s not one of death but of release from the concerns of every day life. The author’s soul floats above his body. From that distance, the tensions of daily life is diminished, and replace by joy. This joy comes in no small part from the escape from every day worries. But perhaps it is also a joy in the author’s own powers to shape his experience of the world. For the poet has a further insight, one that comes from reflection on the very experience of the power of memory to “lift the burdens” upon him. That is, the author is now thinking not about the Wye, or about his memories of the Wye, or about how these memories have lifted his spirits and shaped his life. Rather he is thinking about the human abilities that allow memory and reflection to have this effect. In doing this he grasps two important features of his own powers. First, he sees just how his power of reflection and memory can keep him from being dragged down into the pain and despair of daily life. The pleasure he received from his experience on the banks of the Wye are not limited to that time and place but are always available. And the pain and worries of daily life can be diminished and put in their place by gaining some distance and perspective from them. Second he grasps that these very experiences are not just due to the power of nature over him. As he points out later in the poem, when he was younger “nature…to me was all in all.” This does not mean that nature was “all in all” when he was young but that he experienced it as “all in all.” What he has come to realize is that the effect of nature upon him depends upon what he brings to nature. For he has seen that the pleasures he receives upon reflection on his experience at the banks of the Wye are different and possibly even greater that those he had at the time of the actual experience. Later in the poem, the author recognizes that half ...
