in the selection and combination of imagery. Wordsworth's naive
explanation of the task performed by the imagination in his "Cuckoo" and
"Leech-Gatherer"
[Footnote: Preface to poems of 1815-1845.]
occupies a middle ground. We are at least certain of his entire
honesty--and incidentally of his total lack of humor!

"'Shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?'

"This concise interrogation characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the
voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal
existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by
a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard
throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight....

"'As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,
Wonder to all who do the same espy
By what means it could thither come, and whence,
So that it seems a thing endued with sense,
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, which on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun himself.

Such seemed this Man; not all alive or dead.
Nor all asleep, in his extreme old age.
* * * * *
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth altogether if it move at all.'