We have not space for many extracts from the poem. Its philosophical value could not be indicated by quotations, and we shall content ourselves with citing a few random passages, illustrative of its general style and thought. The following lines exhibit the tendency of Wordsworth’s mind, when a youth at college:
I looked for universal things; perused
The common countenance of earth and sky:
Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace
Of that first Paradise whence man was driven;
And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed
By the proud name she bears—the name of Heaven.
I called on both to teach me what they might;
Or turning the mind in upon herself,
Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts