But though he got certainties there, they must
have been, one judges, certainties too arid for his thirsting mind. Then
he made his great discovery--helped to it, perhaps, by his sister
Dorothy and his friend Coleridge--he found nature, and in nature, peace.
Not a very wonderful discovery, you will say, but though the cleansing
and healing force of natural surroundings on the mind is a familiar
enough idea in our own day, that is only because Wordsworth found it.
When he gave his message to the world it was a new message. It is worth
while remembering that it is still an unaccepted one. Most of his
critics still consider it only Wordsworth's fun when he wrote:
"One impulse from the vernal wood
Can teach us more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can."
Yet Wordsworth really believed that moral lessons and ideas were to be
gathered from trees and stones. It was the main part of his teaching. He
claimed that his own morality had been so furnished him, and he wrote
his poetry to convince other people that what had been true for him
could be true for them too.
For him life was a series of impressions, and the poet's duty was to
recapture those impressions, to isolate them and brood over them, till
gradually as a result of his contemplation emotion stirred again--an
emotion akin to the authentic thrill that had excited him when the
impression was first born in experience.
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