It is a kind of illumination, whereby in a lightning flash we see that
the world is quite different from what it ordinarily appears to be, and
when it is over--for the experience is but momentary--it is impossible
to describe the vision in precise terms, but the effect of it is such as
to inspire and guide the whole subsequent life of the seer. Wordsworth
several times depicts this "bliss ineffable" when "all his thought were
steeped in feeling." The well-known passage in _Tintern Abbey_ already
quoted (p. 7) is one of the finest analysis of it left us by any of the
seers, and it closely resembles the accounts given by Plotinus and
Boehme of similar experiences.

To Wordsworth this vision came through Nature, and for this reason. He
believed that all we see round us is alive, beating with the same life
which pulsates in us. It is, he says,--

my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

and that if we will but listen and look, we will hear and see and feel
this central life. This is the pith of the message we find repeated
again and again in various forms throughout Wordsworth's poetry, and
perhaps best summed up at the end of the fourth book of the _Excursion_,
a book which should be closely studied by any one who would explore the
secret of the poet's outlook upon life. He tells us in the _Prelude_
(Book iii.) that even in boyhood it was by this feeling he "mounted to
community with highest truth"--

To every natural form, rock, fruits, or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,