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In the Introduction to The Mind of a Poet, Richard Havens stated that his study was devoted toseeking the reasons for ‘Wordsworth’s preoccupation with the mysterious, the elusive, and the vague[which] cannot…be dismissed as mere romanticism.’ Havens was concerned to ‘bring together whathe says about God, nature, reason, fear, passion, solitude, the imagination, and the like’ (7) and to‘demonstrate the fundamental unity of his thought’. Meyer Abrams’ and Jonathan Wordsworth’sreadings of Wordsworth have followed a similar quest, though also identifying Wordsworth’s attitudeof mind as specifically ‘romantic’. Geoffrey Hartman’s phenomenological approach focussed on thequestion of ‘consciousness about consciousnesses’ and all these approaches suggest that Wordsworthwas something of a ‘victim’ of ‘unconscious’ mental experiences. I have argued here that there is a‘fundamental unity’ to Wordsworth’s thought, and that it can be discovered in his attempt to bind hisbeliefs together as a cohesive system, framed according to Stoic principles that had captured hisimagination while reading Cicero. I also suggest that Wordsworth’s reading in Cicero had led him todefine Thomson’s appreciation of Nature as Epicurean, and that he made a point of distinguishing hisown Stoic appreciation of nature from Thomson’s supernatural representations. In doing so he againprovides evidence of his dedication to a Stoic ‘one–life’ philosophy and rejects the transcendentalismimplied by the existence of supernatural entities.It is, of course, a commonplace of pastoral poetry for poets to seek inspiration in nature,reclining in a shady bower, under a shadowing tree, or in the entrance of a secluded cave. But in thenotebook entries of the Alfoxden period Wordsworth is paying particular attention to the movementsof his mind:To gazeOn that green hill and on those scattered treesAnd feel a pleasant consciousness of lifeIn the impression of that lovelinessUntil the sweet sensation called the mindInto itself, by image from withoutUnvisited, and all her reflex powersWrapped in a still dream of forgetfulness.I lived without the knowledge that I livedThen by those beauteous forms brought back againTo lose myself again as if my lifeDid ebb and flow with a strange mystery. (Alfoxden Notebook. PW V 341)In this passage Wordsworth describes the ‘light of sense’ going out as his gaze, on the forms of nature,leads to a state of trance in which his mind is absent from the world of the sense. But there are no‘flashes’ that show him ‘The invisible world’. 44 Instead he enjoys a blissful state of ‘no-mind’, andthen finds himself drawn back into consciousness, which is also described as ‘beauteous’ in its ownright. Consciousness ebbs and flows between these two states of mind, and Wordsworth’s mind is44 As noted above, a particular interpretation of the dynamics of this experience was central to the argument ofHartman’s influential study of Wordsworth. I credit Wordsworth with a far greater consciousness of what hewas doing in writing the famous passage in Book VI, as he acknowledges the ‘glory’ of his own mind in aguarded reference to claims that would have been seen as heretical by orthodox Christians.240