John Donne's Angst

     In the "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Prufrock can find no escape from his anxiety, self-doubt, and shallow society he lives in.  We can imagine him winding his way endlessly through a modern purgatory searching for a love to fulfill his life and save him from himself.  It is interesting and significant that during the years Eliot wrote this poem and the later "The Waste Land" (1922), Eliot's own life was darkened by a loveless marriage, a sense that life was hollow, and the Western world was undergoing inexorable cultural and spiritual decay.  That changed when he converted to Anglicanism and his poems reflected his longing for personal serenity.  From that time onward, Eliot's most unifying element in his work was his Christianity.  

     Like Eliot, another poet who moved from poems of secular concerns to ones of religious themes was John Donne (1572-1631).  And although his poetry was appreciated during his life and for a short time after his death, it fell into relative obscurity until Eliot championed him as an innovative artist and wrote an essay (The Metaphysical Poets, 1921) that secured his proper place among major English poets.  Today, Donne's poetry continues to resonate among some readers, but wider opportunities to encounter his poems in schools and universities have been supplanted by the English classes in which identity and gender politics dominate the curriculum.  

     Though no person's work can be divided into two precise portions, Donne's poetry does seem to branch into distinct fields: first, secular poems that celebrate physical and spiritual love; second, religious poems that lay open his anxiety and ambivalence concerning God's mercy.   

      One of his most powerful religious poems is his Sonnet IX, "If poisonous minerals."  (Some spelling and punctuation for this poem have been modernized.)  

                    If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

                    Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,

                    If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

                    Cannot be damn'd, alas, why should I be?

                    Why should intent or reason, born in me,

                    Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?

                    And mercy being easy, and glorious

                    To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?

                    But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,

                    O God? Oh, of thine only worthy blood

                    And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,

                    And drown in it my sins' black memory;

                    That thou remember them, some claim as debt;

                    I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

     In this poem, Donne begins by formulating a litany of logical points.  But within this logic there is a persistent and irresistible counter argument he keeps raising himself.  He asserts, "Why should he be accountable for his (sinful) nature when it was God himself who planted "that tree,/Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us"?  His point is plausible, so far, so good.  He follows with a comparison.  Why if other earthly creatures "Cannot be damn'd" should he be?  After all, are not goats lecherous, and serpents envious?  Shouldn't justice that is "Divine" be parceled out equally?  But is there something "equal" between him and other earthly creatures?   There is an essential distinction, and he admits it:  he possesses "reason," a faculty which endows him with means to discern and control moral implications of his actions; something animals simply don't have.  So why does he cite them as evidence to exonerate his personal culpability?  Are these psychological projections?  Whatever they may be, Donne's own words actually undermine his assertions almost as soon as he makes them.  He devises a more theological and tactful question and asks why would God threaten him, if Christianity's most important theological principle is Divine Mercy?  Isn't mercy "easy" for God to offer to all sinners?  Doesn't mercy amplify the glory of God?  

     By the eighth line of the poem, Donne's questions and seemingly logical argument wilt the moment they slam against the unyielding force of God's "stern wrath." He seems as lost as Prufrock, doom to inescapable suffering.  But as he moves through the sestet, his Christian conscience concedes his "dispute" is futile and entreats God to absolve him of his sins instead.  He asks that Christ's blood mix with his tears, so those sins are forgotten:  "Oh! of thine only worthy blood,/And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,/And drown in it my sins black memory." If God will not expunge those sins, then he asks that they be forgiven: "That thou remember them, some claim as debt."  If the poem were to end here, it would appear that Donne has repented his sins, given up his initial argument and submitted himself to the will of God.  But does he surrender completely?  The final line seems to gravitate back toward dispute as he suggests or rather argues again that God should forget his sins: "I think it mercy, if thou would forget."  Is Donne disputing again, attempting to persuade, to influence God's judgment?  This "second" request slides like a wedge between the eternal judge and the supposed penitent.  Is the tone of this line presumptive or repentant?  Why does he conflate God forgetting his sins with mercy when fear of damnation hovers over him?  What has become of the grace that infuses faith or does Donne believe that he only needs mercy to rescue his soul?  

Where and Why to Begin with Modernist Poetry

      Is literary Modernism (the literary movement beginning in the late 19th century characterized by "a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing") relevant to our world today? The movement is characterized by stream of consciousness, fragmentation, and interior monologue. Its development derived from the replacement of idealism with disillusionment including a mistrust of governments and religious institutions, and the rejection of absolute truths. This new insight was embraced by artists of all types who seemed to have adapted ideas from Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Nietzsche. Some literary artists who adopted these ideas for increased psychological realism were Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot.  

