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The opening stanzas describe the glory of the morning after a night of rain and wind. Birdsrejoice and swollen rivers add their ‘pleasant noise’ to the symphony of sounds produced by nature. A‘Hare is running races in her mirth’, and when the poet sees it as it ‘raced about with joy’, the imageproduces a joyful impression on his mind. He is ‘as happy as a boy’ and forgets the ‘ways of men sovain and melancholy’. But then ‘as sometimes chanceth’, such extreme feelings of joy can lead to anabrupt reversal and, ‘As high as we have mounted in delight / In our dejection do we sink as low’. Theexperience is not as debilitating or exaggerated as Coleridge’s dejection. Wordsworth observes hismind’s reversal, and can comment on it, acknowledging that he can still hear the bird, think of thehare and acknowledge himself still to be ‘happy as a Child of earth’. But he is simultaneously awarethat the moods of his mind can change without warning if they are excessive, and that he mustdevelop a more stable sense of self-consciousness in order not to be at the mercy of such uncontrolledemotions. He must learn to control his feelings.The poem develops into a meditation on the dangers for young poets who believe that theirlives might forever remain in ‘a summer mood’ dependent on a ‘genial faith, still rich in genial good’.To become useful members of society they need to develop their own resourcefulness – the genialpoet cannot expect others to ‘Build for him, sow for him, and at his call / Love him who for himselfwill take no heed at all’. Chatterton is named as an example of a poet whose life ends in madness anddeath due to his excessive ‘pride’, and Burns’ exaltations of ‘glory’ and ‘joy’ can also be read asdisplays of excessive emotion that (along with the toil of ‘following his plough’) led to his early death.The gladness (laetitia) of youth can end in ‘despondency and madness if the young poet does not learnto control the moods of the mind. And then the poem introduces its extraordinary, exemplary ‘figure’ -that of the leech gatherer: ‘Good God!’ Wordsworth later exclaimed, ‘such a figure in such a place, apious self-respecting, miserably infirm old man telling such a tale’ (EY 366). 43After setting the scene, Wordsworth then describes how he is pulled out of the dejected moodof his own mind by his encounter with this most impressive figure of admonishment who, although a‘mysterious’ character, exists solidly in ‘the physical world’. In comparing him with a ‘huge Stone’Wordsworth represents him in a very concrete manner, before going on to describe the circumstancesof his life and his struggle to gain ‘an honest maintenance’. Whether or not the meeting occurred by‘peculiar grace’, Wordsworth is cheered by the example of this man, whose stoic fortitude isrecognised as an inspiration that lifts Wordsworth’s mood of self-indulgent melancholy. Theresolution of his mood takes place in an encounter with a fellow human being whose resolve in theface of the great challenges he has faced in his life, illustrates the power of the human spirit.43 We are fortunate in having Wordsworth’s own gloss on the poem available to us in the letter he wrote to SaraHutchinson upbraiding her for her criticism of his description of the leech gatherer. In the letter he tells her:‘I describe myself as being exalted to the highest pitch of delight by the joyousness and beauty of Nature andthen depressed, even in the midst of these beautiful objects, to the lowest dejection or despair. A young poetin the midst of the happiness of nature is described as overwhelmed by the thought of the miserable reverseswhich have befallen the happiest of all men, viz Poets - I think of this till I am so deeply impressed by it ,that I consider the manner in which I was rescued from my dejection and despair, almost as the interpositionof Providence’ (EY 366 my italics ).65