Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But 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 surprised:

—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality

from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1807)

Ah! As I listened with a heart forlorn,

The pulses of my being beat anew:

And even as Life returns upon the drowned,

Life’s joy rekindling roused a throng of pains—

—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, “To William Wordsworth:

Composed on the Night After His Recitation of a Poem

on the Growth of an Individual Mind” (1807)

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had

To find: the scene was set; it repeated what

Was in the script.

Then the theatre was changed

To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.

It has to face the men of the time and to meet

The women of the time. It has to think about war

And it has to find what will suffice.

—WALLACE STEVENS, “Of Modern Poetry” (1940)