But the Ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary interpretation of the words, as I am to believe, that Plato himself ever meant or taught it. πολλά μοι ὑπ’ ἀγκῶνος ὠκέα βέλη ἔνδον ἐντὶ φαρέτρας φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν ἐς δὲ τὸ πᾶν ἑρμηνέων χατίζει. σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ. μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι παγγλωσσίᾳ, κόρακες ὥς, ἄκραντα γαρύετον Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον. PINDAR, OLYMP. ii.”[336] The following parallel passages from _The Excursion_, _The Prelude_, Ruskin’s _Modern Painters_, Keble’s _Praelectiones de Poeticae vi Medica_ (p. 788, Prael. xxxix.), and the _Silex Scintillans_ of Henry Vaughan, are quoted, in an interesting note to the _Ode_ on Immortality, in Professor Henry Reed’s American edition of the Poems (1851). I Ah! why in age Do we revert so fondly to the walks Of childhood--but that there the Soul discerns The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired Of her own native vigour--thence can hear Reverberations; and a choral song, Commingling with the incense that ascends, Undaunted, toward the imperishable heavens, From her own lonely altar? _The Excursion_, book ix. ll. 36-44. II Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements. I guess not what this tells of Being past, Nor what it augurs of the life to come; etc. _The Prelude_, book v. ll. 507-511. III