ABSTRACT
S. T Coleridge and William Wordsworth talk about ‘Modes of seeing and hearing’ and ‘habits of meditation’ with the intention of keeping an anchor in the world of common perception while at the same time guarding themselves from the possible despotism of the outer senses. The poem, displaying a tour de force of observation but only rudimentary habits of meditation, is a crucial one in the development of a theory of description. The union of observation and meditation is clearly explained by Coleridge when he says sensation is intelligence itself revealed as an earlier power in the process of self-construction. Coleridge saw the presence of Wordsworthian bestowal as great as to hazard that the scene may be ‘an emblem of the poem itself and of the author’s genius as it was displayed’. Though Coleridge may rely on retrospective reasoning when he fancies this, it is possible at least to affirm in this instance a prelusive blending of descriptive and meditative modes.
