• Wordsworth, “Excursion,” Book IV :⁠— “ ’Tis by comparison an easy task Earth to despise; but to converse with heaven⁠— This is not easy:⁠—to relinquish all We have, or hope, of happiness and joy, And stand in freedom loosened from this world, I deem not arduous; but must needs confess That ’tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul’s desires; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain. —Man is of dust: ethereal hopes are his, Which, when they should sustain themselves aloft, Want due consistence; like a pillar of smoke, That with majestic energy from earth Rises; but, having reached the thinner air, Melts, and dissolves, and is no longer seen.” And again in “Tintern Abbey”:⁠— “That blessed mood, In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened.” ↩
• Paradise, or the system of the heavens, which lives by the divine influences from above, and whose fruit and foliage are eternal. The fifth resting-place or division of this tree is the planet Mars. ↩