ABSTRACT
William Wordsworth was a man who continually struggled not to be over-whelmed by his feelings. For Wordsworth writing poetry was like reaching out a hand to steady himself. Wordsworth's poetry about nature is not any more specific than it is, because he is constantly trying to look through nature to his own mind and being. For Wordsworth the imagination is a disembodied voice that speaks to us without interruption like the sound of running water heard at a distance. When in the Snowdon meditation Wordsworth actually describes how 'higher minds' work, his language becomes sharper and more confident, and he has no need of religious language. Wordsworth's description of 'higher minds' is like a sketch for Stevens's 'figure of a poet', although Stevens is conscious than Wordsworth of the nature of abstraction. Wordsworth shares Coleridge's belief that the imagination is esemplastic, and the source of its power, as Wordsworth presents it here, is that it connects consciousness with the unconscious.
