William Wordsworth

Even as a Dragon's Eye That Feels the Stress

Even as a Dragon's Eye That Feels the Stress - meaning Summary

Lonely Light Amidst Darkness

Wordsworth presents a solitary light — a taper burning on a dark, motionless mountainside — as a symbol of isolated consciousness. The image of a lamp glaring through damp and unreflected by the lake emphasizes exile and melancholy. This lone, joyless beam contrasts with the imagined domestic scene nearby, where people converse and sing unaware of the light’s sorrow, suggesting a gap between inner desolation and external conviviality.

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EVEN as a dragon's eye that feels the stress Of a bedimming sleep, or as a lamp Suddenly glaring through sepulchral damp, So burns yon Taper 'mid a black recess Of mountains, silent, dreary, motionless: The lake below reflects it not; the sky, Muffled in clouds, affords no company To mitigate and cheer its loneliness. Yet, round the body of that joyless Thing Which sends so far its melancholy light, Perhaps are seated in domestic ring A gay society with faces bright, Conversing, reading, laughing;--or they sing, While hearts and voices in the song unite.

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