Wordsworth’s Poetry

Themes of the SelectionNatureWordsworth is popularly known as a nature poet, and his reputation is justly deserved, although most readers do not appreciate the political and philosophical significances of his apparently innocent sketches of nature.

Appreciating the natural world is a sort of therapy for Wordsworth. It is a prescription designed to cure the alienation modern man feels in the industrialized, urban environment. So much show that Wordsworth, in ‘The World is too much with us’, would abandon orthodox religion just to catch a ‘glimpse’ of nature which would ‘leave him less forlorn’ (l 12-13). Wordsworth accuses us of being ‘out of tune’, but offers a sort of salvation by adopting Wordsworth’s therapeutic state of a wise passiveness’, we can acquire the ‘calm so deep’ Wordsworth reports in ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’, and the ‘peace so perfect’ of the old man in ‘Old Man Travelling’. The reasons for such a heavy reliance on something which we must have a sort of faith to believe in can be explained with reference to the failure of the French Revolution. Wordsworth recommends a state of passiveness, which is the opposite to the active Revolutionary methods practised by the French Jacobins. Wordsworth argues in ‘There was a boy’ that knowledge can enter into our mind ‘unawares’ (l 22), while the active search for knowledge in books is accused in ‘The Tables Turned’, as being ‘barren’ (l 30). The Romantic poets tended to explain the failure of the French Revolution through a lack of empathy. Although the revolutionaries had good intentions, they could not use their imagination to feel what other people felt. The results were the guillotine and the Napoleonic wars.

But Wordsworth’s appreciation of nature in his poetry is not an unproblematic enjoyment. In ‘Nutting’, after the young boy has devastated the hazel tree by taking its nuts with his staff, he feels ‘a sense of pain’ (l 50), while the sky looks ‘intruding’ (l 51). Death, or the threat of death, is a recurring theme in Wordsworth’s poetry. Lucy in ‘Strange fits of passion’ is suspected of dying, while the boy in ‘There was a boy’ died when he was only 12 years old. Death is an inextricable part of nature. The blackbirds in ‘The Fountain’ seem to have a happy old age, unlike humans, who suffer and fear their own deaths. Although Wordsworth feels in harmony with nature in some poems, he finds it difficult to accept that one day we all must die, and that we will not all reach a ripe old age.

So nature is a sort of spiritual medicine in that it can give us transcendental experiences of calmness, reveal truths of the Universe, helps us accept death.

ChildhoodWordsworth can arguably be credited with ‘inventing’ childhood. He certainly made a huge impact on his contemporaries' views of childhood, and many of the great Victorian writers such as Dickens would not have been able to write the way they did without Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. In medieval and renaissance Europe, children were considered little adults. What this means is that they generally did not go to school, and instead worked on a farm or in the city as a labourer, sometimes starting when they were just four years old. Children were also treated in the same way as adults were in the legal system. Children were executed for stealing, they worked in coal mines or in factories.

For Wordsworth, and many of his fellow Romantics, children were examples of what human nature naturally is, what it could be if society were reformed. In ‘Anecdote for Fathers’ the poet learns that the didactic method of teaching and an insistence on logic do not necessarily lead to wisdom. The poet’s ‘happiness’ (l 14), and the pleasure he derives from the ‘delightful shore’ (l 10) do not require a rational explanation, they transcend mundane concerns, such as the principles we use in mathematics of science.

Although Wordsworth seeks out children as fountains of wisdom and proof in his and Coleridge’s theory of human perfectibility, they prove elusive in his poetry. The young boy in ‘There was a boy’ dies. Wordsworth suspects his recollections in ‘Nutting’ to be partly fabricated, or at least embellished. The young boy in ‘Anecdote for Fathers’ is unable to explain himself in a manner which fits Wordsworth’s adult rational mentality. In ‘The Fountain’, although the narrator is presumably a young man or a teenager, he refuses to be a ‘son’ to Matthew, to compensate for the old man’s dead children. So in Wordsworth’s poetry although childhood is invented as a distinct, special stage of human existence, dialogue between the young and the old is often problematic, impossible, or implicated in an unspecified anxiety. It is worth keeping in mind that Wordsworth lost his mother when he was 8 and his father when he was 13, and was brought up by relatives. Wordsworth had to face the responsibilities and the brutal facts of life at an early age, and essentially had his childhood innocence taken away from him.

