Book XII

[I kind of jumped all over in my references, but my focus will (eventually) be lines 368-379).]

We’re still trying to figure out what the heck Wordsworth means when he talks about “imagination.” And there are a whole lot of dualities that Wordsworth explores in this passage, and really throughout. I selected this passage because, as the concluding stanza, it attempts to summarize many of the main points. Those points feature the couples “right reason” and “knowledge,” the temporal and eternal, and the tangible and intangible.

Wordsworth discusses right reason in the second stanza of this book: “I had been taught to reverence a power/That is the very quality and shape/And image of right reason” (lines 25-26). I am almost afraid to tackle these lines because a certain phrase never means the same thing when you ask two different poets. Milton used the term “right reason” when he discussed the inherent understanding of natural law. Heavy stuff. Basically, he thought that every man had a sort of internal way of “knowing” what was right or wrong, important or not, sacred or secular, etc. This understanding seems to stand well against the way Wordsworth discusses knowledge. He talks about walking down the road and meeting people and learning from them through his conversations (lines 145-184). In these lines, it seems that man gains all of his knowledge through experience. He must be taught, he must read, and he must study. Things that wouldn’t have appeared to the “vulgar eye,” the common eye, in this case the unlearned eye. From this passage, it seems that gaining knowledge is hard work, which is a far cry from the knowledge a man possesses automatically with right reason.

The second juxtaposition, brought to my attention by the use of the word “originates” in line 374, is between the temporal and the eternal. Wordsworth writes that right reason allowed him

“a temperate shew

Of objects that endure…

To seek in man, and in the frame of life

Social and individual, what there is

Desirable, affecting, good or fair,

Of kindred permanence, the gifts divine

And universal, the pervading grace

That hath been, is, and shall be” (lines 35-44).

Right reason has revealed that which is lasting, has sifted the chaff from the wheat to reveal those things on early that will endure. This “shew of objects” will assist the speaker in finding value in his experience. As long as he rightly employs right reason in his everyday life, the more important aspects of life will stand out to him, and he will be able to make a proper investment of his time and attention. On the other hand, the speaker also highlights his experience. He wishes

“To ascertain how much of real worth,

And genuine knowledge, and true power of the mind,

Did at this day exist in those who lived

By bodily labour, labour far exceeding

Their due proportion, under all the weight

Of that injustice which upon ourselves

By composition of society/Ourselves entail.” (lines 98-105)

This description is very much focused on daily toil. The speaker is wondering in this passage if the concerns we have in this world are getting in the way of the exercise of our imaginations. “What bars are thrown/By Nature in the way of such a hope?/Our animal wants and the necessities/Which they impose, are these the obstacles?” (lines 92-95) This also harkens to the dichotomy of the body and soul. Where does the soul exist in the body? Is the soul impeded by the body? How can the two disparate entities exist in such close connection to each other? The speaker seems to equate the imagination to the soul, but cannot ignore the physical needs that our life on earth requires.

This leads directly into the last pair, the tangible and intangible. In this final line, the speaker refers to the excellence, spirit, and power “Both of the object seen, and the eye that sees” (379). The object seen links directly to these human needs. This is the physical world, the tangible world, the world that is related to our body, and to the knowledge that we gain by experience. The eye that sees is, ostensibly, the imagination. This eye sees Nature, it sees grandeur all in one picture, it sees the everlasting in the midst of the temporal, it sees the right through all the wrong. And the speaker credits this eye to the poet: “poets…/Have each for his peculiar dower a sense/By which he is enabled to perceive/Something unseen before” (lines 301-305). I hate to try and boil it down, to reduce it to such a thin mixture, but it seems that the speaker finds that poets possess something in themselves, some form of right reason that empowers their imagination, allows them to see all of nature at once, even that which is not evident to the “vulgar eye.” Unlike the common man, they do not see and appreciate Nature after long study and through hard-earned knowledge, but through some divine gift that always has been, and always will be.