ABSTRACT
The 'Characters' and The types' are at once the unchanging message of the earth and the essentially mobile voice of the printed poet who leads us through it from an almost comic self-characterization to the revelation of a mind wholly identified with the 'symbols of eternity'. William Wordsworth's verse more often arrives at its positive values by a negative route. He leads us to the 'symbols of Eternity' by recalling what a fool he made of himself in his own approach to the Alps. The extent to which we should treat our surroundings as home and family is frequently pointed by confessions of the poet's own insensitive moments of treating them like strangers. The natural world, according to The Prelude, does have the power to 'breathe/Grandeur upon the very humblest face/Of human life', but only 'if we have eyes to see', and looking at pictures can be bad for the eyes.
