Actor : The poet now imagines new roles for the wind : as a tragic actor, and as a
bold mighty poet.
perfect.... sounds ! : it can produce all the sounds that are sorrowful.
thou.......bold: thou powerful poet who, in a state of frenzy (poetic inspiration) can
boldly express whatever you want to describe.
host in rout: army running away in defeat. (The poet now guesses the meaning of
wind’s sounds.)
deepest silence : the fury of the storm subsides : the wind is now silent, but in this mood
also, she is not inactive (to the poet, of course).
It tells....loud : the poet is now reminded of a different story.
Otway : Thomas Otway (1652-85) was a dramatist, noted for The Orphan and Venice
Preserved, both plays containing heroines whose sorrows drowned contemporary audiences
in tears. In the original draft of the poem, Coleridge wrote Wordsworth’s for Otway’s and the
allusion in lines 121-5 is to Wordsworth’s Lucy Gray :

107
 There is no similar episode in Otway’s works. In a way Coleridge is paying a tribute to
Wordsworth in these lines. Allan Grant makes these observations on stanza VII:
”The language of strophe VII shows a sense of straining after effect, a falling back on
eighteenth-century diction in an effort to match appropriately the mood of the storm. The last
strophe follows only uneasily on the heels of this outburst. But behind the strident tones of
the mad lutanist we feel some stirring of the imagination, through scenes of Alpine loneliness
to pictures of public and private distress, the battle cries and groans and the wailing of a lost
child.
(The emphasis in this stanza is not so much upon the creativeness of the wind (as Actor
and poet) as upon the evils, torments and sorrows which it appears to create.)
6.2.8 Stanza VIII
This stanza ends on a quieter note. The poet, though still restless himself, is full of
tenderness and good wishes for his wife, It presents quite a contrast with the previous stanza.
Full ....keep : The poet does not want his wife Sara to keep awake.
Vigil: sleeplessness : to keep vigils means to remain awake.
but a mountain-birth : this has been taken for an allusion to the mountains in travail
which will bring forth nothing of importance. Another explanation is May the storm be only
local, confined to the mountains. The first interpretation seems to be more appropriate. The
line should be taken as a wish that what seems to be terrible and destructive (‘may this
storm’) may turn out after all to be a mere nothing, or a trifle that cannot disturb Sara’s peace.
Joy... Voice : joy should raise her spirits and lend a sweetness to her voice.
from pole to pole : from one end of the world to the other end.
To her ...live : all things may live for her sake only.
eddy : a whirlpool; a whirlwind ; as a verb, to move round and round.
The metaphor of the whirlpool in connection with the spirit or soul is quite apt. All
things of this world may not only dedicate their existence to her, but may also become a vital
force like a whirlwind, to add energy and strength to her spirit.
guided from above: guided, getting inspiration from Heaven. The last three lines seem
more appropriate as being addressed to Wordsworth. Wordsworth, still a child of Nature and
getting divine inspiration, has not lost his inborn joy, which is the life-breath of poetry. But
since Coleridge himself is out of the race now, he seems to be passing on the torch of poetic
creation to his best friend.

108
7. Concepts of Imagination
The term ‘imagination’ has been variously defined: as a power responsible for visual
images, singly or in association; as the capacity for making from these images ideal
combinations of character and objects, on the one hand, and chimeras and castles in the air,
on the other; as a sympathetic projection of the artist into character and situation; as the
faculty which creates the symbols of abstract conceptions; and as creation itself, the “shaping
power” inherent in man.
For the Romantic poets and critics, imagination was no longer a passive recipient of
impressions, but an active agent conferring upon external nature its significance and unity,
For the mystic Blake the imagination was a “spiritual sensation,” “the eternal Body of Man.”
The material world of 18th century empiricism had for him no existence, and Reason was a
spectre and a negation. Some writers, notably Coleridge, have fought to distinguish the
imagination from other similar faculties of the mind (especially ‘fancy’, which in the
eighteenth century was synonymous with imagination) and define it as the principle of
creativity in art. In the famous chapter 13 of Biographia Literaria (1817) Coleridge described
the poetic imagination: “It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this
process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is
essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead,” (BL 1817).
The imagination, that is, is able to “create” rather merely reassemble, by dissolving the
fixities and definities —the mental pictures, or images, received from the senses —and
unifying them into a new whole. And the fancy is merely mechanical, the imagination is
“vital”; that is, it is an organic faculty, which operates not like a machine, but like a living
and growing plant. In chapter 14 of the Biographia, Coleridge explores the way in which the
imagination creates harmonious wholes (poems) out of disparate experience: “This power...
reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness,
with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea with the image... a more than usual
state of emotion, with more than usual order,’” The faculty of imagination, in other words,
assimilates and synthesizes the most disparate elements into an organic whole — that is, a
newly generated unity, constituted by a living interdependence of parts whose identity cannot
survive their removal from the whole.
”Fancy”, according to Coleridge (BL 1817), “.... has no other counters to play with, but
fixities and definities. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated
from the order of time and space”. To Coleridge, thus, the fancy is a mechanical process
which receives the elementary images - the “fixities and definities” which come to it ready-
made from the senses —and, without altering the parts, reassembles them into a different
spatial and temporal order from that in which they were originally perceived.
Most critics often tended to make fancy simply the faculty that produces a lesser, lighter,
or humorous kind of poetry, and to make imagination the faculty that produces a higher, more
serious, and more passionate poetry. And the concept of “imagination” itself is as various as
the modes of psychology that critics have adopted (Freudian, Jungian) and the ways in which
they conceive the essential nature of a poem (as essentially realistic or essentially visionary,
as “object”, or as “myth”, as “pure poetry” or as a work designed to produce effects on an
audience).

