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1. Wordsworth and Shelley in the "Preface" Wordsworth in The Prelude: “His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image.” Shelley in “Alastor”: He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. 2. The Poet’s “gazing” on the world His wandering step Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old: Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, Dark āthiopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, He lingered, poring on memorials Of the world's youth, through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. (106-128) 3. The Poet’s disenchantment with his own dream vision Roused by the shock he started from his trance— The cold white light of morning, the blue moon Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, The distinct valley and the vacant woods, Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. The spirit of sweet human love has sent A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas! Were limbs and breath and being intertwined Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost, In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, Lead only to a black and watery depth, While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung, Where every shade which the foul grave exhales Hides its dead eye from the detested day, Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms? This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart, The insatiate hope which it awakened stung His brain even like despair. (192-222) 4. The Poet’s “mute conference/ With his still soul” led to his recognition of his own lack of unity with Nature in the Swan episode. "Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. (280-295) 5. The Poet’s recognition of his own mind in Nature, an equivalent of Wordsworth’s Snowdon, leading to a further exploration into his own soul. Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain; as the human heart, Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel An unaccustomed presence, and the sound Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed To stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, Borrowed from aught the visible world affords Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;— But, undulating woods, and silent well, And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, Held commune with him, as if he and it Were all that was,—only... when his regard Was raised by intense pensiveness,... two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, And seemed with their serene and azure smiles To beckon him.
(469-492) 6. The end result of the poet’s exploration: “A fragile lute” with “No sense, no motion, no divinity” When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, Did he resign his high and holy soul To images of the majestic past, That paused within his passive being now, Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay, Surrendering to their final impulses The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, And his own being unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there At peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jaggèd hills It rests, and still as the divided frame Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still: And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained Utterly black, the murky shades involved An image, silent, cold, and motionless, As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. Even as a vapour fed with golden beams That ministered on sunlight, ere the west Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame— No sense, no motion, no divinity— A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream Once fed with many-voicèd waves—a dream Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. (625-671) 7. The narrator’s elegy on the Poet O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy, Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, who now, Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for ever, Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream Of dark magician in his visioned cave, Raking the cinders of a crucible For life and power, even when his feeble hand Shakes in its last decay, were the true law Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled! The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius. Heartless things Are done and said i' the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison, Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled— Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee Been purest ministers, who are, alas! Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes That image sleep in death, upon that form Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone In the frail pauses of this simple strain, Let not high verse, mourning the memory Of that which is no more, or painting's woe Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. (672-720)
 
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