To examine whether Modernism is pertinent today, one would do well by reexamining T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."  The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, reminiscent of the style of superbly crafted works by Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning.  Tennyson and, especially, Browning drew interesting and complex characters in their poems straightforwardly expressing their speakers' motives and desires.  When we finish their poems, we come away satisfied with our understanding of each of the particular characters.  Eliot's poem is anything but straightforward.  For instance, he uses a quotation from Dante's Purgatory as an epigraph to his poem: 

                    S'io credesse che mia riposta fosse
                    A persona che mai  tormasse al mondo,
                    Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
                    Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
                    Non formo vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
                    Senza tema di'infamia ti rispondo.

     Its translation reads, "If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy."  The speaker of this passage is Guido da Montelfeltro, guilty of giving false counsel to Pope Boniface in 1298.    

     The obvious question that the reader immediately asks is why does Eliot quote this passage from Dante?  The first stanza does not clarify what connection the epigraph might have to the poem:

                        Let us go then, you and I,

                        When the evening is spread out against the sky

                        Like a patient etherized upon a table;

                        Let us go, through half-deserted streets,

                        The muttering retreats

                        Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

                        And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:

                        Streets that follow like a tedious argument

                        Of insidious intent

                        To lead you to an overwhelming question...

                        Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

                        Let us go and make our visit.

Only by probing each stanza and afterwards perceiving the poem as a whole, can the reader elicit Eliot's meaning and possibly assess its relevance today.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

⁠⁠S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
⁠⁠A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
⁠⁠Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
⁠⁠Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
⁠⁠Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
⁠⁠Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky           

Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . .

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

The speaker, whom we assume is Prufrock, invites some unnamed character to join him on a walk. But is this a literal walk or a figurative one?  Is there a destination?  What does the simile in line 3 imply about the Prufrock?  The streets he wanders through (real, remembered or imagined) seem like a descent into a dark, dismal world of a sordid, empty existence.  Why does he suppress the question he anticipates from his listener?  

The next stanza introduces a twice uttered refrain:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

This rather random utterance breaks off the narrative sequence of the first stanza.  The reader feels lost.  Where did this come from?  What can women "Talking of Michelango" have to do with Prufrock?  One technique of Literary Modernism is defined as stream of consciousness.  This technique unveils a speaker's mind directly to the reader.  Instead of maintaining logical, distinct sequence of thoughts, the poet lets the reader see unedited thinking unfold naturally.  Prufrock's mind is roaming the way any person's mind might flow from thoughts to thoughts.  

By following Prufrock's thoughts as a stream of consciousness the reader is able to piece together the speaker's life and experiences.  Thus, the image of a peculiar "yellow fog," in the next two stanzas can tell us something about Prufrock:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,      
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.

Initially, what can the image and the movement of the fog suggest?   Looking at the next stanza might help:

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Prufrock asserts "And indeed there will be a time/For the yellow smoke (fog now blackened by coal soot) that slides along the street/Rubbing its back upon the window-panes."  Why?  Does the fog obscure Prufrock's visibility? Does this vapor allow time for us to self-create or possibly reinvent ourselves, "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"/ ..."time for a hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions."  Is Eliot asking who we are or is he suggesting that modern man can no longer be definitive, therefore, implying that we no longer can be decisive or reliable?  That instead our thoughts are ambiguous and controlled by fear, discontent, regret, confusion, or cynicism?  Is this who we are today and if so, can we acknowledge it? 

In the next stanza, we again have the couplet of women and Michelanelo:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

At this point in the poem, Prufrock's thoughts seem muddled. Or is this simply how his mind wanders?  Eliot engages us by means of fragmented phrases, images, and allusions to illustrate the psychology of the modern, insecure, indecisive man overwhelmed by a petty social world and by the unhappiness of his frustrated desires.  In this post-modern society do we feel trapped in a self-absorbed and image obsessed culture?  Can we possess the self-knowledge to resist the pressures of social conformity, or have we ceased to think and become enveloped in all our new means of escape? 

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

"And indeed there will be time," but for what---to fret about how we look to others?  We all can admit that the post-modern world's preoccupation with self-image has become ubiquitous, but does that make us all empty, devoid of unselfconscious thought? Dare we "Disturb the universe" or are we fearful to try?
.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
⁠So how should I presume?

Prufrock has "known them all already, known them all."  What is it he knows?   Women with whom he desires romance?  The "evenings," "mornings," "afternoons" of his life repeat without variation in a stagnant procession of days that echo in the phrase "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."  Beside an obsessive interest in our self-image, do our fully formulated lives reduce us to mindlessly measuring out our lives in robotic routines?  Is Prufrock seeking romance?  (Look back to the title.) He knows "the voices dying with a dying fall," but what do they mean to him?  And why does he wonder, "So how should I presume?"