109
 Coleridge and Wordsworth employed various verbs in describing the process of
imaginative composition (unify, abstract, modify, aggregate, evoke, combine). Metaphor
came to be defined as the result of creative thinking rather than as superficial decoration.
Rejecting the notion that figurative language is adventitious decoration, they, along with
other writers like Hunt, Hazlilt and Ruskin, described poetic language as the result of the
activity of the whole sentient being, involving processes which, in the absence of a more
precise term, they called “imagination”.
7.1 The Romantic Imagination
If we wish to distinguish a single characteristic which differentiates the English
Romantics from the poets of the eighteenth century, it is to be found in the importance which
they attached to the imagination and in the special view which they held of it. On this, despite
significant differences on points of detail, Blake. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Shelley, and Keats
agree, and for each it sustains a deeply considered theory of poetry. In the eighteenth century
imagination was not a cardinal point in poetical theory. For Pope and Johnson, as for Dryden
before them, it has little importance, and when they mention it, it has a limited significance.
They approve of fancy. provided that it is controlled by what they call “judgement,” and they
admire the apt use of images, by which they mean little more than visual impressions and
metaphors. But for them what matters most in poetry is its truth to the emotions, or, as they
prefer to say, sentiment. They wish to speak in general terms for the common experience of
men. not to indulge personal whims in creating new worlds. For them the poet is more an
interpreter than a creator, more concerned with showing the attractions of what we already
know than with expeditions into the unfamiliar and the unseen. They are less interested in the
mysteries of life than in its familiar appearance, and they think that their task is to display this
with as much charm and truth as they can command. But for the Romantics imagination is
fundamental, because they think that without it poetry is impossible.
This belief in the imagination was part of the contemporary belief in the individual self.
The poets were conscious of a wonderful capacity to create imaginary worlds, and they could
not believe that this was idle or false. On the contrary, they thought that to curb it was to deny
something vitally necessary to their whole being. They thought that it was just this which
made them poets, and that in their exercise of it they could do far better than other poets who
sacrificed it to caution and common sense. They saw that the power of poetry is strongest
when the creative impulse works untrammeled, and they knew that in their own case this
happened when they shaped fleeting visions into concrete forms and pursued wild thoughts
until they captured and mastered them. Just as in politics men turned their minds from the
existing order to vast prospects of a reformed humanity, so in the arts they abandoned the
conventional plan of existence for private adventures which had an inspiring glory. As in the
Renaissance poets suddenly found the huge possibilities of the human self and expressed
them in a bold and far-flung art. which is certainly much more than an imitation of life, so the
Romantics, brought to a fuller consciousness of their own powers, felt a similar need to exert
these powers in fashioning new worlds of the mind.
The Romantic emphasis on the imagination was strengthened by considerations which
are both religious and metaphysical. For a century English philosophy had been dominated by
the theories of Locke. He assumed that in perception the mind is wholly passive, a mere
recorder of impressions from without, “a lazy looker on on an external world.” His system
was well suited to an age of scientific speculation which found its representative voice in
Newton, The mechanistic explanation which both philosophers and scientists gave of the
110
world meant that scanty respect was paid to the human self and especially to its more
instinctive, though not less powerful, convictions. Thus both Locke and Newton found a
place for God in their universes, the former on the ground that “the works of nature in every
part of them sufficiently evidence a deity,” and the latter on the principle that the great
machine of the world implies a mechanic. But this was not at all what the Romantics
demanded from religion. For them it was a question less of reason than of feeling, less of
argument than of experience, and they complained that these mechanistic explanations were a
denial of their innermost convictions. So too with poetry. Locke had views on poetry, as he
had on most human activities, but no very high regard for it. For him it is a matter of “wit”,
and the task of wit is to combine ideas and “thereby to make up pleasant pictures and
agreeable visions in the fancy.” Wit, in his view, is quite irresponsible and not troubled with
truth or reality. The Romantics rejected with contumely a theory which robbed their work of
its essential connection with life.
Locke is the target both of Blake and of Coleridge, to whom he represents a deadly
heresy on the nature of existence. They are concerned with more than discrediting his special
views on God and poetry: they are hostile to his whole system which supports those views,
and, even worse, robs the human self of importance. They reject his conception of the
universe and replace it by their own systems, which deserve the name of “idealist” because
mind is their central point and governing factor. But because they are poets, they insist that
the most vital activity of the mind is the imagination. Since for them it is the very source of
spiritual energy, they cannot but believe that it is divine, and that, when they exercise it, they
in some way partake of the activity of God. Blake says proudly and prophetically:

This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we
shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite
and Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite and Temporal.
There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see
reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All things are comprehended in their Eternal
Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, The Human
Imagination.3

For Blake the imagination is nothing less than God as He operates in the human soul. It
follows that any act of creation performed by the imagination is divine and that in the
imagination man’s spiritual nature, is fully and finally realized. Coleridge does not speak
with so apocalyptic a certainty, but his conclusion is not very different from Blake’s:

The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all
human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in
the infinite I AM.

