There are in our existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue, whence, depressed By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse, our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among those passages of life that give Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, The mind is lord and master—outward sense The obedient servant of her will.’ He then gives us one of these ‘passages,’ and what is it? A day when as a child he saw ‘A naked pool that lay beneath the hills, The beacon on the summit, and, more near, A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head, And seemed with difficult steps to force her way Against the blowing wind.’ It was, as he says, an ‘ordinary sight,’ but ‘Colours and words that are unknown to man’ would have failed him ‘To paint the visionary dreariness’ which invested what he saw. Years afterwards, when he revisited the spot, the ‘loved one at his side,’ there fell on it ‘A spirit of pleasure and youth’s golden gleam; And think ye not with radiance more sublime For these remembrances, and for the power They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid Of feeling, and diversity of strength Attends us, if but once we have been strong.’ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. Although he expands here and elsewhere he does not elaborate. He stops where the fact ends and shuns abstractions. * * * * * ‘So taught, so trained, we boldly face All accidents of time and place; Whatever props may fail, Trust in that sovereign law can spread New glory o’er the mountain’s head, Fresh beauty through the vale.’ This is from _The Wishing-Gate Destroyed_, a late poem, not published till 1842, when Wordsworth was seventy-two years old. It is his Nicene and Apostles’ Creed and Thirty-Nine Articles. Trust, with no credentials but its own existence, and yet they are indisputable. * * * * * ‘Is it that Man is soon deprest? A thoughtless Thing! who, once unblest, Does little on his memory rest, Or on his reason.’ _To the Daisy_.