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
⁠And how should I presume?

"And I have known the eyes already, known them all--/The eyes that fix you in formulated phrase."   Why does Prufrock narrow his focus to the "eyes" of those whom he knows "already"?  "Eyes" that reduce him to a "formulated phrase."  Prufrock is "pinned" on a "wall," his existence condensed into what people want him to be.  How is he to formulate his own words and phrases to move beyond the inescapable way people define him?  Don't we try to create who we are through social media?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
⁠And should I then presume?
⁠And how should I begin?

Here, about halfway through the poem, we see what the "the voices dying with a dying fall" mean to Prufrock.  He has "known the arms already, know them all--/Arms that are braceleted and white and bare," He knows them, but what of it.  The "perfume from a dress" only makes him "digress."  Can he commence a romance when he only wonders whether he can "presume," or how he can "begin?"  Uncertainty and hesitation beset him.  Others (women) shape and control his perception of himself.  

⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The image of going through "narrow streets" and seeing "pipes/Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows" mirrors Prufrock's life.  The "pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" are an oblique allusion to Shakespeare's brooding, Prince Hamlet.  Do you see any parallel?  Any irony? 

⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

The ambiguity of Prufrock's angst slides into deeper enigmatic depths in this stanza.  The "afternoon, evening, sleeps so peacefully!" until "it" "malingers."  Is the "it," "afternoon" or "evening"?  What is the "moment" he fears he won't have the "strength to force...to its crisis"?  Why does he imagine himself John the Baptist, "I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter," then negate that image by proclaiming "I am no prophet"? 

The enigmatic "it" persists through the next two stanzas: 

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
⁠Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
⁠That is not it, at all."

After so much hesitation and self-doubt, Prufrock considers whether it would have been worthwhile "To have bitten off the matter with a smile," to finally speak directly, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball/To roll it toward some overwhelming question," To raise himself up by a miracle and say finally "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,/Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all."  Would "it" have been "worthwhile"?  

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
⁠"That is not it at all,
⁠That is not what I meant, at all."

And what if he had found the courage to speak?  Where would it have gotten him beyond afternoon teas and trite social pleasantries?

⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

Here is the second reference to Prince Hamlet.  In Shakespeare's play, when charged with the enormous burden of avenging his father's murder, Hamlet attempts to think his way into action.  He delays and delays, which is understandable given the monumentality of what he must do; yet he does act finally with lethal effectiveness.  For all Prufrock does not know, he knows he is no Prince Hamlet.  Rather, he could be "an attendant lord, one that will do/To swell a progress, start a scene or two,/Advise the prince."  But is Prufrock merely a subordinate in a social hierarchy?  Advising a prince can be prestigious; but he is also "no doubt, and easy tool,/Deferential, glad to be of use,/Politic, cautious, and meticulous;/Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse/At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--/Almost, at times, the Fool."  At this point in the poem, Prufrock seems to be having an epiphany.  Does this self-knowledge enable him to free himself from suffocating rules and rituals of social mores?   Does self-knowledge enable us to resist social fashion from shaping our ethics and behavior?

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.  

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

The last eight line of the poem ("I have heard the mermaids singing...and we drown"), are among the most curious in the poem.  What do they reveal about Prufrock?  Eliot?  Us?

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

  

     

    In Eliot's poem, Prufrock traverses through a social purgatory, the bleak world of 1910, where love has been reduced to barren assignations, social relationships to vapid gossip, and Prufrock himself to a middle-aged, inadequate, indecisive, timid man.  As he struggles within this quintessentially modernist poem, quintessentially a modernist man, ambiguity dominates a psychological landscape he lays in front of us.  We wander among innuendoes and enigmas, following Prufrock's "stream of consciousness," to the poem's conclusion, feeling the painful dichotomy between the potential of human relationships and love Prufrock seeks and the reality of the discordant human voices in which he is drowning.  In our post-modern world, we think we know ourselves and believe we have found answers in each new iteration of technology.  But do our device dominated lives of posting selfies on social media belie a smugness and, like Prufrock, we think we hear "mermaids singing," but one day "human voices" will wake us, and we too will drown?  

Please feel free to respond so that we may all involve ourselves in a dialogue on Eliot's poem and how we perceive our post-modern world in light of Prufrock's modernist neurosis.

