dots-menu
×

Home  »  Parnassus  »  William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

The Skeptic

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

(See full text.)

I CALLED on dreams and visions to disclose

That which is veiled from waking thought; conjured

Eternity, as men constrain a ghost

To appear and answer. Then my soul

Turned inward, to examine of what stuff

Time’s fetters are composed; and life was put

To inquisition, long and profitless.

By pain of heart,—now checked, and now impelled,

The Intellectual Power, through words and things,

Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way!