Applying this standard to the facts of this case, and considering first only the public record, I have no doubt that the leak at issue was a serious matter. Authorized “to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, [his] investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses,” see Letter from James B. Comey, Acting Attorney General, to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney, Northern District of Illinois (Feb. 6, 2004), the special counsel is attempting to discover the origins of press reports describing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative monitoring weapons of mass destruction. See majority op. at 966-67. These reports appeared after Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote in a New York Times op-ed column that his findings on an official mission to Niger in 2002 cast doubt on President Bush’s assertion in his January 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq “recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” See id. at 966.
An alleged covert agent, Plame evidently traveled overseas on clandestine missions beginning nearly two decades ago. See, e.g. , Richard Leiby & Dana Priest, The Spy Next Door; Valerie Wilson, Ideal Mom, Was Also the Ideal Cover , Wash. Post, Oct. 8, 2003, at A1. Her exposure, therefore, not only may have jeopardized any covert activities of her own, but also may have endangered friends and associates from whom she might have gathered information in the past. Acting to criminalize such exposure of secret agents, see 50 U.S.C. § 421, Congress has identified that behavior’s “intolerable” consequences: ” [t]he loss of vital human intelligence which our policymakers need, the great cost to the American taxpayer of replacing intelligence resources lost due to such disclosures, and the greatly increased risk of harm which continuing disclosures force intelligence officers and sources to endure.” S.Rep. No. 97-201, at 10-11 (1981), reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N. 145, 154-55.
The leak of Plame’s apparent employment, moreover, had marginal news value. To be sure, insofar as Plame’s CIA relationship may have helped explain her husband’s selection for the Niger trip, that information could bear on her husband’s credibility and thus contribute to public debate over the president’s “sixteen words.” Compared to the damage of undermining covert intelligence-gathering, however, this slight news value cannot, in my view, justify privileging the leaker’s identity.
Turning now to the classified material, I agree with the special counsel that ex parte review presents no due process difficulty. To be sure, grand jury secrecy is not absolute. As Rule 6(e) itself provides, courts may “authorize disclosure … of a grand jury matter … preliminarily to or in connection with a judicial proceeding.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e) (3) (E). In addition, as the reporters point out, even apart from United States v. Dinsio , 468 F.2d 1392 (9th Cir. 1972), now superceded by United States v. Mara , 410 U.S. 19 , 93 S. Ct. 774, 35 L. Ed. 2d 99 (1973), see majority op. at 974 (citing In re Braughton , 520 F.2d 765, 767 (9th Cir. 1975)), the Second and Ninth Circuits have held that due process requires an “uninhibited adversary hearing” in civil contempt proceedings, see United States v. Alter , 482 F.2d 1016, 1024 (9th Cir. 1973) (internal quotation marks omitted); In the Matter of Kitchen , 706 F.2d 1266, 1272 (2d Cir. 1983) (internal quotation marks omitted), including “the right to confront all the government’s evidence, both documentary and testimonial, unless particular and compelling reasons peculiar to the grand jury function require some curtailment of [that] right,” Kitchen , 706 F.2d at 1272.
In this circuit, however, we have approved the use of “ in camera, ex parte proceedings to determine the propriety of a grand jury subpoena or the existence of a crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege when such proceedings are necessary to ensure the secrecy of ongoing grand jury proceedings.” In re Sealed Case No. 98-3077 , 151 F.3d 1059, 1075 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (per curiam). Just as due process poses no barrier to forcing an attorney to testify based on the court’s examination of evidence, unseen by the lawyer, that the client sought legal advice in pursuit of a crime, neither does it preclude compulsion of a reporter’s testimony based on a comparable review of evidence, likewise unseen by the reporter, that a source engaged in a harmful leak. In fact, appellants’ protests notwithstanding, ex parte review protects their interests, as it allows the government to present — and the court to demand — a far more extensive showing than would otherwise be possible given the need for grand jury secrecy discussed in the court’s opinion, see majority op. at 973-74.
That said, without benefit of the adversarial process, we must take care to ensure that the special counsel has met his burden of demonstrating that the information is both critical and unobtainable from any other source. Having carefully scrutinized his voluminous classified filings, I believe that he has.
With respect to Miller, * * * * * [REDACTED] * * * * *
Regarding Cooper, * * * * * [REDACTED] * * * * *
In sum, based on an exhaustive investigation, the special counsel has established the need for Miller’s and Cooper’s testimony. Thus, considering the gravity of the suspected crime and the low value of the leaked information, no privilege bars the subpoenas.
One last point. In concluding that no privilege applies in this case, I have assigned no importance to the fact that neither Cooper nor Miller, perhaps recognizing the irresponsible (and quite possibly illegal) nature of the leaks at issue, revealed Plame’s employment, though Cooper wrote about it after Novak’s column appeared. Contrary to the reporters’ view, this apparent self-restraint spares Miller and Cooper no obligation to testify. Narrowly drawn limitations on the public’s right to evidence, testimonial privileges apply “only where necessary to achieve [their] purpose,” Fisher v. United States , 425 U.S. 391 , 403, 96 S. Ct. 1569, 48 L. Ed. 2d 39 (1976), and in this case the privilege’s purpose is to promote dissemination of useful information. It thus makes no difference how these reporters responded to the information they received, any more than it matters whether an attorney drops a client who seeks criminal advice (communication subject to the crime-fraud exception) or a psychotherapist seeks to dissuade homicidal plans revealed during counseling (information Jaffee suggested would not be privileged, see 518 U.S. at 18 n. 19, 116 S. Ct. 1923). In all such cases, because the communication is unworthy of protection, recipients’ reactions are irrelevant to whether their testimony may be compelled in an investigation of the source.
Indeed, Cooper’s own Time. com article illustrates this point. True, his story revealed a suspicious confluence of leaks, contributing to the outcry that led to this investigation. Yet the article had that effect precisely because the leaked information — Plame’s covert status — lacked significant news value. In essence, seeking protection for sources whose nefariousness he himself exposed, Cooper asks us to protect criminal leaks so that he can write about the crime. The greater public interest lies in preventing the leak to begin with. Had Cooper based his report on leaks about the leaks — say, from a whistleblower who revealed the plot against Wilson — the situation would be different. Because in that case the source would not have revealed the name of a covert agent, but instead revealed the fact that others had done so, the balance of news value and harm would shift in favor of protecting the whistleblower. Yet it appears Cooper relied on the Plame leaks themselves, drawing the inference of sinister motive on his own. Accordingly, his story itself makes the case for punishing the leakers. While requiring Cooper to testify may discourage future leaks, discouraging leaks of this kind is precisely what the public interest requires.
I conclude, as I began, with the tensions at work in this case. Here, two reporters and a news magazine, informants to the public, seek to keep a grand jury uninformed. Representing two equally fundamental principles — rule of law and free speech — the special counsel and the reporters both aim to facilitate fully informed and accurate decision-making by those they serve: the grand jury and the electorate. To this court falls the task of balancing the two sides’ concerns.
As James Madison explained, ” [A] people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” See In re Lindsey , 148 F.3d 1100, 1109 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (quoting Letter from James Madison to W.T. Barry (Aug. 4, 1822), in 9 The Writings of James Madison 103 (Gaillard Hunt ed., 1910)). Consistent with that maxim, ” [a] free press is indispensable to the workings of our democratic society,” Associated Press v. United States , 326 U.S. 1 , 28, 65 S. Ct. 1416, 89 L. Ed. 2013 (1945) (Frankfurter, J., concurring), and because confidential sources are essential to the workings of the press — a practical reality that virtually all states and the federal government now acknowledge — I believe that “reason and experience” compel recognition of a privilege for reporters’ sources. That said, because ” [l]iberty can only be exercised in a system of law which safeguards order,” Cox v. Louisiana , 379 U.S. 559 , 574, 85 S. Ct. 476, 13 L. Ed. 2d 487 (1965), the privilege must give way to imperatives of law enforcement in exceptional cases.
Were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security or more vital to public debate, or had the special counsel failed to demonstrate the grand jury’s need for the reporters’ evidence, I might have supported the motion to quash. Because identifying appellants’ sources instead appears essential to remedying a serious breach of public trust, I join in affirming the district court’s orders compelling their testimony.
Judge Tatel distinguishes these cases by concluding that their analysis cannot be used to avoid the “dispositive” issue in this case. Tatel Op. at 990. There are, however, only three ways of answering the question whether these reporters’ confidential source information is protected by a federal common-law privilege: (1) there is no privilege, (2) there is an absolute privilege and (3) there is a qualified privilege. None of us, including the reporters in their brief, would choose door number two, see Tatel Op. at 996; Appellants’ Br. at 42, and only one of us heads for door number one, see Sentelle Op. at 976-77. That leaves door number three. But in choosing this route, the critical question is not definitional, as Judge Tatel sees it, see Tatel Op. at 990, but quantitative: Is the Special Counsel’s evidentiary proffer sufficient to overcome any qualified privilege that may exist? Because we agree that the answer is “yes,” there is no need for us to go any further. Granted, the circumstances of the cited cases differ but they use the same analysis. Moreover, its application here is consistent with the tried and true principle that ” [w]here … no harm results from our failing to answer a question, … the `doctrine of judicial restraint provides a fully adequate justification for deciding [the] case on the best and narrowest ground available.'” Michel , 206 F.3d at 260 n. 4 (quoting Air Courier Conference of Am. , 498 U.S. at 531, 111 S. Ct. 913 (Stevens, J. concurring in judgment)); see supra note 2.
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7.5: The Normal Distribution
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While the binomial distribution is conceptually the simplest distribution to understand, it’s not the most important one. That particular honour goes to the normal distribution , which is also referred to as “the bell curve” or a “Gaussian distribution”. A normal distribution is described using two parameters, the mean of the distribution μ and the standard deviation of the distribution σ. The notation that we sometimes use to say that a variable X is normally distributed is as follows:
X∼Normal(μ,σ)
Of course, that’s just notation. It doesn’t tell us anything interesting about the normal distribution itself. As was the case with the binomial distribution, I have included the formula for the normal distribution in this book, because I think it’s important enough that everyone who learns statistics should at least look at it, but since this is an introductory text I don’t want to focus on it, so I’ve tucked it away in Table 9.2. Similarly, the R functions for the normal distribution are
dnorm()
,
pnorm()
,
qnorm()
and
rnorm()
. However, they behave in pretty much exactly the same way as the corresponding functions for the binomial distribution, so there’s not a lot that you need to know. The only thing that I should point out is that the argument names for the parameters are
mean
and
sd
. In pretty much every other respect, there’s nothing else to add.
Instead of focusing on the maths, let’s try to get a sense for what it means for a variable to be normally distributed. To that end, have a look at Figure 9.6, which plots a normal distribution with mean μ=0 and standard deviation σ=1. You can see where the name “bell curve” comes from: it looks a bit like a bell. Notice that, unlike the plots that I drew to illustrate the binomial distribution, the picture of the normal distribution in Figure 9.6 shows a smooth curve instead of “histogram-like” bars. This isn’t an arbitrary choice: the normal distribution is continuous, whereas the binomial is discrete. For instance, in the die rolling example from the last section, it was possible to get 3 skulls or 4 skulls, but impossible to get 3.9 skulls. The figures that I drew in the previous section reflected this fact: in Figure 9.3, for instance, there’s a bar located at X=3 and another one at X=4, but there’s nothing in between. Continuous quantities don’t have this constraint. For instance, suppose we’re talking about the weather. The temperature on a pleasant Spring day could be 23 degrees, 24 degrees, 23.9 degrees, or anything in between since temperature is a continuous variable, and so a normal distribution might be quite appropriate for describing Spring temperatures. 145
With this in mind, let’s see if we can’t get an intuition for how the normal distribution works. Firstly, let’s have a look at what happens when we play around with the parameters of the distribution. To that end, Figure 9.7 plots normal distributions that have different means, but have the same standard deviation. As you might expect, all of these distributions have the same “width”. The only difference between them is that they’ve been shifted to the left or to the right. In every other respect they’re identical. In contrast, if we increase the standard deviation while keeping the mean constant, the peak of the distribution stays in the same place, but the distribution gets wider, as you can see in Figure 9.8. Notice, though, that when we widen the distribution, the height of the peak shrinks. This has to happen: in the same way that the heights of the bars that we used to draw a discrete binomial distribution have to sum to 1, the total area under the curve for the normal distribution must equal 1. Before moving on, I want to point out one important characteristic of the normal distribution. Irrespective of what the actual mean and standard deviation are, 68.3% of the area falls within 1 standard deviation of the mean. Similarly, 95.4% of the distribution falls within 2 standard deviations of the mean, and 99.7% of the distribution is within 3 standard deviations. This idea is illustrated in Figure ?? .
Probability density
There’s something I’ve been trying to hide throughout my discussion of the normal distribution, something that some introductory textbooks omit completely. They might be right to do so: this “thing” that I’m hiding is weird and counterintuitive even by the admittedly distorted standards that apply in statistics. Fortunately, it’s not something that you need to understand at a deep level in order to do basic statistics: rather, it’s something that starts to become important later on when you move beyond the basics. So, if it doesn’t make complete sense, don’t worry: try to make sure that you follow the gist of it.
Throughout my discussion of the normal distribution, there’s been one or two things that don’t quite make sense. Perhaps you noticed that the y-axis in these figures is labelled “Probability Density” rather than density. Maybe you noticed that I used p(X) instead of P(X) when giving the formula for the normal distribution. Maybe you’re wondering why R uses the “d” prefix for functions like
dnorm()
. And maybe, just maybe, you’ve been playing around with the
dnorm()
function, and you accidentally typed in a command like this:
dnorm( x = 1, mean = 1, sd = 0.1 )
## [1] 3.989423
And if you’ve done the last part, you’re probably very confused. I’ve asked R to calculate the probability that
x = 1
, for a normally distributed variable with
mean = 1
and standard deviation
sd = 0.1
; and it tells me that the probability is 3.99. But, as we discussed earlier, probabilities
can’t
be larger than 1. So either I’ve made a mistake, or that’s not a probability.
As it turns out, the second answer is correct. What we’ve calculated here isn’t actually a probability: it’s something else. To understand what that something is, you have to spend a little time thinking about what it really means to say that X is a continuous variable. Let’s say we’re talking about the temperature outside. The thermometer tells me it’s 23 degrees, but I know that’s not really true. It’s not exactly 23 degrees. Maybe it’s 23.1 degrees, I think to myself. But I know that that’s not really true either, because it might actually be 23.09 degrees. But, I know that… well, you get the idea. The tricky thing with genuinely continuous quantities is that you never really know exactly what they are.