It is true that he regards poetry as a product of the secondary imagination, but since this
differs only in degree from the primary, it remains clear that for Coleridge the imagination is
of first importance because it partakes of the creative activity of God.
This is a tremendous claim, and it is not confined to Blake and Coleridge. It was to some
degree held by Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats. Each was confident not only that the
111
imagination was his most precious possession but that it was somehow concerned with a
supernatural order. Never before had quite such a claim been made, and from it Romantic
poetry derives much that is most magical in it. The danger of so bold an assumption is that
the poet may be so absorbed in his own private universe and in the exploration of its remoter
corners that he may be unable to convey his essential experience to other men and fail to
convert them to his special creed. The Romantics certainly created worlds of their own, but
they succeeded in persuading others that these were not absurd or merely fanciful. Indeed, in
this respect they were closer to earth and the common man than some of their German
contemporaries. They have not the respect for unsatisfied longing as an end in itself or the
belief in hallucination and magic which play so large a part in the mind of Brentano, nor have
they that nihilistic delight in being detached from life, of which Novalis writes to Caroline
Schlegel:

I know that imagination is most attracted by what is most immoral, most animal; but
I also know how like a dream all imagination is, how it loves night, meaninglessness,
and solitude.

This was not what the English Romantics thought. They believed that the imagination stands
in some essential relation to truth and reality, and they were at pains to make their poetry pay
attention to them.
In doing this they encountered an old difficulty. If a man gives free play to his
imagination, what assurance is there that what he says is in any sense true? Can it tell us
anything that we do not know, or is it so removed from ordinary life as to be an escape from
it? The question had been answered in one sense by Locke when he dealt so cavalierly with
poetic wit, and a similar answer was given by Blake’s revolutionary friend, Tom Paine, in his
Age of Reason:

I had some turn, and I believe some talent for poetry: but this I rather repressed than
encouraged as leading too much into the field of imagination.

This is a point of view, and it is not new. It is based on the assumption that the creations of
the imagination are mere fantasies and. as such, divorced from life. The problem had troubled
the Elizabethans, and Shakespeare shows his acquaintance with it when he makes Theseus
say:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling.

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name

This would have won the approval of an Italian philosopher like Pico della Mirandola, who
thought that the imagination is almost a diseased faculty, and would certainly have welcomed

112
Theseus’ association of the poet with the lunatic and the lover. Even those who did not
venture so far as this thought that the creations of the imagination have little to do with actual
life and provide no more than an agreeable escape from it. This was Bacon’s view in The
Advancement of Learning:

The imagination, being not tied to the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which
nature hath severed and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful
matches and divorces of things.
Bacon regards this as a harmless and not unpleasant activity; but not more. Though the
Elizabethans excelled almost all other ages in the creation of imaginary worlds, their gravest
thinkers made no great claim for them and were on the whole content that they should do no
more than give a respite from the cares of ordinary life.
Such a position is plainly unsatisfactory for poets who believe that the imagination is a
divine faculty concerned with the central issues of being. Indeed, it must be difficult for
almost any poet to think that what he creates is imaginary in the derogatory sense which
Bacon and his like give to the word. Poets usually believe that their creations are somehow
concerned with reality, and this belief sustains them in their work. Their approach is indeed
not that of the analytical mind, but it is none the less penetrating. They assume that poetry
deals in some sense with truth, though this truth may be different from that of science or
philosophy. That Shakespeare understood the question is clear from what Hippolyta says in
answer to Theseus’ discourse on the imagination:
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur’d so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images,
And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
Hippolyta has sense enough to see that a poet’s inventions are not an “airy nothing” but
stand in some relation to reality. In this she presents a view which is in opposition to that of
the Platonist Pico but which has some affinity with that of Guarino, who says that the
statements of poetry are true not literally but symbolically. For Hippolyta the creations of the
imagination are related to living experience and reflect some kind of reality.
The Romantics face this issue squarely and boldly. So far from thinking that the
imagination deals with the non-existent, they insist that it reveals an important kind of truth.
They believe that when it is at work it sees things to which the ordinary intelligence is blind
and that it is intimately connected with a special insight or perception or intuition. Indeed,
imagination and insight are in fact inseparable and form for all practical purposes a single
faculty. Insight both awakes the imagination to work and is in turn sharpened by it when it is
at work. This is the assumption on which the Romantics wrote poetry. It means that, when
their creative gifts are engaged, they are inspired by their sense of the mystery of things to
probe it with a peculiar insight and to shape their discoveries into imaginative forms. Nor is
this process difficult to understand. Most of us, when we use our imaginations, are in the first
place stirred by some alluring puzzle which calls for a solution, and in the second place
enabled by our own creations in the mind to see much that was before dark or unintelligible.
As our fancies take coherent shape, we see more clearly what has puzzled and perplexed us.
This is what the Romantics do. They combine imagination and truth because their creations

113
are inspired and controlled by a peculiar insight. Coleridge makes the point conclusively
when he praises Wordsworth:

It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought; the fine balance of truth in
observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects observed; and above
all the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and
height of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations, of which, for the
common view, customs had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the
dew drops.

