decay

Resolution and Independence is one of the most explicit representation of Wordsworth's philosophy as a poet. Here is his Wanderer at his most predatory state, and here, the core of the sublimity is laid bare.

Much has been written about the old man in story; some say the old man is wise, or that Wordsworth made him to "read nature as he does". jperez and kduglin noted that the weight placed upon the old man and his decrepit condition allows him to commune with nature, and that the shared weight of human existence bind human hearts together.

Although the leech-gatherer is human in name, Wordsworth's portrayal makes even that fact questionable. In his state of decay, the old man reminds me more of the ruined cottage and the broken cliff-face than of a human being. Wordsworth himself compares him to "a huge stone" that "seems a thing endued with sense", and called him "not all alive nor dead". The leech-gatherer is not only a person close to nature, but has become part of nature himself. Like the ruined cottage, he is well on his way to being decomposed and reabsorbed into nature. Indeed, several times in the story, the old man blends into nature and seeps below the narrator's senses - his voice was "like a stream" and he began to take on the shape of a dream. Again and again, the old man, like nature, "blends" in and out of the narrator's consciousness rather than commanding his attention as a solidly present human would.

In a way, since the leech-gatherer has decayed back into nature, the narrator, in interacting with him, interacts with nature itself. Thus in that one old man is contained the whole core of Wordsworth's philosophy: the awesome and awful power of nature meets the fire of humanity within the leech-gatherer; by interacting with the old man, the narrator both feels the ruthlessness of nature and probes the harmony between humans and the world. Therein lies the sublime for Wordsworth, and therein also lies the heart of why wandering must be at least in part predatory.