Now think about what this implies when we talk about probabilities. Suppose that tomorrow’s maximum temperature is sampled from a normal distribution with mean 23 and standard deviation 1. What’s the probability that the temperature will be exactly 23 degrees? The answer is “zero”, or possibly, “a number so close to zero that it might as well be zero”. Why is this? It’s like trying to throw a dart at an infinitely small dart board: no matter how good your aim, you’ll never hit it. In real life you’ll never get a value of exactly 23. It’ll always be something like 23.1 or 22.99998 or something. In other words, it’s completely meaningless to talk about the probability that the temperature is exactly 23 degrees.  Because in everyday language, “23 degrees” usually means something like “somewhere between 22.5 and 23.5 degrees”. And while it doesn’t feel very meaningful to ask about the probability that the temperature is exactly 23 degrees, it does seem sensible to ask about the probability that the temperature lies between 22.5 and 23.5, or between 20 and 30, or any other range of temperatures.
The point of this discussion is to make clear that, when we’re talking about continuous distributions, it’s not meaningful to talk about the probability of a specific value. However, what we can talk about is the probability that the value lies within a particular range of values. To find out the probability associated with a particular range, what you need to do is calculate the “area under the curve”. We’ve seen this concept already: in Figures 9.9 and (fig:sdnorm1b), the shaded areas shown depict genuine probabilities (e.g., in Figure 9.9 it shows the probability of observing a value that falls within 1 standard deviation of the mean).
Okay, so that explains part of the story. I’ve explained a little bit about how continuous probability distributions should be interpreted (i.e., area under the curve is the key thing), but I haven’t actually explained what the
dnorm()
function actually calculates. Equivalently, what does the formula for p(x) that I described earlier actually mean? Obviously, p(x) doesn’t describe a probability, but what is it? The name for this quantity p(x) is a
probability density
, and in terms of the plots we’ve been drawing, it corresponds to the
height
of the curve. The densities themselves aren’t meaningful in and of themselves: but they’re “rigged” to ensure that the
area
under the curve is always interpretable as genuine probabilities. To be honest, that’s about as much as you really need to know for now.
146


1.3: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Although brought up in a fairly conventional Anglican family—Coleridge’s father was vicar of his parish and master of a grammar school—and expected to enter the clergy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge explored radical religious and social thought from his days at Jesus College, University of Cambridge onward. He sympathized with Unitarian beliefs and utopian democratic societies. He and his friend Robert Southey (1774-1843) conceived of a government based on pantisocracy, that is, equal government by all, and planned to set up a commune on the shores of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. To forward this goal, Southey married Edith Fricker (1774-1837), and Coleridge married her sister Sara Fricker (1802-1852). Although he never realized his pantisocratic society, Coleridge’s marriage to Sara endured, unhappily.
Another friendship that crucially shaped Coleridge’s career was that with Wordsworth, whom he met in 1795. They collaborated on Lyrical Ballads , to which Coleridge contributed “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Coleridge traveled with Wordsworth to Germany where Coleridge learned the German language and read and translated important philosophical texts by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Friedrich von Schelling (1775-1854), Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781). Their thought informed his subsequent prose and poetic works, and Coleridge is known for introducing the new German critical philosophy to England.
His most esteemed prose work is Biographia Literaria (1817), written as counterpoint to Wordsworth’s Preface to The Lyrical Ballads . In it, he famously defined imagination as a unifying power, as the means by which finite individuals commune with the infinite. In Biographia Literaria , Coleridge also explained the approach he and Wordsworth took to their respective contributions. He and Wordsworth decided on two types of poems for Lyrical Ballads, both of which would effectively reveal the imagination in action.
Wordsworth would take natural (or real) incidents and situations and make them seem supernatural (or unreal), while Coleridge would take supernatural incidents and situations and make them seem natural. Wordsworth desired a reciprocal relationship with nature. Coleridge, on the other hand, desired what might be described as circularity. From Kant, Coleridge learned that objectivity is subjectivity, that is, based on relativity. Kant led to Sartre’s Existentialism. Coleridge feared some sense of separation due to his own, possibly extreme, subjectivity/relativity, self-absorption, or what came to be termed solipsism. In most of his poetry, he seeks to recover unity, to unify what has been separated. For him, a break with unity leads to death-in-life.
His poems express radical views on the mutuality of humans and nature, of divinity, of imagination, and of poetry itself. In “The Eolian Harp,” he makes what conservative contemporaries, including Coleridge’s wife, would consider an irreligious claim that all animated beings in nature and the world have the ability to give voice to God. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores a psychological landscape of separation and solitude, sin and redemption in natural—rather than institutional—terms. In “Kubla Khan” the poetic vision synthesizes opposites of the sunny and the dark, the inner and the outer life (caves and dome) into a powerful, paradisiacal harmony.
This latter poem is famous, or infamous, for having apparently been written while Coleridge was under the influence of opium. Opium was then commonly used as a pain-killer; it was prescribed to Coleridge to relieve his chronic back pain. He became addicted to the drug, an addiction from which he was never free, though later in his life it was controlled with the help of Dr. James Gilman. It’s impossible to say to what extent, if any, Coleridge’s addiction affected his productivity. Coleridge claims that “Kubla Khan” is an unfinished poem. Yet, it is remarkably complete, with its last stanza referring back to the first. Coleridge may have had a self-protective desire for his radical views not to be taken too seriously. His views are indeed radical; and he takes his readers to the threshold of a new world that seems to be meant for others, but not himself.
1.9.1: “The Eolian Harp”
Composed at Clevedon, Somersetshire
My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our cot, our cot o’ergrown
With white-flower’d Jasmin, and the broad-leav’d Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Snatch’d from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed!
The stilly murmur of the distant
Sea Tells us of silence.
And that simplest Lute,
Plac’d length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caressed,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where—
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
And thus, my love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;
Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject lute!
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O belovéd woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily dispraised
These shapings of the unregenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healéd me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this cot, and thee, heart-honour’d Maid!
1.9.2: “Frost at Midnight”
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud–and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
‘Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger ’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou , my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
1.9.3: “Dejection: An Ode”
Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
“Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence”
I
Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o’erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming-on of rain and squally blast.
And oh ! that even now the gust were swelling,
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
II
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear—
O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green :
And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel how beautiful they are!
III
My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
IV
O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live:
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth—
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
V
O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne’er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud—
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.
VI
There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man—
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.
VII
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav’st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn( 1 ), or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches’ home,
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak’st Devils’ yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!
Thou mighty Poet, e’en to frenzy bold!
What tell’st thou now about?
‘Tis of the rushing of a host in rout,
With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds—
At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!
But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,
With groans, and tremulous shudderings—all is over—
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!
A tale of less affright,
And tempered with delight,
As Otway’s self had framed the tender lay,
‘Tis of a little child
Upon a lonesome wild,
Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:
And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.
VIII
‘Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep:
Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!
Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
With light heart may she rise,
Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,
Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;
To her may all things live, from the pole to pole,
Their life the eddying of her living soul!
O simple spirit, guided from above,
Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,
Thus may’st thou ever, evermore rejoice.
1.9.4: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Part The First
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
“The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand, “
There was a ship,” quoth he.
“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot chuse but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased south along.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.
It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners’ hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?”—
With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.
