" Absorbed in admiration of fantastic clouds of sunset, he
feels for a moment ashamed to think that they are unrememberable--
They are of the sky,
And from our earthly memory fade away.
But soon he disclaims this regret, and reasserts the paramount
interest of the things that we can grasp and love.
Grove, isle, with every shape of sky-built dome,
Though clad In colours beautiful and pure,
Find in the heart of man no natural home;
The immortal Mind craves objects that endure:
These cleave to it; from these it cannot roam,
Nor they from it: their fellowship is secure.
From this temper of Wordsworth's mind, it follows that there will be
many moods in which we shall not retain him as our companion. Moods
which are rebellious, which beat at the bars of fate; moods of
passion reckless in its vehemence, and assuming the primacy of all
other emotions through the intensity of its delight or pain; moods
of mere imaginative phantasy, when we would fain shape from the
well-worn materials of our thought some fabric at once beautiful and
new; from all such phases of our inward being Wordsworth stands aloof.
His poem on the nightingale and the stockdove illustrates with
half-conscious allegory the contrast between himself and certain
other poets.
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