So long as the imagination works in this way, it cannot fairly be accused of being an escape
from life or of being no more than an agreeable relaxation.
The perception which works so closely with the imagination is not of the kind on which
Locke believed, and the Romantics took pains to dispel any misunderstanding on the point.
Since what mattered to them was an insight into the nature of things, they rejected Locke’s
limitation of perception to physical objects, because it robbed the mind of its most essential
function, which is at the same time to perceive and to create. On this Blake speaks with
prophetic scorn:

Mental things are alone Real; what is call’d Corporeal, Nobody knows of its
Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy, and its Existence an Imposture. Where is the
Existence Out of Mind or Thought? Where is it but in the Mind of Fool?

Coleridge came to a similar conclusion for not very different reasons:

If the mind be not passive, if it be indeed made in God’s image, and that, too, in the
sublimest sense, the Image of the Creator, there is ground for the suspicion that any
system built on the passiveness of the mind must be false as a system.

When they rejected the sensationalist view of an external world, Blake and Coleridge
prepared the way to restoring the supremacy of the spirit which had been denied by Locke but
was at this time being propounded by German metaphysicians. Blake knew nothing of them,
and his conclusions arose from his own visionary outlook, which could not believe that
matter is in any sense as real as spirit. Coleridge had read Kant and Schelling and found in
them much to support his views, but those views were derived less from them than from his
own instinctive conviction that the world of spirit is the only reality. Because he was first a
poet and only secondly a metaphysician, his conception of a universe of spirit came from his
intense sense of an inner life and from his belief that the imagination, working with intuition,
is more likely than the analytical reason to make discoveries on matters which really concern
us.
In rejecting Locke’s and Newton’s explanations of the visible world, the Romantics
obeyed an inner call to explore more fully the world of spirit. In different ways each of them
believed in an order of things which is not that which we see and know, and this was the goal
of their passionate search. They wished to penetrate to an abiding reality, to explore its
mysteries, and by this to understand more clearly what life means and what it is worth. They