Part The Second
The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners’ hollo!
And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work ‘em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay
That made the breeze to blow!
Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
‘Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
‘Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.
And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
Part The Third
There passed a weary time.
Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist:
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
The western wave was all a-flame
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven’s Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered,
With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres!
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman’s mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
“The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!”
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea.
Off shot the spectre-bark.
We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip—
Till clombe above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
The souls did from their bodies fly,—
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my CROSS-BOW!
Part The Fourth
“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.
“I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.”—
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
The many men, so beautiful!

I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray:
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
my heart as dry as dust.

The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Part The Fifth
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light—almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.
And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain poured down from one black cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up blew;
The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do:
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools—
We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother’s son,
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me.
“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!”
Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!
‘Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawned—they dropped their arms,
And clustered round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies passed.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!
And now ‘twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel’s song,
That makes the Heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed her to the ocean:
But in a minute she ‘gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion—
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life returned,
I heard and in my soul discerned
Two VOICES in the air.
“Is it he?” quoth one, “Is this the man?

“The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow.”
The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, “The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.”
Part The Sixth
First Voice.
But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing—
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the OCEAN doing?
Second Voice.
Still as a slave before his lord,
The OCEAN hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast—
If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.
First Voice.
But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?
Second Voice.
The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner’s trance is abated.
I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
‘Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green.
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen—
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring—
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—
On me alone it blew.
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree!
We drifted o’er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray—
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
And the bay was white with silent light,
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deck—
Oh, Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
This seraph band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light:
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart—
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
But soon I heard the dash of oars;
I heard the Pilot’s cheer;
My head was turned perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.
The Pilot, and the Pilot’s boy,
I heard them coming fast:
Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third—I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good!
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away
The Albatross’s blood.
Part The Seventh
This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn and noon and eve—
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,
“Why this is strange, I trow!
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?”
“Strange, by my faith!” the Hermit said—
“And they answered not our cheer!
The planks looked warped! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
“Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along;
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf’s young.”
“Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look—
(The Pilot made reply)
I am a-feared”—”Push on, push on!”
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.
Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:
It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.
Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drowned
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot’s boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.
I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
“Ha! ha!” quoth he, “full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.”
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
“O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!”
The Hermit crossed his brow.
“Say quick,” quoth he, “I bid thee say—
What manner of man art thou?”
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely ‘twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
‘Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!—
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
1.9.5: Reading and Review Questions
- To what degree, if any, is Coleridge’s poetry artless? What significance, if any, does his poetry give to artlessness, and why?
- How, if at all, do Christian practices of sin, recognition of sin, confession, penance, and redemption undergird Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and why? What does the Ancient Mariner need to recognize as his crime, or sin, and why?
- How does Coleridge’s state of imagination in Dejection: An Ode compare to that of Wordsworth’s in Intimations of Immortality? What concerns both men about the imagination? What power(s) of the imagination, if any, do they recover by the end of their respective poems, and how?
- What, if anything, is radical or revolutionary about Coleridge’s vision of unity among man, nature, and God? Why, for example, does he warn readers at the end of “Kubla Khan” to beware the poet?


3.3.8: Salman Rushdie (1947- )
The Perforated Sheet Indian Contemporary Literature Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai). His education was primarily British. He attended the Rugby School and studied at King's college, Cambridge. While his first novel, Grimus (1975), was not well received, his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981) was critically acclaimed. After its publication he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983. Rushdie went on to publish other critically praised novels, such as Shame (1983). However, he is probably best known for his work, Satanic Verses (1988), and the backlash it garnered from Muslim groups in Pakistan, Egypt, and Iran for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran. Some groups went as far as calling for Rushdie's death. Consequently, Rushdie went into hiding with his family. In 1998, the Iranian government renounced its death threats, and Rushdie and his family came out of hiding the following year. "The Perforated Sheet" is from his second novel, Midnight's Children . The novel has elements of magical realism, postcolonial fiction, and postmodernism. Critics often compare it to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude . Rushdie pairs the magical elements of the text with a perspective that is distinctly Indian, weaving traditional Indian elements through the work. Consider while reading:
- Do you see any of Rushdie's characters as allegorical? Why or why not?
- Are there any elements of magical realism in Rushdie's work?
- What biographical elements are present in Rushdie's work?
- How would you categorize Rushdie's writing?
Written by Laura Ng


2.3: Therapeutic Communication
Therapeutic communication has roots going back to Florence Nightingale, who insisted on the importance of building trusting relationships with patients. She taught that therapeutic healing resulted from nurses’ presence with patients. [1] Since then, several professional nursing associations have highlighted therapeutic communication as one of the most vital elements in nursing. Therapeutic communication is a type of professional communication defined as the purposeful, interpersonal, information-transmitting process that leads to client understanding and participation. [2] Read an example of a nursing student using therapeutic communication in the following box.
Example of Nurse Using Therapeutic Listening
Ms. Z. is a nursing student (as simulated in Figure 2.1) [3] who enjoys interacting with patients. When she goes to patients’ rooms, she greets them and introduces herself and her role in a calm tone. She kindly asks patients about their problems and notices their reactions. She provides information and answers their questions. Patients perceive that she wants to help them. She treats patients professionally by respecting boundaries and listening to them in a nonjudgmental manner. She addresses communication barriers and respects patients’ cultural beliefs. She notices patients’ health literacy and ensures they understand her messages and patient education. As a result, patients trust her and feel as if she cares about them, so they feel comfortable sharing their health care needs with her. [4]
Therapeutic communication is different from social interaction. Social interaction does not have a goal or purpose and includes casual sharing of information, whereas therapeutic communication has a goal or purpose for the conversation. An example of a nursing goal before using therapeutic communication is, “The client will share feelings or concerns about their treatment plan by the end of the conversation.”
Therapeutic communication includes active listening, professional touch, and a variety of therapeutic communication techniques.
Active Listening
Listening is an important part of communication. There are three main types of listening, including competitive, passive, and active listening. Competitive listening occurs when we are mostly focused on sharing our own point of view instead of listening to someone else. Passive listening occurs when we are not interested in listening to the other person, and we assume we understand what the person is communicating correctly without verifying their message. During active listening , we communicate both verbally and nonverbally that we are interested in what the other person is saying while also actively verifying our understanding with them. For example, an active listening technique is to restate what the person said and then verify our understanding is correct. This feedback process is the major difference between passive listening and active listening. [5]
Nonverbal communication is an important component of active listening. SOLER is a mnemonic for establishing good nonverbal communication with clients. SOLER stands for the following [6] :
- S: S itting and squarely facing the client
- O: Using o pen posture (i.e., avoid crossing arms)
- L: L eaning towards the client to indicate interest in listening
- E: Maintaining good e ye contact
- R: Maintaining a r elaxed posture
Touch
Professional touch is a powerful way to communicate caring and empathy if done respectfully while also being aware of the client’s preferences, cultural beliefs, and personal boundaries. Nurses use professional touch when assessing, expressing concern, or comforting patients. For example, simply holding a patient’s hand during a painful procedure can effectively provide comfort.
For individuals with a history of trauma, touch can be negatively perceived, so it is important to ask permission before touching. Inform the person before engaging in medical procedures requiring touch such as, “I need to hold down your arm so I can draw blood.”
