What seest thou else / In the dark backward and abysm of time?
A fate dictated from outside, from theory or from circumstance, is a false fate.
The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.
The three sentences above may indicate the nature and the necessity of a New Romanticism as well as any. Their common theme is the look inward and downward. With all due respect to William Blake, who abjured the Classical notion that the Muses were the daughters of memory, our pasts—our first yearnings, first tastings of world and word—are for each of us, as for Wordsworth, the “hiding places of our power.” To which I add, with Emerson, “the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.” Our most private thoughts are our most “universal.” You awake and find them truth.
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