I have alluded above to some of the passages, most of them familiar
enough, in which Wordsworth's sense of the mystic relation between
the world without us and the world within--the correspondence
between the seen and the unseen--is expressed in its most general
terms. But it is evident that such a conviction as this, if it
contain any truth, cannot be barren of consequences on any level of
thought. The communion with Nature which is capable of being at
times sublimed to an incommunicable ecstasy must be capable also of
explaining Nature to us so far as she can be explained; there must
be _axiomata media_ of natural religion; there must be something in
the nature of poetic truths, standing midway between mystic
intuition and delicate observation.
How rich Wordsworth is in these poetic truths--how illumining is the
gaze which he turns on the commonest phenomena--how subtly and
variously he shows us the soul's innate perceptions or inherited
memories as it were co-operating with Nature and "half creating" the
voice with which she speaks--all this can be learnt by attentive
study alone. Only a few scattered samples can be given here; and I
will begin with one on whose significance the poet has himself dwelt.
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