Nurses should avoid using touch with individuals who are becoming agitated or experiencing a manic or psychotic episode because it can cause escalation. It is also helpful to maintain a larger interpersonal distance when interacting with an individual who is experiencing paranoia or psychosis.
 See Table 2.3a for definitions of various therapeutic communication techniques discussed in the American Nurse , the official journal of the American Nurses Association.
Table 2.3a Therapeutic Communication Techniques [7]
| Therapeutic Techniques | Definition | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Acceptance | Acceptance acknowledges a client’s emotions or message and affirms they have been heard. Acceptance isn’t necessarily the same thing as agreement; it can be enough to simply make eye contact and say, “I hear what you are saying.” Clients who feel their nurses are listening to them and taking them seriously are more likely to be receptive to care. |
Client: “I hate taking all this medicine. It makes me feel numb.”
Nurse (making eye contact): “Yes, I understand.” |
| Clarification | Clarification asks the client to further define what they are communicating. Similar to active listening, asking for clarification when a client says something confusing or ambiguous is important. It helps nurses ensure they understand what is actually being said and can help clients process their ideas more thoroughly. |
Client: “I feel useless to everyone and everything.”
Nurse: “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by useless. Can you give an example of a time you felt useless?” |
| Focusing | Focusing on a specific statement made by a client that seems particularly important prompts them to discuss it further. Clients don’t always have an objective perspective on their situation or past experiences, but as impartial observers, nurses can more easily pick out important topics on which to focus. |
Client: “I grew up with five brothers and sisters. We didn’t have much money, so my mom was always working and never home. We had to fend for ourselves, and there was never any food in the house.”
Nurse: “It sounds as if you experienced some stressful conditions growing up.” |
| Exploring | Exploring gathers more information about what the client is communicating. |
Client: “I had to lie when I found out a dark secret about my sister.”
Nurse: “If you feel comfortable doing so, tell me more about the situation and your sister’s dark secret.” |
| Giving Recognition | Giving recognition acknowledges and validates the client’s positive health behaviors. Recognition acknowledges a patient’s behavior and highlights it without giving an overt compliment. A compliment can sometimes be taken as condescending, especially when it concerns a routine task like making the bed. | Nurse: “I noticed you took all of your medications.” |
| Open-Ended Questions/ Offering General Leads | Using open questions or offering general leads provides keywords to “open” the discussion while also seeking more information. Therapeutic communication is most effective when clients direct the flow of conversation and decide what to talk about. Giving patients a broad opening such as “What’s on your mind today?” or “What would you like to talk about?” is a good way to encourage clients to discuss what’s on their mind. |
Client: “I’m unsure of what to do next.”
Nurse: “Tell me more about your concerns.” |
| Paraphrasing | Paraphrasing rephrases the client’s words and key ideas to clarify their message and encourage additional communication. |
Client: “I’ve been way too busy today.”
Nurse: “Participating in the support groups today has kept you busy.” |
| Presenting Reality | Presenting reality restructures the client’s distorted thoughts with valid information. |
Client: “I can’t go in that room; there are spiders on the walls.”
Nurse: “I see no evidence of spiders on the walls.” |
| Restating | Restating uses different word choices for the same content stated by the client to encourage elaboration. |
Client: “The nurses hate me here.”
Nurse: “You feel as though the nurses dislike you?” |
| Reflecting | Reflecting asks clients what they think they should do, encourages them to be accountable for their own actions, and helps them come up with solutions. |
Client: “Do you think I should do this new treatment or not?”
Nurse: “What do you think the pros and cons are for the new treatment plan?” |
| Providing Silence | Providing silence allows quiet time for self-reflection by the client. | The nurse does not verbally respond after a client makes a statement, although they may nod or use other nonverbal communication to demonstrate active listening and validation of the client’s message. |
| Making Observations | Observations about the appearance, demeanor, or behavior of patients can help draw attention to areas that might pose a problem for them. |
Nurse: “You look tired today.”
Client: “I haven’t been getting much sleep lately because of so many racing thoughts in my head at night.” |
| Offering Self/ Providing Presence | Offering self provides support by being present. Inpatient care can be lonely and stressful at times. When nurses provide presence and spend time with their clients, it shows clients they value them and are willing to give them time and attention. | Offering to simply sit with clients for a few minutes is a powerful way to create a caring connection. |
| Encouraging Descriptions of Perceptions | Asking about perceptions in an encouraging, nonjudgmental way is important for clients experiencing sensory issues or hallucinations. It gives clients a prompt to explain what they’re perceiving without casting their perceptions in a negative light. It is also important to establish safety by ensuring the hallucinations are not encouraging the client to harm themselves or others. |
The client looks distracted and frightened as if they see or hear something.
Nurse: “It looks as though you might be hearing something. What do you hear now?” or “It looks as if you might be seeing something. What does it look like to you?” |
| Encouraging Comparisons | Encouraging comparisons helps clients reflect on previous situations in which they have coped effectively. In this manner, nurses can help clients discover solutions to their problems. |
Nurse: “It must have been difficult when you went through a divorce. How did you cope with that?”
Client: “I walked my dog outside a lot.” Nurse: “It sounds as though walking your dog outside helps you cope with stress and feel better?” |
| Offering Hope | Offering hope encourages a client to persevere and be resilient. | Nurse: “I remember you shared with me how well you coped with difficult situations in the past.” |
| Offering Humor | Humor can lighten the mood and contribute to feelings of togetherness, closeness, and friendliness. However, it is vital for the nurse to tailor humor to the client’s sense of humor. |
Nurse: “Knock, knock.”
Client: “Who’s there?” Nurse: “Orange.” Client: “Orange who?” Nurse: “Orange you glad to see me?” (Laughs with the client) |
| Confronting | Confronting presents reality or challenges a client’s assumptions. Nurses should only apply this technique during the working phase after they have established trust. Confrontation, when used correctly, can help clients break destructive routines or understand the state of their current situation. |
Client: “I haven’t drunk much this year.”
Nurse: “Yesterday you told me that every weekend you go out and drink so much you don’t know where you are when you wake up.” |
| Summarizing | Summarizing demonstrates active listening to clients and allows the nurse to verify information. Ending a discussion with a phrase such as “Does that sound correct?” gives clients explicit permission to make corrections if they’re necessary. |
Client: “I don’t like to take my medications because they make me tired, and I gain a lot of weight.”
Nurse: “You haven’t been taking your medications this month because of the side effects of fatigue and weight gain. Is that correct?” |
Nontherapeutic Responses
Nurses must be aware of potential barriers to communication and avoid nontherapeutic responses. Nonverbal communication such as looking at one’s watch, crossing arms across one’s chest, or not actively listening may be perceived as barriers to communication. Nontherapeutic verbal responses often block the client’s communication of feelings or ideas. See Table 2.3b for a description of nontherapeutic responses to avoid.
Table 2.3b Nontherapeutic Responses [8] , [9]
| Nontherapeutic Response | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Asking Personal Questions | Asking personal questions that are not relevant to the situation is not professional or appropriate. Don’t ask questions just to satisfy your curiosity. |
Nontherapeutic: “Why have you and Mary never gotten married?”
Therapeutic: “How would you describe your relationship with Mary?” |
| Giving Personal Opinions | Giving personal opinions takes away the decision-making from the client. Effective problem-solving must be accomplished by the client and not provided by the nurse. |
Nontherapeutic: “If I were you, I would put your father in a nursing home to reduce your stress.”
