ABSTRACT
Salisbury Plain' is notable for its invocation of a weird spirit of place, and Wordsworth's unique tragedy The Borderers, though hovering uneasily between stage and closet, has powerfully apocalyptic moments and some intriguing analytical psychology. To expand on Coleridge's list: Wordsworth's finest poems hold in daring tension humour and seriousness, delicacy and strength, tenderness and grandeur, the subjective and the objective, the intellect and the emotions, energy and repose. But the poetry of the great decade is equally concerned with the fundamental human passions as observed quasi-scientifically in a variety of mostly rural characters, in the relationship between humankind and the natural world, and in public affairs. The author has heard of many who, upon their first acquaintance with his poetry, have had much to get over before they could thoroughly relish it; but never of one who, having once learned to enjoy it, had ceased to value it or survived his admiration.
