Bruce Dawe

Some poets are sublime and ridiculous at the same time. James Kenneth Stephen was only being felicitously expressive of what oft was thought of Wordsworth when he wrote:

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud’s thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep
And, Wordsworth, both are thine ...