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About 15 years ago I was teaching a survey course in Romantic poetry, and some student asked why the course was a requirement for graduation. I explained the importance of cultural literacy as a goal of school-based education. To show them how common knowledge worked, I said that at the end of the nineteenth century almost any literate person could fill in the blank in this sentence: “My heart leaps up when I behold a blank in the sky.” Who today can fill in that missing blank? My students stared blankly, just as I would have done at their age. Well, I puffed, the missing word is “rainbow,” and it is an important line from Wordsworth, and an important line in English Romanticism, and an important line in Christian …
James B. Twitchell (Wed,) studied this question.