Therapeutic: “Let’s explore options for your father’s care.” |
| Changing the Subject | Changing the subject when someone is trying to communicate with you demonstrates lack of empathy and blocks further communication. It communicates that you don’t care about what they are sharing. |
Nontherapeutic: “Let’s not talk about your insurance problems; it’s time for your walk now.”
Therapeutic: “After your walk, let’s look into what is going on with your insurance company.” |
| Stating Generalizations and Stereotypes | Generalizations and stereotypes can threaten nurse-patient relationships. |
Nontherapeutic: “Older adults are always confused.”
Therapeutic: “Tell me more about your concerns about your father’s confusion.” |
| Providing False Reassurances | When a client is seriously ill or distressed, the nurse may be tempted to offer false hope with statements that everything will be alright. These comments can discourage further expressions of a client’s feelings. |
Nontherapeutic: “You’ll be fine; don’t worry.”
Therapeutic: “It must be difficult not to know what will happen next. What can I do to help?” |
| Showing Sympathy | Sympathy focuses on the nurse’s feelings rather than the client. It demonstrates pity rather than trying to help the client cope with the situation. |
Nontherapeutic: “I’m so sorry about your amputation; I can’t imagine losing my leg due to a car crash.”
Therapeutic: “The loss of your leg is a major change. How do you think this will affect your life?” |
| Asking “Why” Questions | A nurse may be tempted to ask the client to explain “why” they believe, feel, or act in a certain way. However, clients and family members can interpret “why” questions as accusations and become defensive. It is best to rephrase a question to avoid using the word “why.” |
Nontherapeutic: “Why are you so upset?”
Therapeutic: “You seem upset. Tell me more about that.” |
| Approving or Disapproving | Nurses should not impose their own attitudes, values, beliefs, and moral standards on others while in the professional nursing role. Judgmental messages contain terms such as “should,” “shouldn’t,” “ought to,” “good,” “bad,” “right,” or “wrong.” Agreeing or disagreeing sends the subtle message that a nurse has the right to make value judgments about the client’s decisions. Approving implies that the behavior being praised is the only acceptable one, and disapproving implies that the client must meet the nurse’s expectations or standards. Instead, the nurse should assist the client to explore their own values, beliefs, goals, and decisions. |
Nontherapeutic: “You shouldn’t consider elective surgery; there are too many risks involved.”
Therapeutic: “You are considering having elective surgery. Tell me more about the pros and cons of surgery.” |
| Giving Defensive Responses | When clients or family members express criticism, nurses should listen to the message. Listening does not imply agreement. To discover reasons for the client’s anger or dissatisfaction, the nurse should listen without criticizing, avoid being defensive or accusatory, and attempt to defuse anger. |
Client: “Everyone is lying to me!”
Nontherapeutic: “No one here would intentionally lie to you.” Therapeutic: “You believe people have been dishonest with you. Tell me more about what happened.” (After obtaining additional information, the nurse may elect to follow the chain of command at the agency and report the client’s concerns for follow-up.) |
| Providing Passive or Aggressive Responses | Passive responses serve to avoid conflict or sidestep issues, whereas aggressive responses provoke confrontation. Nurses should use assertive communication. |
Nontherapeutic: “It’s your fault you are feeling ill because you didn’t take your medicine.”
Therapeutic: “Taking your medicine every day can prevent these symptoms from returning.” |
| Arguing | Arguing against client perceptions denies that they are real and valid. They imply that the other person is lying, misinformed, or uneducated. The skillful nurse can provide information or present reality in a way that avoids argument. |
Nontherapeutic: “How can you say you didn’t sleep last night when I heard you snoring!”
Therapeutic: “You don’t feel rested this morning? Let’s talk about ways to improve the quality of your rest.” |
See the following box for a summary of tips for using therapeutic communication and avoiding common barriers to therapeutic communication.
Tips for Effective Therapeutic Communication
- Establish a goal for the conversation.
- Be self-aware of one’s nonverbal messages.
- Observe the client’s nonverbal behaviors and actions as ‘cues’ for assessments and planning interventions.
- Avoid self-disclosure of personal information and use professional boundaries. (Review boundary setting in the “ Boundaries ” section of Chapter 1.)
- Be patient-centered and actively listen to what the client is expressing (e.g., provide empathy, not sympathy; show respect; gain the client’s trust; and accept the person as who they are as an individual).
- Be sensitive to the values, cultural beliefs, attitudes, practices, and problem-solving strategies of the client.
- Effectively use therapeutic communication techniques.
- Recognize themes in a conversation (e.g., Is there a theme emerging of poor self-esteem, guilt, shame, loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness, or suicidal thoughts?).
Common Barriers to Therapeutic Communication
- Using a tone of voice that is distant, condescending, or disapproving.
- Using medical jargon or too many technical terms.
- Asking yes/no questions instead of open-ended questions.
- Continually asking “why,” causing the client to become defensive or feel challenged by your questions.
- Using too many probing questions, causing the client to feel you are interrogating them, resulting in defensiveness or refusal to talk with the nurse.
- Lacking awareness of one’s biases, fears, feelings, or insecurities.
- Causing sensory overload in the client with a high emotional level of the content.
- Giving advice.
- Blurring the nurse-client relationship boundaries (e.g., assuming control of the conversation, disclosing personal information, practicing outside one’s scope of practice).
Recognizing and Addressing Escalation
When communicating therapeutically with a client, it is important to recognize if the client is escalating with increased agitation and becoming a danger to themselves, staff, or other patients. When escalation occurs, providing safety becomes the nurse’s top priority, and the focus is no longer on therapeutic communication. Read more information in the “ Crisis and Crisis Intervention ” section of the “Stress, Coping, and Crisis Intervention” chapter.
Cultural Considerations
Recall the discussion from Chapter 1 on how cultural values and beliefs can impact a client’s mental health in many ways. Every culture has a different perspective on mental health. For many cultures, there is stigma surrounding mental health. Mental health challenges may be considered a weakness and something to hide, which can make it harder for those struggling to talk openly and ask for help. Culture can also influence how people describe and feel about their symptoms. It can affect whether someone chooses to recognize and talk openly about physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, or both. Cultural factors can determine how much support someone gets from their family and community when it comes to mental health. [10]
Nurses can help clients understand the role culture plays in their mental health by encouraging therapeutic communication about their symptoms and treatment. For example, a nurse should ask, “What do you think is wrong? How would you treat your symptoms?”
Read more about providing culturally responsive care in the “ Diverse Clients ” chapter of Open RN Nursing Fundamentals .
