Page 18 - GALIET INSIGHT IN THE LIGHTNING: Coleridge IV

the image-world cast on the walls of the cavern (Plato). Wordsworth has
traced the stream
From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard Its natal murmur; followed it to light
And open day; accompanied its course Among the ways of nature, for a time
Lost sight of it bewildered and engulphed: Then given it greeting as it rose once more
In strength, reflecting from its placid breast; And lastly, from its progress have we drawn Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought Of human Being, Eternity and God.
(The Prelude, Book XIV, 193-205)
Just as the perpetual life-giving streams that flow nurturing the natural stony bowls in the Naiades’ immortal grotto, Wordsworth, outside Plato’s cavern, ascending, equally senses the participation of the particular in the perfect forms. As Porphyry argues, the Naiades’ grove embodies the image of the world twofold: in its darkness, it resembles the world’s earthly and stony matter holding invisible, occult powers; in its orderly form, it participates in the form of universal beauty.11 Coleridge’s soul, too, after his dejection is strengthened, shines, as if it were a lamp, unto all things.
Here. Yet in this ascending journey towards mind, what and how many more odysseys and glories in these poems stir, and
11 Porphyry. On the Cave of the Nymphs. Trans. Thomas Taylor. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1991.
—18—