单项选择题
| During the first year that Mr.
Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two
cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a
faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest
of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which
accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a known
and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining
both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself--(to which of
us I do not recollect)--that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts.
In the one, the incidents and agents were to he, in part at least, supernatural.
And the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections
by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such
situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every
human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed
himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be
chosen from ordinary life. The characters and incidents were to be such as will
be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and
feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present
themselves. In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads, in which it was agreed, that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic. Yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us. And inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand. |