114
were convinced that, though visible things are the instruments by which we find this reality,
they are not everything and have indeed little significance unless they are related to some
embracing and sustaining power. Nor is it hard to see what this means. Most of us feel that a
physical universe is not enough and demand some scheme which will explain why our beliefs
and convictions are valid and why in an apparently mechanistic order we have scales of
values for which no mechanism can account. Locke and Newton explain what the sensible
world is, but not what it is worth. Indeed, in explaining mental judgements by physical
processes they destroy their validity, since the only assurance for the truth of our judgements
is the existence of an objective truth which cannot be determined by a causal, subjective
process. Such systems embody a spirit of negation, because in trying to explain our belief in
the good or the holy or the beautiful they succeed only in explaining it away. That is why
Blake dismissed atomic physicists and their like as men who try in vain to destroy the divine
light which alone gives meaning to life, and proclaimed that in its presence their theories
cease to count:
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.
The Romantics were concerned with the things of the spirit and hoped that through
imagination and inspired insight they could both understand them and present them in
compelling poetry.
It was this search for an unseen world that awoke the inspiration of the Romantics and
made poets of them. The power of their work comes partly from the driving force of their
desire to grasp these ultimate truths, partly from their exaltation when they thought that they
had found them, unlike their German contemporaries, who were content with the thrills of
Sehnsucht, or longing, and did not care much what the Jenseits, or “beyond,” might be, so
long as it was sufficiently mysterious, the English Romantics pursued their lines of
imaginative enquiry until they found answers which satisfied them. Their aim was to convey
the mystery of things through individual manifestations and thereby to show what it means.
They appeal not to the logical mind but to the complete self, to the whole range of intellectual
faculties, senses, and emotions. Only individual presentations of imaginative experience can
do this. In them we see examples of what cannot be expressed directly in words and can be
conveyed only by hint and suggestion. The powers which Wordsworth saw in nature or
Shelley in love are so enormous that we begin to understand them only when they are
manifested in single, concrete examples. Then, through the single cases, we apprehend some-
thing of what the poet has seen in vision. The essence of the Romantic imagination is that it
fashions shapes which display these unseen forces at work, and there is no other way to
display them, since they resist analysis and description and cannot be presented except in
particular instances.
The apprehension of these spiritual issues is quite different from the scientific
understanding of natural laws or the philosophical grasp of general truths. Such laws and
truths are properly stated in abstract words, but spiritual powers must be introduced through
particular examples, because only then do we see them in their true individuality, indeed,
only when the divine light of the imagination is on them do we begin to understand their
significance and their appeal. That is why Blake is so stern on the view that art deals with
general truths. He has none of Samuel Johnson’s respect for the “grandeur of generality,” and
115
would disagree violently with him when he says, “nothing can please many and please long,
but just representation of general nature.” Blake thought quite otherwise:
”To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.
General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.”
”What is Genera! Nature? is there Such a Thing? what is Genera! Knowledge? is there
such a Thing? Speaking All Knowledge is Particular.”
Blake believed this because he lived in the imagination. He knew that nothing had full
significance for him unless it appeared in a particular form. And with this the Romantics in
general agreed. Their art aimed at presenting as forcibly as possible the moments of vision
which give to even the vastest issues the coherence and simplicity of single events. Even in
Kubla Khan, which keeps so many qualities of the dream in which it was born, there is a
highly individual presentation of remote and mysterious experience, which is in fact the
central experience of all creation in its Dionysiac delight and its enraptured ordering of many
elements into an entrancing pattern. Coleridge may not have been fully conscious of what he
was doing when he wrote it, but the experience which he portrays is of the creative mood in
its purest moments, when boundless possibilities seem to open before it. No wonder he felt,
that if he could only realize, all the potentialities of such a moment, he would be like one who
has supped with the gods:
And all should cry. Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
It was in such experience, remote and strange and beyond the senses, that the Romantics
sought for poetry, and they saw that the only way to convey it to others was in particular
instances and examples.
The invisible powers which sustain the universe work through and in the visible world.
Only by what we see and hear and touch can we be brought into relation with them. Every
poet has to work with the world of the senses, but for the Romantics it was the instrument
which set their visionary powers in action. It affected them at times in such a way that they
seemed to be carried beyond it into a transcendental order of things, but this would never
have happened if they had not looked on the world around them with attentive and loving
eyes. One of the advantages which they gained by their deliverance from abstractions and
general truths was a freedom to use their senses and to look on nature without conventional
prepossessions. More than this, they were all gifted with a high degree of physical sensibility
and sometimes so enthralled by what they saw that it entirely dominated their being. This is
obviously true of Wordsworth and of Keats, who brought back to poetry a keenness of eye
and of ear which it had hardly known since Shakespeare. But it is no less true of Blake and
Coleridge and Shelley. The careful, observing eye which made Blake a cunning craftsman in
line and colour was at work in his poetry, it is true that he was seldom content with mere
description of what he saw, but, when he used description for an ulterior purpose to convey
some vast mystery, his words are exact and vivid and make his symbols shine brightly before
the eye. Though Coleridge found some of his finest inspiration in dreams and trances, he
gave to their details a singular brilliance of outline and character. Though Shelley lived
116
among soaring ideas and impalpable abstractions, he was fully at home in the visible world, if
only because it was a mirror of eternity and worthy of attention for that reason. There are
perhaps poets who live entirely in dreams and hardly notice the familiar scene, but the
Romantics are not of their number. Indeed, their strength comes largely from the way in
which they throw a new and magic light on the common face of nature and lure us to look for
some explanation for the irresistible attraction which it exerts. In nature all the Romantic
poets found their initial inspiration. It was not everything to them, but they would have been
nothing without it; for through it they found those exalting moments when they passed from
sight to vision and pierced as they thought, to the secrets of the universe.
Though all the Romantic poets believed in an ulterior reality and based their poetry on it,
they found it in different ways and made different uses of it. They varied in the degree of
importance which they attached to the visible world and in their interpretation of it. At one
extreme is Blake, who held that the imagination is a divine power and that everything real
comes from it. It operates with a given material, which is nature, but Blake believed that a
time would come when nature will disappear and the spirit be free to create without it. While
it is there, man takes his symbols from it and uses them to interpret the unseen. Blake’s true
home was in vision, in what he saw when he gave full liberty to his creative imagination and
transformed sense-data through it. For him the imagination uncovers the reality masked by
visible things. The familiar world gives hints which must be taken and pursued and
developed:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Through visible things Blake reached that transcendent state which he called “eternity”
and felt to create new and living worlds. He was not a mystic striving darkly and laboriously
towards God, but a visionary who could say of himself:
I am in God’s presence night and day,
And he never turns his face away
Of all the Romantics, Blake is the most rigorous in his conception of the imagination.
He could confidently say, “One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination, The Divine
Vision,”! because for him the imagination creates reality, and this reality is the divine activity
of the self in its unimpeded energy, His attention is turned towards an ideal, spiritual world,
which with all other selves who obey the imagination he helps to build.
Though Blake had a keen eye for the visible world, his special concern was with the
invisible. For him every living thing was symbol of everlasting powers, and it was these
which he wished to grasp and to understand. Since he was a painter with a remarkably
pictorial habit of mind, he described the invisible in the language of the visible, and no doubt
he really saw it with his inner vision. But what he saw was not, so to speak, an alternative to
the given world, but a spiritual order to which the language of physical sight can be applied
only in metaphor. What concerned him most deeply and drew out his strongest powers was
the sense of spiritual reality at work in all living things. For him even the commonest event
might be fraught with lessons and meanings. How much he found can be seen from his
Auguries of Innocence. where in epigrammatic, oracular couplets he displays his sense of the

