On a fair prospect some have looked And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away. In all these passages, it will be observed, the emotion is educed from Nature rather than added to her; she is treated as a mystic text to be deciphered, rather than as a stimulus to roving imagination. This latter mood, indeed, Wordsworth feels occasionally, as in the sonnet where the woodland sights become to him "like a dream of the whole world;" but it is checked by the recurring sense that "it is our business to idealize the real, and not to realize the ideal." Absorbed in admiration of fantastic clouds of sunset, he feels for a moment ashamed to think that they are unrememberable-- They are of the sky, And from our earthly memory fade away. But soon he disclaims this regret, and reasserts the paramount interest of the things that we can grasp and love. Grove, isle, with every shape of sky-built dome, Though clad In colours beautiful and pure, Find in the heart of man no natural home; The immortal Mind craves objects that endure: These cleave to it; from these it cannot roam, Nor they from it: their fellowship is secure. From this temper of Wordsworth's mind, it follows that there will be many moods in which we shall not retain him as our companion. Moods which are rebellious, which beat at the bars of fate; moods of passion reckless in its vehemence, and assuming the primacy of all other emotions through the intensity of its delight or pain; moods of mere imaginative phantasy, when we would fain shape from the well-worn materials of our thought some fabric at once beautiful and new; from all such phases of our inward being Wordsworth stands aloof. His poem on the nightingale and the stockdove illustrates with half-conscious allegory the contrast between himself and certain other poets. O Nightingale! Thou surely art A creature of a fiery heart:-- These notes of thine--they pierce and pierce; Tumultuous harmony and fierce! Thou sing'st as if the God of wine Had helped thee to a Valentine; A song in mockery and despite Of shades, and dews, and silent Night; And steady bliss, and all the loves Now sleeping in their peaceful groves. I heard a Stock-dove sing or say His homely tale, this very day; His voice was buried among trees, Yet to be come at by the breeze: He did not cease; but cooed--and cooed, And somewhat pensively he wooed. He sang of love with quiet blending, Slow to begin, and never ending; Of serious faith and inward glee; That was the Song--the Song for me!