He realizes that he has committed a crime; that it is the height of folly to ignore instinct and tradition, and so he wanders over waste and wild
till anger is appeased
In heaven, and mercy gives me leave to die.
Although the radicalism of his early years does not reveal itself to any great extent in his poetry of that time, still it is responsible for his largest work, The Excursion. This poem is an attempt to reconstruct a new theory of life out of the ruins of the French Revolution. According to Wordsworth, the poet is a teacher. “I wish,” he says, “to be considered as a teacher or as nothing.” Shelley says that “poets are the unacknowleged legislators of the world.”[184] His Revolt of Islam and other poems attempt to inculcate “a liberal and comprehensive morality.” What particularly distinguishes Wordsworth and Shelley from preceding poets is that they moralize and draw lessons from their own experiences. The two principal characters in The Excursion—the Solitary and the Wanderer—represent Wordsworth the radical and Wordsworth the conservative. The Wanderer, who has had a long experience of men and things, derives from nature moral reflections of various kinds. In his walks he meets the Solitary, a gloomy, morose sceptic. This man tells about his desire to find peace and contentment; his delight in nature; and the happiness of his wedded life. The death of his wife and children filled him with despair. He then begins to question the ways of God to men and exclaims
Then my soul
Turned inward—to examine of what stuff
Times fetters are composed; and life was put
To inquisition, long and profitless![185]
He is aroused from these abstractions by the report that the dread Bastile has fallen; and from the wreck he sees a golden palace rise
The appointed seat of equitable law
The mild paternal sway
... from the blind mist issuing
I beheld
Glory, beyond all glory ever seen.
In Queen Mab Shelley has a somewhat similar phrase:
Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear.
He thus becomes interested once more in life; and joins in the chorus of Liberty singing in every grove.
War shall cease
Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured?
Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck
The tree of Liberty.[186]