The soul of Dion, instantly dissolved.

I can only compare these lines to that famous passage of Sophocles
where the lamentations of the dying Oedipus are interrupted by the
impatient summons of an unseen accompanying god. In both places the
effect is the same; to present to us with striking brevity the
contrast between the visible and the invisible presences that may
stand about a man's last hour; for he may feel with the desolate
Oedipus that "all I am has perished"--he may sink like Dion through
inextricable sadness to a disastrous death, and then in a moment the
transitory shall disappear and the essential shall be made plain,
and from Dioa's upright spirit the perplexities shall vanish away,
and Oedipus, in the welcome of that unknown companionship, shall
find his expiations over and his reward begun.

It is true, no doubt, that when Wordsworth wrote these poems he had
lost something of the young inimitable charm which fills such pieces
as the _Fountain_ or the _Solitary Reaper_. His language is majestic,
but it is no longer magical. And yet we cannot but feel that he has
put into these poems something which he could not have put into the
poems which preceded them; that they bear the impress of a soul
which has added moral effort to poetic inspiration, and is mistress
now of the acquired as well as of the innate virtue. For it is words
like these that are the strength and stay of men; nor can their
accent of lofty earnestness be simulated by the writer's art.
Literary skill may deceive the reader who seeks a literary pleasure
alone; and he to whom these strong consolations are a mere
imaginative luxury may be uncertain or indifferent out of what heart
they come. But those who need them know; spirits that hunger after
righteousness discern their proper food; there is no fear lest they