- Karimi, H., & Masoudi Alavi, N. (2015). Florence Nightingale: The mother of nursing. Nursing and Midwifery Studies, 4 (2), e29475. https://doi.org/10.17795/nmsjournal29475 ↵
- Abdolrahimi, M., Ghiyasvandian, S., Zakerimoghadam, M., & Ebadi, A. (2017). Therapeutic communication in nursing students: A Walker & Avant concept analysis. Electronic Physician, 9 (8), 4968–4977. https://doi.org/10.19082/4968 ↵
- “ beautiful african nurse taking care of senior patient in wheelchair ” by agilemktg1 is in the Public Domain. ↵
- Abdolrahimi, M., Ghiyasvandian, S., Zakerimoghadam, M., & Ebadi, A. (2017). Therapeutic communication in nursing students: A Walker & Avant concept analysis. Electronic Physician, 9 (8), 4968–4977. https://doi.org/10.19082/4968 ↵
- This work is a derivative of Human Relations by LibreTexts and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 ↵
- Stickley, T. (2011). From SOLER to SURETY for effective non-verbal communication. Nurse Education in Practice, 11 (6), 395–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2011.03.021 ↵
- American Nurse. (n.d.). Therapeutic communication techniques . https://www.myamericannurse.com/therapeutic-communication-techniques/ ↵
- Abdolrahimi, M., Ghiyasvandian, S., Zakerimoghadam, M., & Ebadi, A. (2017). Therapeutic communication in nursing students: A Walker & Avant concept analysis. Electronic Physician, 9 (8), 4968–4977. https://doi.org/10.19082/4968 ↵
- StatPearls by Sharma & Gupta is licensed under CC BY 4.0 ↵
- Mental Health First Aid USA. (2019, July 11). Four ways culture impacts mental health. National Council for Mental Wellbeing. https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/2019/07/four-ways-culture-impacts-mental-health/ ↵


6: The Terrestrial Planets and their moons
Airless worlds in our solar system seem peppered with craters large and small. Earth, on the other hand, has few craters, but a thick atmosphere and much surface activity. Although impacts occurred on Earth at the same rate, craters have since been erased by forces in the planet’s crust and atmosphere. What can the comparison between the obvious persistent cratering on so many other worlds, and the different appearance of Earth, tell us about the history of our planet?
As our first step in exploring the solar system in more detail, we turn to the most familiar planet, our own Earth. The first humans to see Earth as a blue sphere floating in the blackness of space were the astronauts who made the first voyage around the Moon in 1968. For many people, the historic images showing our world as a small, distant globe represent a pivotal moment in human history, when it became difficult for educated human beings to view our world without a global perspective. In this chapter, we examine the composition and structure of our planet with its envelope of ocean and atmosphere. We ask how our terrestrial environment came to be the way it is today, and how it compares with other planets.
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- 6.1: The Global Perspective
- Earth is the prototype terrestrial planet. Its interior composition and structure are probed using seismic waves. Such studies reveal that Earth has a metal core and a silicate mantle. The outer layer, or crust, consists primarily of oceanic basalt and continental granite. A global magnetic field, generated in the core, produces Earth’s magnetosphere, which can trap charged atomic particles.
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- 6.2: Earth's Crust
- Terrestrial rocks can be classified as igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic. A fourth type, primitive rock, is not found on Earth. Our planet’s geology is dominated by plate tectonics, in which crustal plates move slowly in response to mantle convection. The surface expression of plate tectonics includes continental drift, recycling of the ocean floor, mountain building, rift zones, subduction zones, faults, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions of lava from the interior.
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- 6.3: Earth's Atmosphere
- The atmosphere has a surface pressure of 1 bar and is composed primarily of \(N_2\) and \(O_2\), plus such important trace gases as \(H_2O\), \(CO_2\), and \(O_3\). Its structure consists of the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and ionosphere. Changing the composition of the atmosphere also influences the temperature. Atmospheric circulation (weather) is driven by seasonally changing deposition of sunlight.
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- 6.4: Life, Chemical Evolution, and Climate Change
- Life originated on Earth at a time when the atmosphere lacked \(O_2\) and consisted mostly of \(CO_2\). Later, photosynthesis gave rise to free oxygen and ozone. Modern genomic analysis lets us see how the wide diversity of species on the planet are related to each other. \(CO_2\) and methane in the atmosphere heat the surface through the greenhouse effect; today, increasing amounts of atmospheric \(CO_2\) are leading to the global warming of our planet.
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- 6.5: Cosmic Influences on the Evolution of Earth
- Earth, like the Moon and other planets, has been influenced by the impacts of cosmic debris, including such recent examples as Meteor Crater and the Tunguska explosion. Larger past impacts are implicated in some mass extinctions, including the large impact 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species.
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- 6.6: General Properties of the Moon
- Most of what we know about the Moon derives from the Apollo program, including 400 kilograms of lunar samples still being intensively studied. The Moon has one-eightieth the mass of Earth and is severely depleted in both metals and volatile materials. It is made almost entirely of silicates like those in Earth’s mantle and crust. However, more recent spacecraft have found evidence of a small amount of water near the lunar poles, most likely deposited by comet and asteroid impacts.
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- 6.7: The Lunar Surface
- The Moon, like Earth, was formed about 4.5 billion year ago. The Moon’s heavily cratered highlands are made of rocks more than 4 billion years old. The darker volcanic plains of the maria were erupted primarily between 3.3 and 3.8 billion years ago. Generally, the surface is dominated by impacts, including continuing small impacts that produce its fine-grained soil.
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- 6.8: Impact Craters
- A century ago, Grove Gilbert suggested that the lunar craters were caused by impacts, but the cratering process was not well understood until more recently. High-speed impacts produce explosions and excavate craters 10 to 15 times the size of the impactor with raised rims, ejecta blankets, and often central peaks. Cratering rates have been roughly constant for the past 3 billion years but earlier were much greater. Crater counts can be used to derive approximate ages for geological features.
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- 6.9: The Origin of the Moon
- The three standard hypotheses for the origin of the Moon were the fission hypothesis, the sister hypothesis, and the capture hypothesis. All have problems, and they have been supplanted by the giant impact hypothesis, which ascribes the origin of the Moon to the impact of a Mars-sized projectile with Earth 4.5 billion years ago. The debris from the impact made a ring around Earth which condensed and formed the Moon.
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- 6.10: Mercury
- Mercury is the nearest planet to the Sun and the fastest moving. Mercury is similar to the Moon in having a heavily cratered surface and no atmosphere, but it differs in having a very large metal core. Early in its evolution, it apparently lost part of its silicate mantle, probably due to one or more giant impacts. Long scarps on its surface testify to a global compression of Mercury’s crust during the past 4 billion years.
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- 6.11: The Nearest Planets - An Overview
- Venus, the nearest planet, is a great disappointment through the telescope because of its impenetrable cloud cover. Mars is more tantalizing, with dark markings and polar caps. Early in the twentieth century, it was widely believed that the “canals” of Mars indicated intelligent life there. Mars has only 11% the mass of Earth, but Venus is nearly our twin in size and mass. Mars rotates in 24 hours and has seasons like Earth; Venus has a retrograde rotation period of 243 days.
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- 6.12: The Geology of Venus
- Venus has been mapped by radar, especially with the Magellan spacecraft. Its crust consists of 75% lowland lava plains, numerous volcanic features, and many large coronae, which are the expression of subsurface volcanism. The planet has been modified by widespread tectonics driven by mantle convection, forming complex patterns of ridges and cracks and building high continental regions such as Ishtar. The surface is extraordinarily inhospitable, with pressure of 90 bars and temperature of 730 K.
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- 6.13: The Massive Atmosphere of Venus
- The atmosphere of Venus is 96% \(CO_2\). Thick clouds at altitudes of 30 to 60 kilometers are made of sulfuric acid, and a \(CO_2\) greenhouse effect maintains the high surface temperature. Venus presumably reached its current state from more earthlike initial conditions as a result of a runaway greenhouse effect, which included the loss of large quantities of water.