Who Reads Milton

    Three-hundred and fifty-six years ago, Paradise Lost was published.  The poem was John Milton's masterpiece, an epic-staging of the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan.  It is a difficult poem of more than 11,500 lines, with layers of classical and biblical allusions, and sentences in labyrinthine syntax.  It is still being read, studied, and analyzed by scholars, but less so by those who pursue a degree in English.  Decades ago, many colleges and universities, demoted Milton from a required course to an elective one for English majors.  Perhaps Milton would have been pleased that those pursuing degrees in literature no longer have to study him; after all, he did prefer that a "fit audience..., though few," read his work. All the same, it's too bad, because students who aren't exposed to Paradise Lost don't know what they are missing.  Of course, everyone who reads it for the first time struggles intensely to understand what is on the page.  Even Dr. Johnson expressed similar reservations about Milton's poem: "We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation." But Johnson also recognized something else about the poem: 

"The characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish."

    Though Paradise Lost is one of the most difficult poems to read, it is also one of the greatest poetic achievements in the English language.  To read it is to enter an imaginative world that abounds with spectacular sights and sounds.  The best way to begin this journey is to read aloud the first book of the poem.  Listen to the sounds of Milton's words and the flow of his language.  Move slowly.  In our era of texting and twitter, that suggestion may be hard to follow.  And even though technology, and those who create it, want to abridge our attention spans and subjugate our imaginations, we all still possess the power to resist, to swim against the current of Silicon Valley, and soar like Satan to higher realms.  

Read On!

Paradise Lost: Book  1 (1674 version) by John… | Poetry Foundation

    

Wordsworth; Some Thoughts

     In my previous post, I mentioned that Keats "wrote some of the greatest poetry," but a person interested in reading his poetry might avoid him because his poems seem difficult. If that is the case, then the best place to begin reading English Romantic poetry is with William Wordsworth.  Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote poems that are sensitive, profound, beautiful, and written in he what described as "a selection of language really spoken by men."  A theme that Wordsworth explored often his poems is his view of our relationship with nature.  His poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" illustrates this point:  

                        I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

                        I wandered lonely as a cloud,

                        That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

                        When all at once I saw a crowd,

                        A host, of golden daffodils;

                        Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

                        Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

                        Continuous as the stars that shine

                        And twinkle on the milky way,

                        They stretched in never-ending line

                        Along the margin of a bay:

                        Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

                        Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

                        The wave beside them danced; but they

                        Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;

                        A poet could not be but gay,

                        In such a jocund company;

                        I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

                        What wealth the show to me had brought:

                        For oft, when on my couch I lie

                        In vacant or in pensive mood,

                        They flash upon that inward eye

                        Which is the bliss of solitude;

                        And then my heart with pleasure fills,

                        and dances with the daffodils.

     

     This delightful, simple poem is based on an experience Wordsworth had while he and his sister were out walking one day.  In stanzas 1-3, the speaker "floats" cloud-like above the landscape, isolated and aimlessly drifting, when he is startled by the sight of daffodils, "Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."  These are no ordinary flowers, but like the stars of the milky way they "stretch" infinitely "along the margin of a "bay."  As if granted boundless perspective, he absorbs "Ten thousand" flowers within a single "glance."  Seeing the daffodils' transcendent brilliance fills him with an immediate, visceral feeling of joy, but gives "little thought" to the "wealth the show to me had brought."  That wealth only comes to him later "when on my couch I lie/In vacant or in pensive mood,/They flash upon that inward eye/Which is the bliss of solitude;/And then my heart with pleasure fills."  

     Once having read the poem, it is clear that Wordsworth views our relationship with nature as having something more to it that than just one of enjoying the beauty of natural scenery.  As we follow the poems sequence, we see him notice the flowers, feel inspired by them, then remember the experience days later when his mind is "In vacant or in pensive mood."  It is important to recognize here the necessity of memory, his recollecting the image through his imagination which soothes him in his solitude when "They flash upon his inward eye."   The question is, in what way does the imagination participate in this process?  Is it the force driving the experience toward its fulfillment, or is it subordinate to nature, simple a receptacle, passively receiving nature's spiritual bounty?  To answer that, we must turn to one of Wordsworth's masterpieces, "Tintern Abbey."  

     "Tintern Abbey" (organized into six verse paragraphs) recounts a time when he and his sister visited the river Wye, near Tintern Abbey.  The poem can be described as a meditation on how nature can instill goodness and wisdom in those willing to receive and possess her gifts.  Wordsworth first begins the poem by stating how long it has been since he last visited this place: "five years have passed; five summers, with the length/Of five long winters! and again I hear/These waters."  He then proceeds with this first section of the poem describing the attributes of the scene, which include cliffs, trees, a cottage, growing fruit, farms, and hedgerows.  These images convey a picturesque seclusion of pastoral tranquility.

