In a second poem inspired by this revived study of classical
antiquity Wordsworth has traced the career of Dion,--the worthy
pupil of Plato, the philosophic ruler of Syracuse, who allowed
himself to shed blood unjustly, though for the public good, and was
haunted by a spectre symbolical of this fatal error. At last Dion
was assassinated, and the words in which the poet tells his fate seem
to me to breathe the very triumph of philosophy, to paint with a
touch the greatness of a spirit which makes of Death himself a
deliverer, and has its strength in the unseen.
So were the hopeless troubles, that involved
The soul of Dion, instantly dissolved.
I can only compare these lines to that famous passage of Sophocles
where the lamentations of the dying Oedipus are interrupted by the
impatient summons of an unseen accompanying god. In both places the
effect is the same; to present to us with striking brevity the
contrast between the visible and the invisible presences that may
stand about a man's last hour; for he may feel with the desolate
Oedipus that "all I am has perished"--he may sink like Dion through
inextricable sadness to a disastrous death, and then in a moment the
transitory shall disappear and the essential shall be made plain,
and from Dioa's upright spirit the perplexities shall vanish away,
and Oedipus, in the welcome of that unknown companionship, shall
find his expiations over and his reward begun.
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