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- 6.14: The Geology of Mars
- Most of what we know about Mars is derived from spacecraft: highly successful orbiters, landers, and rovers. We have also been able to study a few martian rocks that reached Earth as meteorites. Mars has heavily cratered highlands in its southern hemisphere, but younger, lower volcanic plains over much of its northern half. The Tharsis bulge, as big as North America, includes several huge volcanoes; Olympus Mons is more than 20 kilometers high and 500 kilometers in diameter.
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- 6.15: Water and Life on Mars
- The martian atmosphere has a surface pressure of less than 0.01 bar and is 95% \(CO_2\). It has dust clouds, water clouds, and carbon dioxide (dry ice) clouds. Liquid water on the surface is not possible today, but there is subsurface permafrost at high latitudes. Seasonal polar caps are made of dry ice; the northern residual cap is water ice, whereas the southern permanent ice cap is made predominantly of water ice with a covering of carbon dioxide ice.
Thumbnail: This image, taken from the International Space Station in 2006, shows a plume of ash coming from the Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian Islands. Although the plume was only visible for around two hours, such events are a testament to the dynamic nature of Earth’s crust. (credit: modification of work by NASA)
Contributors and Attributions
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Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College), David Morrison (NASA Ames Research Center), Sidney C. Wolff (National Optical Astronomy Observatory) with many contributing authors. Textbook content produced by OpenStax College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license. Download for free at https://openstax.org/details/books/astronomy ).


4: Why Should We Protect Biodiversity?
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- 4.2: Regulating Services
- Regulating services maintain nature’s ability to provide material contributions, usually in indirect ways. For example, our ability to obtain food indirectly depends on a variety of subtle yet important ecosystem processes (e.g. energy cycling), as well as more observable services (e.g. pollination). For that reason, regulation services are sometimes called indirect use values.
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- 4.3: Nonmaterial Contributions
- Nonmaterial contributions from nature, also called cultural services, include the subjective and psychological aspects of nature that influence our perceptions about quality of life. These contributions can be divided into three subcategories: inspiration and learning support, supporting psychological and physical experiences, and supporting individual and group identities.


46 .
Describe the concept of sensitive periods in development. Why are these periods important for certain skills and abilities? Provide examples from the text and discuss how this understanding can inform parenting practices and early childhood education.
47 .
Compare and contrast Piaget’s theory of cognitive development with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. How do these theories explain the process of learning and development in children? Use specific examples from the text to support your analysis. In your essay, focus on the following three areas: the role of the learner, the role of culture, and the importance of stages. Finally, explain the practical implications for a schoolteacher or any educator considering both theories of cognitive development.
48 .
Explain the meanings of key variables in lifespan development research, such as gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnoracial identity. How do these variables influence research findings? Provide examples from the text to illustrate how each variable is defined and its impact on research outcomes.
49 .
Discuss the challenges to the generalizability of research findings in developmental psychology. What does the term “WEIRD” refer to, and how does it highlight issues in research applicability? Use examples from the text to explain the significance of these challenges and potential solutions.
50 .
Discuss the different research methods used in developmental psychology, including longitudinal, cross-sectional, cross-sequential, naturalistic observation, case study, correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental designs. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of each method and provide examples from the text to illustrate how each method is used in developmental research. In the second part of your essay, describe the importance of validity and reliability in developmental psychology research. How do researchers ensure that their studies are both valid and reliable? Provide examples from the text to illustrate the concepts of validity and reliability in research.


2.4: Previewing
- Use previewing as a reading strategy
Reading Strategy: Previewing
What It Is
Previewing is a strategy that readers use to recall prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. It calls for readers to skim a text before reading, looking for various features and information that will help as they return to read it in detail later.
Why Use It
According to research, previewing a text can improve comprehension (Graves, Cooke, & LaBerge, 1983, cited in Paris et al., 1991). It can set a purpose for reading and help you prepare for what’s coming.
Depending on the genre, your approach to previewing may vary:
- To preview nonfiction, find out what you know about the subject and what you want to find out. It also to understand how an author has organized information.
- To preview biographies, determine something about the person in the biography, the time period, and some possible places and events in the life of the person.
- To preview fiction, determine characters, setting, and plot. Preview to make predictions about a story’s problems and solutions.
How To Use It
To preview a text before you read, first ask yourself whether the text is fiction or nonfiction.
- If the text is fiction or biography, look at the title, chapter headings, introductory notes, and illustrations for a better understanding of the content and possible settings or events.
- If the text is nonfiction, look at text features and illustrations (and their captions) to determine the subject matter and to recall prior knowledge, to decide what you already know about the subject. Previewing also helps you figure out what you don’t know and what you want to find out.
How to Preview
Think of previewing a text as similar to creating a movie trailer. A successful preview for either a movie or a reading experience will capture what the overall work is going to be about, generally what expectations the audience can have of the experience to come, how the piece is structured, and what kinds of patterns will emerge.
Scanning
The technique of scanning is a useful one to use if you want to get an overview of the text you are reading as a whole – its shape, the focus of each section, the topics or key issues that are dealt with, and so on. In order to scan a piece of text you might look for sub-headings or identify key words and phrases which give you clues about its focus. Another useful method is to read the first sentence or two of each paragraph in order to get the general gist of the discussion and the way that it progresses.
S canning is also used to find a particular piece of information. Run your eyes over the text looking for the specific piece of information you need. You may run your eyes quickly down the page in a zigzag or winding S pattern. If you are looking for a name, you note capital letters. For a date, you look for numbers. Vocabulary words may be boldfaced or italicized. When you scan for information, you read only what is needed. If you see words or phrases that you don’t understand, don’t worry when scanning.
Using internet tools such as a search bar or Ctrl + F can be useful when scanning.
Skimming
Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important information, or “gist” of a text. Run your eyes over the text, noting important information. Use skimming to quickly get up to speed on the basic content coverage; it’s not essential to understand each word when skimming. As you skim, you could write down the main ideas and develop a chapter outline.
When you preview, you look for sign-posts by doing the following things:
- Scan for titles, headings, and subheadings
- Skim the first paragraph or introduction
- Skim the last paragraph or summary
- Scan the first sentence after each heading
- Skim the abstract (if provided)
- Make a note of graphic aids such as figures, tables, charts, graphs, and images
- Make a note of typographical aids such as bold-faced or highlighted words and phrases
- Scan any supplemental material at the beginning or end of the text, such as chapter outlines, chapter objectives, discussion questions, or vocabulary lists
Previewing engages your prior experience, and asks you to think about what you already know about this subject matter, or this author, or this publication. Then anticipate what new information might be ahead of you when you return to read this text more closely.
This video explains the advantages of previewing a text and how to do it successfully.
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290903862690496098/embed
You can view the transcript for “How to Preview a Text” here (opens in new window) .
Contributors and Attributions
- Revision and Adaptation. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
- Reading Strategy Preview. Provided by : Sage Library Wiki. Located at : sagelibrary.wikispaces.com/Reading+Strategy+Preview. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
- Image of movie marquee. Authored by : Sarah Hina. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/osCrvL . License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
- Previewing. Provided by : Excelsior Online Reading Lab. Located at : https://owl.excelsior.edu/orc/what-to-do-before-reading/previewing/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
- Scanning and Skimming. Authored by : Bunda College of Agriculture. Provided by : OER Africa. Located at : http://www.oerafrica.org/publishersource/bunda-college-agriculture-university-malawi . Project : Reading Skills. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial