ABSTRACT
"Resolution and Independence", recounts not only a divine admonition to poetic labor, but also a divine "gifting" of the means to act on that admonition, if only Jonathan Wordsworth will make the effort. The degree of the Wordsworths' financial desperation between 1795 and 1803, the dates of Raisley Calvert's legacy and the settlement of the Lowther debt, has been the subject of debate. In general, Wordsworth was not reluctant in citing the profit motive as his chief incentive to publish, if not to write. The condition of Wordsworth's health during early 1802 has often been remarked in discussions of "Resolution and Independence" as one of the signal concerns of the narrator. By May of 1802, the epic and lyrical foci of Wordsworth's poetic vision had begun to coalesce into a rough parallax, leading him to turn his back on market concerns just as the third edition of the Ballads was going to press.
