“[S]urrounded . . . by kneeling crowds”

This chapter starts with a reflection on the discordant ways in which Wordsworth’s “prose mind” and his “mind poetic” relate to the practice of churchgoing. After this, the attention is drawn to one specific motif: the incessant, nearly obsessive presence of the subject of prayer in The Poetical Works of Wordsworth. Almost as in Christopher Smart, the lyrical “I” sees or imagines he sees or hears prayer all around; this is evidenced through references to a long list of Wordsworth’s “minor Pieces.” The poet’s universe, the human world and the natural, real and imagined, experienced or recollected in tranquillity, inside his mind and outside it, serve and adore, build their temples, worship, thank, praise, sing, and pray. The perplexing feature, however, is that, unlike Smart’s lyrical speaker, Wordsworth’s “I” sounds disconnected. He just listens, hears, overhears, looks without joining in, observes those observing their rites. “[S]urrounded . . . by kneeling crowds,” his “I” remains standing: strikingly, in Wordsworth’s entire poetic oeuvre there is only one stanza (the second stanza of “On a high Part of the Coast of Cumberland”) wherein his “I” turns to God with a relatively elaborate, genuinely personal prayer.