It is given sometimes to a poet to sink a shaft, as it were, into the very depths of the inner life: to penetrate its secret treasuries, and to return, Prometheus-like, with a gift of fire and of light to men. The venturesome words that record such a moment of penetration and insight never lose their power: they seem to have caught something of the everlasting freshness of that world of which they speak: and one man after another may find in them, at some time of need or gladness or awakening, the utterance of thoughts which else he might have been too shy or too faint-hearted to acknowledge even to himself. There is such a splendid venture of courage for the truth's sake in those lines of Wordsworth which surely no familiarity can deprive of their claim to reverence and gratitude; the lines in which he tells his thankfulness,
For those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprized:
.... Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,