"Wordsworth's hopes are faint and delicate, arising out of anxiety and doubt, and so tinged by them. His hopes seem so airy because they represent a merely intellectual or psychological shift. The material situation that necessitated them, the world they attempt to reengage, remains the same. Only one question is left: whether or not the speaker can readjust his attitude, so as to mollify himself. All the activity, and all possibility of movement, occurs within his own mind, which is at once the seat of his trouble and the only available source of remedy. What makes the struggle so fine, and so tricky, is that paradox. The speaker confronts an insoluble dilemma: how are adequate hopes to be found that shall coexist with, and even emerge from, the same material as the despairs that they are needed to counteract?"
{Laura Quinney, The Poetics of Disappointment: From Wordsworth to Ashbery, 1999}