and its varied life, Wordsworth's mind was affected by his mystical consciousness. It will be remembered how, in earlier years, his soul observed affinities in things "where no brotherhood exists to passive minds"; how he was able to intuit the harmony and unity of Reality - feeling the sentiment of "Being spread o'er all things." A similar power is his in the city. Here, the diversity of objects which he beholds is not "blank confusion" for him, as it is for many for whom things are

"melted and reduced

To one identity, by differences

That have no law, no meaning, and no end." 20

"The Spirit of Nature is upon him, and

'The Soul of Beauty and enduring Life
Vouchsafe her inspiration, and diffused,
Through meager lines and colours, and the press
Of self-destroying, transitory things,
Composure, and ennobling Harmony." 21

Here he sees men, multitudes of them, under divers conditions and in divers states - a vast, heterogeneous, motley, and often repulsive throng; but his mystical mind looks beyond all individual peculiarities, all personal conditions, all differentiating physical and moral shapes, and sees the essential, the universal in Man the tie that binds all human beings into one great system or brotherhood. The synthetic vision is his once more, and he beholds

'the unity of man,

One spirit over ignorance and vice
Predominant, in good and evil hearts;
One sense for moral judgments, as one eye
For the sun's light. " 22

20 The Prelude, Bk. VII, 11. 726-728.

21 The Prelude, Bk. VII, 11. 767-771.

22 Sneath, Wordsworth, Boston, 1912, pp. 49-50. The Prelude, Bk. VIII, 11. 668-672.

Thus from early childhood, through youth and young manhood, Wordsworth was subject to mystical experiences that transfigured the face of Nature, and to mystical moods that varied from mild abstraction, yielding flashes and gleams of insight into the heart of Nature and Man, to profound illuminating trances in which his soul was enabled to perceive the spiritual nature and unity of all reality, to stand in the presence of God, and to gain a vision of the soul's immortality and the dignity of duty. It was thus that "the vision and the faculty divine" were developed in him. It was thus that he came to see into the life of things" and

men.

We now come to an interesting and pathetic experience in the life of the poet one that involves a temporary loss of his mystical power. His account of this spiritual crisis is contained in the eleventh and twelfth books of The Prelude. It is a record of unsouling or despiritualizing the world of things and men. This was largely due to his great interest in the French Revolution, and to the more abstract study of man under the influence of the rationalistic spirit of the age. Very early Wordsworth espoused the cause of the revolutionary movement. With ardent soul he cherished high hopes for humanity. He had naïve confidence in the power of "right reason." But the excesses of the Revolution, and England's attitude early in the crisis, filled his soul with much bitterness and disappointment. In his extremity he took refuge from men in an abstract study of man study of man in his essential nature, - endowed with lordly powers of reason and will, who eventually would throw off the tyranny of custom and law. He subjected both man and Nature to the analytical scrutiny of the logical intellect, with the result that he soon lost not only his faith in moral reason, but also his consciousness of a Spiritual Presence in Nature. His mystical soul no longer functioned. He was in the grip of a "moral disease." He was in the darkness

-a

of the skeptic's night. There is a similarity here to the peculiar experience of such religious mystics as Henry Suso, St. Theresa, St. John of the Cross, and Madame Guyon, which experience is known as "the dark night of the soul." With the religious mystics this is a period of desolation and torment. To them it is one of the stages in the "mystic way," leading to a higher and richer mystical experience.

From this "malady" Wordsworth gradually recovered under the tender ministry of his sister, and the healing power of Nature. With his recovery there came a rebirth of the mystical vision and intuition. Through the influence of Dorothy Wordsworth he was made at this time to seek beneath the poet's name his "office upon earth," and the dozen years immediately following are pronounced by competent critics to be the period in which he produced his best poetry - the dominant characteristic of which is mystical insight.

The Lyrical Ballads represent the first fruits of Wordsworth's mental and spiritual restoration. Among these ballads we find poetry relating to both Nature and Man. In the former, the "mystic gleam" is most evident. Here Nature is instinct with life and mind. She pulsates with happiness and love. Out of her abundant resources she ministers to Man's mind and heart. She gives of her wealth to those who commune with her; who indulge in " a wise passiveness"; who come forth into the light of things with a heart "that watches and receives"; who observe "the hour of feeling," in which

"One moment may give us more
Than years of toiling reason." 23

In such poems as "Lines Written in Early Spring," "To
My Sister," "Expostulation and Reply," and "The Tables
Turned," we note this mystical approach of Wordsworth to
Nature. Here we have the poet, as in boyhood and youth,

in close touch with Nature's spirit, communing with her and seeing deep "into the life of things." Coleridge once remarked to Hazlitt, before the poetry of the Lyrical Ballads appeared in print, that "it had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition rather than by deduction." 23 Intuition it unquestionably

was - born largely of mystical feeling.

Among the poems of the Lyrical Ballads, is one entitled, Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey." In this poem we have once more a description of his mystical trance. In it the poet deals with both its psychological and physiological aspects. It is a "serene and blessed mood" in which the soul's burden of the "unintelligible world is lightened"; a mood in which breathing and the circulation of the blood almost cease. The bodily powers are "laid asleep," but the soul is awake. The eye of sense is quieted, its function being inhibited by the power of harmony and joy,- but the inner eye is active, and gains insight into Nature's life.

"Not less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
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 motion 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." 24

23 The Liberal, II, 371.

24 Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 11. 35-48.

Later in the poem, in memorable lines, he acknowledges having felt a Presence in things and men. He has experienced a sense sublime" of " a motion and a spirit" that is operative in all things and in the human mind. The experience is due to Nature, and because of it he recognizes in her the guide and guardian of his heart, the very soul of his moral being.

"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 the 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,
And rolls through all things. 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 recognise
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." 25

This is mysticism - a mood in which there is immediate experience of, or contact with, a Higher Spiritual Power, and a recognition of the essential unity of all things. So intimate is the relation between the Universal Presence and things and minds, that he barely escapes resolving the last two realities into the first. Indeed, there have been those, like Bishop Wordsworth, his kinsman-biographer, who have interpreted this poem pantheistically. However, this is a misinterpretation. Pantheism identifies finite things and minds with the Absolute or "the All." It makes them

25 Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, Il. 93-111.