     If the poem were to end here, the result would be a poem that merely describes, rather beautifully, a specific landscape.  In the second verse paragraph, Wordsworth turns inward and recollects the gifts nature had given him:  

                                         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,

         And passing even into my purer mind,

         With tranquil restoration--feelings too

         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,

         Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

         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 motions 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.

     

     The landscape's gifts become tangible even as Wordsworth remembers memories that comforted him while he lived in "lonely rooms, and 'mid the din/Of towns and cities."  Deprived of the actual sight of the landscape, Wordsworth's memory and imagination recall to him "sensations sweet" at times when he is overwhelmed with "weariness."  These "sensations" are "Felt in [his] blood" and "pass into" his "purer mind," where they restore him to the tranquility, he experienced at Tintern Abbey. But the images of the landscape that memory and imagination transmute into emotions accomplish much more than alleviate the poet's loneliness.  They also inspire him to "acts/Of kindness, and of love" toward his fellow human beings.  Lastly, he proclaims that he "owed another gift" to these "sensations," "Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood," that leads him to a transcendent state in which he becomes a "living soul" and sees "into the life of things."  

     For a brief moment in the next two verse paragraphs, Wordsworth seems to mistrust his memory and the words he just uttered:  "If this/Be but a vain belief," which is followed in the next paragraph by "And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought/With many recognitions dim and faint."  But his doubt is set aside:  "And somewhat of sad perplexity,/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."  In the rest of this verse paragraph, Wordsworth looks back on his youthful days, when he roamed wildly among the "hills," satisfying his "coarser pleasures," and knowing simply the "dizzy raptures" of the "cataract," "the mountain," and the "deep and gloomy wood."  That was a time when he "had no need of a remoter charm,/by thought supplied, nor any interest/Unborrowed from the eye."  His raw response to nature, unmediated by thought, fulfilled his young desire.  

     By the time he visits this landscape at the present moment, he has put away those "dizzy raptures" of his youth without regret, "Not for this/Faint (lose heart) I, nor mourn nor murmur."  Instead, he has an "Abundant recompense," far higher than those ecstatic passions felt along his physical senses.  For the mature Wordsworth, nature's boon enters through the senses, but becomes nourishment for contemplation of our mortality and our indivisible union with nature: 

                                                For I have learned

            To look on nature, not as in the hour

            Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

            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 living air,

            And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

            A motion and a spirit, that impels

            All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

            All rolls through all things.

     No longer youthful and impulsive, the older and wiser Wordworth hears in nature "The still sad music of humanity," and "A presence that disturbs me with the joy/Of elevated thoughts."  He has changed since his first visit from a youth who responds solely physically to this scene with aching, dizzying passions, to one who has been chastened through experience to have an empathic understanding of human suffering, which opens him to the immanent "presence" interfusing his mind with all the externalities of the world.  

     The obvious intangible quality of the "presence" in the landscape suggests that Wordsworth receives revelation of divinity strictly through nature.  But that would misrepresent the poem and Wordsworth.  The "motion" and "spirit" Wordsworth "feels" requires those images of nature to be seen, heard and remembered.  He can summon them through the faculty of memory, but the physical scene first must be apprehended by the eyes.  In his "older" and "wiser" contemplation of nature, he is now able to contrast his earlier and later experiences and recognize how he possesses through his creative imagination a sense of transcendence: 

                                                         Therefore am I still

            A lover of the meadows and the woods,

            And mountains; and of all that we behold

            From this green earth; of 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

            Of all my moral being.

     In the poem's final paragraph, Wordsworth turns to his sister Dorothy, hears "The language of my former heart," and sees "My former pleasures in the shooting lights/"Of thy wild eyes."  He prays that in years to come Nature (capitalized in this part) will, 

                                                         inform

         With quietness and beauty, and so feed 

         The mind that is within us, so impress

          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,

          Shall ever prevail against us, or disturb

          Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold

          Is full of blessings.

     And as the poem ends, Wordsworth avers that Dorothy will always remember the beauty of what this landscape evokes, and how much dearer it was to him because she was with him.  

     Wordsworth's expression of nature, which when recalled through the imagery of the "inward eye" has the power to transform bleakness into blessing of "aspect more sublime...in which the heavy and weary weight/Of all this intelligible world,/is lightened..."  This power is expressed in other words in his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads": 

"In spite of differences of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.  The objects of the Poet's thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and the senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings.  Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man."

     Wordsworth's vision (and that of all the Romantic poets) provides the ordinary person with the power to overcome the mundane, the tragic, the disastrous, by embracing the beauty that can animate the soul.