16. =best philosopher . . . mighty prophet! seer blest!= Stopford Brooke says: "These expressions taken separately have scarcely any recognizable meaning. By taking them all together, we feel rather than see that Wordsworth intended to say that the child, having lately come from a perfect existence, in which he saw truth directly, and was at home with God, retains, unknown to us, that vision;--and, because he does, is the best philosopher, since he sees at once that which we through philosophy are endeavoring to reach; is the mighty prophet, because in his actions and speech he tells unconsciously the truths he sees, but the sight of which we have lost; is more closely haunted by God, more near to the immortal life, more purely and brightly free because he half shares in the pre-existent life and glory out of which he has come."--_Theology in the English Poets._ 17. =Fallings from us, vanishings.= "Fits of utter dreaminess and abstraction, when nothing material seems solid, but everything mere mist and shadow."--_Hales._ 18. =Blank misgivings.= Compare Tennyson, "Two Voices": "Moreover, something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams; "Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare." 19. =The clouds that gather.= Compare these lines with the following from Wordsworth's "Excursion": "Ah! why in age Do we revert so fondly to the walks Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns The dear memorial footsteps unimpair'd Of her own native vigor, thence can hear Reverberations and a choral song, Commingling with the incense that ascends Undaunted toward the imperishable heavens, From her own lonely altar?" FOOTNOTES: [44:A] The first stanza of We are Seven, said to have been written by Coleridge. THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS. We walked along, while bright and red Uprose the morning sun; And Matthew{1} stopped, he looked, and said, 'The will of God be done!' A village schoolmaster was he, With hair of glittering gray; As blithe a man as you could see On a spring holiday. And on that morning, through the grass, And by the steaming rills, We travelled merrily, to pass A day among the hills. 'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun: Then, from thy breast what thought, Beneath so beautiful a sun, So sad a sigh has brought?' A second time did Matthew stop, And fixing still his eye Upon the eastern mountain-top, To me he made reply: 'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft Brings fresh into my mind A day like this which I have left Full thirty years behind. And just above yon slope of corn Such colors, and no other, Were in the sky, that April morn, Of this the very brother.