Though clad In colours beautiful and pure,
Find in the heart of man no natural home;
The immortal Mind craves objects that endure:
These cleave to it; from these it cannot roam,
Nor they from it: their fellowship is secure.

From this temper of Wordsworth's mind, it follows that there will be
many moods in which we shall not retain him as our companion. Moods
which are rebellious, which beat at the bars of fate; moods of
passion reckless in its vehemence, and assuming the primacy of all
other emotions through the intensity of its delight or pain; moods
of mere imaginative phantasy, when we would fain shape from the
well-worn materials of our thought some fabric at once beautiful and
new; from all such phases of our inward being Wordsworth stands aloof.
His poem on the nightingale and the stockdove illustrates with
half-conscious allegory the contrast between himself and certain
other poets.

O Nightingale! Thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart:--
These notes of thine--they pierce and pierce;
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!
Thou sing'st as if the God of wine
Had helped thee to a Valentine;
A song in mockery and despite
Of shades, and dews, and silent Night;
And steady bliss, and all the loves
Now sleeping in their peaceful groves.

I heard a Stock-dove sing or say