Wordsworth's paradoxes about children have a similar origin. A child who at the age of six is a "mighty prophet, seer blest" is a highly improbable not to say impossible child. The "Nature" again of "Heart-Leap Well" which both feels and inspires pity is more remote from normal experience than the Nature "red in tooth and claw" of Tennyson.

—Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism