...dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy...little while May I behold in thee what I was once, 120 My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that...

..."Tintern Abbey," this lunar personification is, in effect, replaced by the human presence of Dorothy: "Oh! yet a little while / May I behold in thee what I was once" (119—20). In the later poem, the moon is never directly perceived but only imagined in the poet's...

...could otherwise no longer reach: ... in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy...May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister!24 Dorothy's journals reveal a habit of minute observation of light and cloud, the ever-changing...

...longings for extreme intimacy or incorporation, and even on Wordsworth's innocently incestuous "O! yet a little while / May I behold in thee what I was once." Wordsworth, to come back to him, is particularly sensitive to the narcissism of demand and response;...