PRELUDE:
THE NEED FOR METAPHOR
Ten ... This number was of old held
high in honor,
for such is the number of fingers by which we count.
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Intent on seeing the sun rise from the top
of Mt. Snowdon, the
young William Wordsworth set out on a climb one evening two
centuries ago with a friend and a shepherd guide.
It was a close, warm summer night, the fog hanging low, air
dripping with moisture. Beginning from a cottage at the moun-
tain's base, the trio dimbed in silence as the mists surrounded
them. The poet's head was bent earthward, as if, he writes, it
were set against an enemy. He was lost in thought, negotiating
rocks and paths, panting breathlessly, leading the way through
the midnight hours. Gradually, though dawn had not yet come,
the ground at the poet's feet began to brighten. With each
step the light increased. There was hardly time to ask or learn
the cause, when suddenly--"lo!" the poet cries in biblical
fashion--he looked up and there was the moon
- hung naked in a firmament
Of azure without cloud, and at my feet
Rested a silent sea of hoary mist.
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EMBLEMS OF MIND
From the mountain peak, the poet saw a vast
sea of vapors
below him, stretching out to the ocean, while the sky above
was unclouded, the full moon illuminating the "ethereal
vault."
All was silent, save for a breach in the mist, a blue chasm not
far off, a "breathing-place" whence came a "roar
of waters,
torrents, streams / Innumerable, roaring with one voice!"
heard
over the whole earth and sea and seemingly felt by the starry
heavens.
When the scene dissolved and the poet thought about what
he had seen, it seemed to him to be an image,
the type
Of a majestic intellect, its acts
And its possessions, what it has and craves,
What in itself it is, and would become.
The moon hanging over the mists, the light
above, the sound
below, the dark abyss and the silent sky--"There I beheld,"
the poet writes, "the emblem of a mind." The poet spins
out
his image of the mind, the relations of its parts represented
by
the moon and the waters, its powers resembling those of human
imagination, and exerting profound influence on its thoughts
and creations. The mind's creations can possess such mastery,
he asserts, that they can catch even the creators by surprise, |
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