Table of Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Note on Texts viii
Personal Polemical Prologue 1
Indolence, industry and quick intuition
Where are you off to? 14
The book's scope 19
1 Wordsworth's Survival on Earth 25
Spots of time
Out damned spot 27
A moment in each day 31
Was it for this? 35
Gentle powers 47
2 Ye Elves 55
Supernatural aid
The one-in-many and the many-in-one 72
3 Shakespeare's Seven Acts of Soul 94
Deep things
Eternal lines 106
Stage by stage 122
4 The Poet as Avatar 142
Milton, melancholy and the meaning of Urania
Perennial wisdom from Spenser to Coleridge 153
5 What Hope Does a Modern Poet Have? 172
W. B. Yeats
When confusion fell upon our thought 179
Wallace Stevens 183
Epilogue 193
Bibliography 199