117
intimate relations which exist in reality and bind the worlds of sight and of spirit in a single
whole. His words look simple enough, but every word needs attention, as when he proclaims:
A Robin Red breast in a
Cage Puts all Heaven in Rage.
Blake’s robin redbreast is itself a spiritual thing, not merely a visible bird, but the
powers which such a bird embodies and symbolizes, the free spirit which delights in song and
in all that song implies. Such a spirit must not be repressed, and any repression of it is a sin
against the divine life of the universe. Blake was a visionary who believed that ordinary
things are unsubstantial in themselves and yet rich as symbols of greater realities. He was so
at home in the spirit that he was not troubled by the apparent solidity of matter. He saw
something else: a world of eternal values and living spirits.
Keats had a more passionate love than Blake for the visible world and has too often been
treated as a man who lived for sensuous impressions, but he resembled Blake in his
conviction that ultimate reality is to be found only in the imagination. What it meant to him
can be seen from some lines in “Sleep and Poetry” in which he asks why the imagination has
lost its old power and scope:
Is there so small a range
In the present strength of manhood, that the high
imagination cannot freely fly
As she was wont of old ? prepare her steeds,
Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds
Upon the clouds? Has she not shown us all?
From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning
Of Jove’s large eye-brow, to the tender greening
Of April meadows?
Keats was still a very young man when he wrote this, and perhaps his words are not so
precise as we might like. But it is clear that he saw the imagination as a power which both
creates and reveals, or rather reveals through creating. Keats accepted the works of the
imagination not merely as existing in their own right, but as having a relation to ultimate
reality through the light which they shed on it. This idea he pursued with hard thought until
he saw exactly what it meant, and made it his own because it answered a need in his creative
being.
Through the imagination Keats sought an absolute reality to which a door was opened
by his appreciation of beauty through the senses. When the objects of sense laid their spell
upon him, he was so stirred and exalted that he felt himself transported to another world and
believed that he could almost grasp the universe as a whole. Sight and touch and smell awoke
his imagination to a sphere of being in which he saw vast issues and was at home with them.
Through beauty he felt that he came into the presence of the ultimately real. The more
intensely a beautiful object affected him, the more convinced he was that he had passed
beyond it to something else. In Endymion he says that happiness raises our minds to a
“fellowship with essence” and leaves us “alchemized and free of space” :
Feel we these things? that moment we have stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
118
 Is like a fleeting spirit’s. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading by degrees
To the chief intensity.
The beauty of visible things carried Keats into ecstasy, and this was the goal of the
desires, since it explained the extraordinary hold which objects of sense had on him and
justified his wish to pass beyond them to something permanent and universal. Keats’ notion
of this reality- was narrower than Blake’s, and he speaks specifically as a poet, whereas
Blake included in the imagination all activities which create or increase life. Moreover, while
Blake’s imagination is active, Keats suggests that his is largely passive and that his need is to
feel the “chief intensity”. But he is close to Blake in the claims which he makes for the
imagination as something absorbing and exalting which opens the way to an unseen spiritual
order.
Coleridge, too, gave much thought to the imagination and devoted to it some
distinguished chapters of his Biographia Literaria. With him it is not always easy to
disentangle theories which he formed in later life from the assumptions upon which he acted
almost instinctively before his creative faculties began to fail. At times he seems to be still
too aware of the sensationalist philosophy of his youth. From it he inherits a conception of a
world of facts, an “inanimate cold world,” in which “objects, as objects, are essentially fixed
and dead.” But as a poet he transcended this idea, or turned it to an unexpected conclusion.
Just because the external world is like this, the poet’s task is to transform it by the
imagination. Just as “accidents of light and shade” may transmute “a known and familiar
landscape.” so this dead world may be brought to life by the imagination. Coleridge justified
this by a bold paradox :
”Dare I add that genius must act of the feeling that body is but a striving to become mind
that is mind in its essence.”
What really counted with him was his own deep trust in the imagination as something
which gives a shape to life. What this meant to him in practice can be seen from the lines in
Dejection in which he explains that nature lives only in us and that it is we who create all that
matters in her :
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth—
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
Coleridge does not go so far as Blake in the claims which he makes for the imagination.
He is still a little hampered by the presence of an external world and feels that in some way
he must conform to it. But when his creative genius is at work, it brushes these hesitations
aside and fashions reality from a shapeless, undifferentiated “given”. In the end he believes
that meaning is found for existence through the exercise of a creative activity which is akin to
that of God.

119
 Coleridge advanced no very definite view of the ultimate reality which poetry explores.
If we may judge by Kubla Khan, he seems to have felt, at least in some moods, that the mere
act of creation is itself transcendental and that we need ask for nothing more. But perhaps the
evidence of Kubla Khan should not be pressed too far. Indeed, if we turn to the Ancient
Mariner and Christabel, it seems clear that Coleridge thought that the task of poetry is to
convey the mystery of life. The ambiguous nature of both poems, with their suggestion of an
intermediate state between dreaming and waking, between living people and unearthly spirits,
gives an idea of the kind of subject which stirred Coleridge’s genius to its boldest flights.
Whatever he might think as a philosopher , as a poet he was fascinated by the notion of
unearthly powers at work in the world, and it was their influence which he sought to catch.
Of course, he did not intend to be taken literally, but we cannot help feeling that his
imaginative conception of reality was of something behind human actions which is more
vivid than the familiar world because of its sharper contrasts of good and evil and the more
purposeful way in which it moves. This conception was developed only in poetry, and even
then only in two or three poems. Coleridge seems to have been forced to it by a troubled and
yet exciting apprehension that life is ruled by powers which cannot be fully understood. The
result is a poetry more mysterious than that of any other Romantic, and yet, because it is
based on primary human emotions, singularly poignant and intimate.
Wordsworth certainly agreed with Coleridge in much that he said about the imagination
, especially in the distinction between it and fancy. For him the imagination was the most
important gift that a poet can have, and his arrangement of his own poems shows what he
meant by it. The section which he calls Poems of the Imagination contains poems in which he
united creative power and a special, visionary insight. He agreed with Coleridge that this
activity resembles that of God, It is the divine capacity of the child who fashions his own
little worlds:
For feeling has to him imparted power
That through the growing faculties of sense
Doth like an agent of the one great Mind
Create, creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds.
The poet keeps this faculty even in maturity, and through it he is what he is. But
Wordsworth was fully aware that mere creation is not enough, that it must be accompanied
by a special insight. So he explains that the imagination
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
Wordsworth did not go so far as the other Romantics in relegating reason to an inferior
position. He preferred to give a new dignity to the word and to insist that inspired insight is
itself rational.
Wordsworth differs from Coleridge in his conception of the external world. He accepts its
independent existence and insists that the imagination must in some sense conform to it.
Once again he sees the issue illustrated by childhood :
A plastic power
Abode with me; a forming hand, at times
120
 Rebellious, acting in a devious mood;
A local spirit of his own, at war
With general tendency, but, for the most,
Subservient strictly to external things
With which it communed.
For Wordsworth the imagination must be subservient to the external world, because that
world is not dead but living and has its own soul, which is, at least in the life that we know,
distinct from the soul of man. Man’s task is to enter into communion with this soul, and
indeed he-can hardly avoid doing so, since from birth onward his life is continuously shaped
by nature, which penetrates his being and influences his thoughts. Wordsworth believed that
he helped to bring this soul of nature closer to man, that he could show
by words
Which speak of nothing more than water we are
how exquisitely the external world is fitted to the individual mind, and the individual mind to
the external world. This, it must be admitted was not to Blake’s taste, and he commented :
“You shall not bring me down to believe such fitting and fitted.” But for Wordsworth this
was right. Nature was the source of his inspiration, and he could not deny to it an existence at
least as powerful as man’s. But since nature lifted him out of himself, he sought for a higher
state in which its soul and the soul of man should be united in a single harmony. Sometimes
he felt that this happened and that through vision he attained an understanding of the oneness
of things.
Though Shelley’s mind moved in a way unlike that of his fellow Romantics, he was no
less attached to the imagination and gave to it no less a place in his theory of poetry. He
understood the creative nature of his work and shows what he thought of it when in
Prometheus Unbound a Spirit sings of the poet:
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom.
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!
Shelley saw that though the poet may hardly notice the visible world, he none the less
uses it as material to create independent beings which have a superior degree of reality. Nor
did he stop at this. He saw that reason must somehow be related to the imagination, and he
decided, in contradistinction to Wordsworth, that its special task is simply to analyse the
given and to act as an instrument for the imagination, which uses its conclusions to create a
synthetic and harmonious whole. He calls poetry “the expression of the Imagination,”
because in it diverse things are brought together in harmony instead of being separated
through analysis. In this he resembles such thinkers as Bacon and Locke, but his conclusion
is quite different from faculty and through it he realizes his noblest powers.
In his Defence of Poetry Shelley controverted the old disparaging view of the
imagination by claiming that the poet has a special kind of knowledge :
121
 He not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according
to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present,
and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time... A poet
participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one,
For Shelley the poet is also a seer, gifted with a peculiar insight into the nature of reality.
And this reality is a timeless, unchanging, complete order, of which the familiar world is but
a broken reflection. Shelley took Plato’s theory of knowledge and applied it to beauty. For
him the Ideal Forms are a basis not so much of knowing as of that exalted insight which is
ours in the presence of beautiful things. The poet’s task is to uncover this absolute real in its
visible examples and to interpret them through it. It is spiritual in the sense that it includes all
the higher faculties of man and gives meaning to his transient sensations. Shelley-tried to
grasp the whole of things in its essential unity, to show what is real and what is merely
phenomenal, and by doing this to display how the phenomenal depends on the real. For him
the ultimate reality is the eternal mind, and this holds the universe together :
This Whole
Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,
With all the silent or tempestuous workings
By which they have been, are, or cease to be,
Is but a vision; - all that it inherits
Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
Thought is its cradle, and its grave, nor less
The future and the past are idle shadows
Of thought’s eternal flight - they have no being
Nought is but that which feels itself to be.
In thought and feeling, in consciousness and spirit, Shelley found reality and gave his
answer to Prospero’s nihilism. He believed that the task of the imagination is to create shapes
by which this reality can be revealed.
The great Romantics, then, agreed that their task was to find through the imagination
some transcendental order which explains the world of appearances and accounts not merely
for the existence of visible things but for the effect which they have on us, for the sudden,
unpredictable beating of the heart in the presence of beauty, for the conviction that what then
moves us cannot be a cheat or an illusion, but must derive its authority from the power which
moves the universe. For them this reality could not but be spiritual, and they provide an
independent illustration of Hegel’s doctrine that nothing is real but spirit. In so far as they
made sweeping statements about the oneness of things, they were metaphysicians, but, unlike
professional metaphysicians, they trusted not in logic but in insight, not in the analytical
reason but in the delighted, inspired soul which in its full nature transcends both the mind and
the emotions. They were, too, in their own way, religious, in their sense of the holiness of
reality and the awe which they felt in its presence. But, so far as their central beliefs were
concerned, they were not orthodox. Blake’s religion denied the existence of God apart from
men; Shelley liked to proclaim that he was an atheist; Keats was uncertain how far to accept
the doctrines of Christianity. Though later both Coleridge and Wordsworth confirmed almost
with enthusiasm, in their most creative days their poetry was founded on a different faith. The
Romantic movement was a prodigious attempt to discover the world of spirit through the

122
unaided efforts of the solitary soul. It was a special manifestation of that belief in the worth of
the individual which philosophers and politicians had recently preached to the world.
This bold expedition into the unknown, conducted with a scrupulous sincerity and a
passionate faith, was very far from being an emotional self-indulgence. Each of these poets
was convinced that he could discover something very important and that he possessed in
poetry a key denied to other men. To this task they were prepared to devote themselves, and
in different ways they paid heavily for it, in happiness, in self-confidence, in the very strength
of their creative powers. They were not content to dream their own dreams and to fashion
comforting illusions. They insisted that their creations must be real, not in the narrow sense
that anything of which we can think has some sort of existence, but in the wide sense that
they are examples and embodiments of eternal things which cannot be presented otherwise
than in individual instances. Because the Romantics were poets, they set forth their visions
with the wealth that poetry alone can give, in the concrete, individual form which makes the
universal vivid and significant to the finite mind. They refused to accept the ideas of other
men on trust or to sacrifice imagination to argument. As Blake says of Los,
I must Create a System or be enslav’d by another Man’s.
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.
The Romantics knew that their business was to create, and through creation to enlighten
the whole sentient and conscious self of man, to wake his imagination to the reality which
lies behind or in familiar things, to rouse him from the deadening routine of custom to a
consciousness of immeasurable distances and unfathomable depths, to make him see that
mere reason is not enough and that what he needs is inspired intuition. They take a wider
view both of man and of poetry than was taken by their staid and rational predecessors of the
eighteenth century, because they believed that it is the whole spiritual nature of man that
counts, and to this they made their challenge and their appeal.

From : C. M. Bowra, The Romantic Imagination, London: Oxford University Press, pp1-24.

8. Suggested Reading
1. Humphry House, Coleridge, University of California: R. Hart Davis, 1962

2. M.H. Abrams edited., English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism, New
York : Oxford University Press, 1975.

3. C.M. Bowra, The Romantic Imagination, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961

4. George Watson, Coleridge the Poet, University of Michigan: Barnes and Noble,
1966.

5. Allan Grant, A Preface to Coleridge, University of Michigan: Longman, 1972.

6. Kathleen Coburn edited., Coleridge: A Collection of Critical Essays : Twentieth

Century Views, Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1967.

123
9. Some Questions
1. “Kubla Khan perfectly records a dream - experience and it has no relation to life as
ordinary men and women live it.” Discuss.
2 “Kubla Khan is an ecstatic reverie on the power of the poet.” Discuss.
or
What is Kubla Khan about ? This is, or ought to be, an established fact of criticism :
“Kubla Khan” is a poem about Poetry.” Do you agree with this view ? Give a reasoned
answer.
3. Give a brief appreciation of the poem Kubla Khan.
4. Would you regard Kubla Khan as a fragment ? If not, then show how is it a complete
poem possessing basic units.
5. Discuss the romantic elements in the poem.
1. “I think it is the opinion of many readers of the Ode, that brilliantly successful as most
of it is. as parts, yet it fails to achieve complete artistic unity.” (Humphry House). Do
you agree with this assessment of the Ode. Give a reasoned answer.
2. Write a note on the “mood” of the poet in the Ode and account for it.
3. What attitude of Nature does Coleridge express in the Dejection Ode ? In what way does
this attitude differ from that of Wordsworth and from his own earlier attitude ?
4. Give a brief critical appreciation of Dejection : an Ode.
5a. The Ode “is a psychological analysis as acute as it is tragic, of his own mental,
emotional state viewed throughout in conscious and deliberate contrast with that of his
poet friend, Wordsworth.” (Selincourt). Comment on this statement.
or
5b. Compare and contrast Coleridge’s Dejection Ode and Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode

124