1 - Old idolatry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
What am I doing if I break an idol? Am I showing that I do not believe in its supposed powers? Or am I, instead, doing just the reverse: demonstrating, in fact, that I believe in the idol's powers so much that I think it needs to be smashed up?
Wordsworth's ‘poem to Coleridge’ ends with an address to Coleridge himself, and with a figure drawn from sacred history:
Oh! yet a few short years of useful life,
And all will be complete, thy race be run,
Thy monument of glory will be raised;
Then, though, too weak to tread the ways of truth
This Age fall back to old idolatry,
Though men return to servitude as fast
As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame
By Nations sink together, we shall still
Find solace in the knowledge which we have,
Bless'd with true happiness if we may be
United helpers forward of a day
Of firmer trust, joint-labourers in the work,
(Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe)
Of their redemption, surely yet to come.
Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak
A lasting inspiration, sanctified
By reason and by truth: what we have loved
Others will love; and we may teach them how,
Instruct them how the mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this Frame of things
(Which 'mid all revolutions in the hopes
And fears of men doth still remain unchanged)
In beauty exalted, as it is itself
Of substance and of fabric more divine.
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- Information
- Wordsworth's Philosophic Song , pp. 35 - 55Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006