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contrast is the idea of purpose in poetry. With Wordsworth a poem exists for a purpose; it should appeal to heart and intellect; it should delight, instruct and elevate. With Poe a poem exists for its own sake; its beauty is the excuse for its being; it should be feeling pure and simple; with intellect, truth or morals it has only secondary relations.
Wordsworth sees something beyond the reach of poetry. Poetry is "the image of man and nature." Its duty is to discover and express truth. To Poe the essence of poetry is the highest of all ends; it is truth itself; it is nature and not the image of nature. "He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm or with however vivid a truth of description of the sights and sounds and odors and colors and sentiments which greet him in common with all mankind,—he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of time, to attain a portion of that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone."
With Poe the vital element of a poet is feeling. With Wordsworth not only feeling, but book learning and intellect are necessary.
"O many are the poets that are sown
By nature; men endowed with highest gifts.
The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse
Which, in the docile season of their youth
It was denied them to acquire, thro' lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books."
The Excursion.
The reflective element predominates in Wordsworth's poems. Even when they express feeling the poems frequently turn from feeling to
reflection. This change from the emotional to the intellectual is a striking contrast to Poe, who never, from beginning to end, loses sight of the emotional element. Take Wordsworth's poem on the rainbow:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So it was when my life began,
So it is now that I am a man,
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man.
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Only the first two lines are emotional. The poem starts out with feelings that the sight of a rainbow arouses, but in the last three lines what has become of the rainbow? Indeed, after the first two lines what has become of the consciousness of the rainbow? It seems as if Wordsworth's intellect forbids his looking at the intrinsic value and beauty of anything.
So it was when my life began,
So it is now I am a man,
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
Indirectly these lines suggest feeling, but to express that feeling they would have to be translated into entirely different terms. As they stand they are simply a matter-of-fact intellectual statement that concerns intellect only.
The child is father of the man.
We are now a long way from the beauties of a rainbow. Even the child is not a child. It has no value in the present. It is merely related to something that follows. Another specimen of intellect predominating over feeling appears in the little poem "Lucy:"
She dwelt among the untrodden ways.
Besides the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
This is the first stanza of the poem, the verse that should strike the key-note of the whole. We see a girl living in a solitary place. The last lines suggest a cause for sympathizing with her if lack of praise and a host of lovers is a misfortune. But the praises might have made her vain and a host of lovers might have made