Samuel Taylor Coleridge, states that the secondary or poetic imagination is the power which, "Reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities?óÔé¼?ªof?óÔé¼?ªidea with the image" Coleridge 482. In, Resolution and Independence, Wordsworth attempts to create an image of the poetic imagination in a decrepit old man. In so doing, Wordsworth attaches his own fears of mortality and aging, and thus oversteps Coleridge's idea of the imagination with the imagery of his own fears. Wordsworth's description of the old man's occupation gives the clearest image of the secondary imagination. "At length, himself unsettling, he the pond Stirred...
before him. This is Wordsworth main problem he can't separate his image from his fear of losing his divine gift. In the last line of the poem he calls to God for support, as if he wants God to carry him through his own divinity. Wordsworth 284. Wordsworth fails to express his ability to create as his salvation. Rather, he sees it as his divinity and therefore his curse. In this expression, Wordsworth convolutes his image of a man fighting against odds to maintain himself with that of an image cursed by its own divinity to fade into nothing.