MemoryFor Wordsworth, memory is a source of joy and insight into the world. In ‘The Solitary Reaper’ memory is examined as a way of preserving pleasure, as the poet reflects towards the end of the poem that he bears the music in his heart ‘long after it is heard no more’ (l 31-32). But memory is also present in the poem in the form of the highland lass’s song, which may be a preserved copy of

‘battles long ago’ (l 20) or of ‘sorrow, loss or pain’ (l 23). The highland lass’s song is a form of memory which gives Wordsworth pleasure but also serves as a way of preserving culture. But in the Elegiac Stanzas Wordsworth considers memory a torment. Ideally he would obliterate the memory of his suffering, which is a theme the second generation of Romantic poets, particularly Keats and Byron, would develop. Wordsworth can no longer ‘behold’ the ‘smiling sea’ without being reminded of the death of his brother; it is a loss which will ‘ne’er be old’. Memory can be a sort of medicine. It can be a ‘treasure house’ a mine/ Of peaceful years’. We may recall times we were happy, or we can examine our past and learn from it, but memory also has the negative effect of being inerasable. Although we can remember our happy times, tragedy will weigh upon us as well.

Writer’s TechniquesBlank VerseAll the great English writers have their own style of blank verse. The two styles of blank verse which Wordsworth inherited were Shakespeare’s style and Milton’s style. Both forms feature elaborate metaphors, long sentence structures with many clauses, and lists of classical references. Milton and Shakespeare used the iambic pentameter rhythm to create poetic, lofty, but sometimes artificially sounding poems. Milton, in Paradise Lost, employed ‘epic similes’, which are similes which are extended over up to ten lines, as well as collages of references to classical and Biblical tradition. Shakespeare used ‘metaphysical metaphors’, which are metaphors in which the comparative image and thing being described are very different. For example in Richard II Shakespeare compares the fortunes of two rival aristocrats by using a well, a river, a snowman and a mirror.

Wordsworth, on the other hand, is noted for his simple but effective use of the iambic pentameter line and homely metaphors. His use of blank verse is in harmony with his aim set out in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads to use the ‘language of men’, and can be compared to his friend Coleridge’s ‘conversation poems’, which are philosophical meditations which try to imitate the cadences of normal speech. Unlike Shakespearean and Miltonic blank verse, Wordsworth’s poems sound like an ordinary person talking. Wordsworth’s blank verse, especially The Prelude, was a landmark in autobiographical writing, which developed throughout the nineteenth century. Consider how Wordsworth builds up a slow rhythm to a spectacular climax in lines 10-16 of ‘There was a boy’. The syllables in bold represent a stressed syllables, while the mark of two straight lines (||) represents a ‘caesura’. A caesura is a pause in a line, which traditionally comes half way through a line in English verse, but poets can vary where they place the caesura or they can build up patterns depending on the desired effect.

…And they would shoutAcross the watery vale, || and shout againResponsive to his call, || with quivering pealsAnd long halloos, || and screams, and echoes loudRedoubled and redoubled || – a wild sceneOr mirth of jocund din!

Blank verse poems in this selection:

• ‘St Paul’s’• ‘There was a boy’• ‘Nutting’

SonnetsThe sonnet is a 14 line poem which arrived in England in the 15th century from Italy, and comes from the Italian word ‘sonnetto’, which means ‘little song’. It was used by the Romantic poets to express a single sentiment, which is usually developed in the two halves of the poem: the octave and the sestet. The sonnet is different from any other fourteen line poem because it is divided into two unequal halves, the first being 8 lines, the second 6 lines. In line 9, where the octave ends and the sestet begins, is called the ‘volta’, which means ‘turn’ in Italian. The octave will set out a single idea, for example the poet might compare his lover to a flower, while in the sestet this comparison will be ‘turned’ upside down. This could mean that the poet extends the comparison, reverse it, or introduce another metaphor. The key to interpreting a sonnet is to identify the tension between octave and sestet. Although the volta traditionally occurs in line 9, Shakespeare developed the ‘English sonnet’, in which the volta occurs in line 12, although there is sometimes a ‘mini-volta’ in line 9. A notable feature of sonnets written by English writers is a couplet at the end of the poem, which is regarded by some readers as superfluous.

In The world is to much with us Wordsworth has the volta occur half way through line 9. The first past on line 9, ‘it moves us not’, really belongs in the octave, as it is part of the octaves argument. The real turn in meaning in the sonnet is the final half of line 9, where Wordsworth uses his sestet to exclaim ‘Great God! I’d rather be/ A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn’. Wordsworth makes use of the final two lines of his sonnet to list ‘Triton’ and ‘Proteus’, which are personifications of nature, to finish off his poem. They can be considered a couplet, although they are not joined by the same rhyme, because they are a separate development of the argument outlined in the sestet. ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ is an unusual sonnet in that it does not follow the traditional argument structure in its octave and sestet. There is no real ‘volta’ in this sonnet. Line 1 and 2 are the real focus of the poem, where Wordsworth explains the meaning of his sketch as the rest of the sonnet is descriptive. In a way this is an inventive poem, as it does not use the traditional, and perhaps predictable, pattern of a description and then an ‘epiphany’ at the end. The argumentative thrust occurs in lines one and two, which is a daring and effective gesture for any poet using the sonnet form.

The BalladFormally, there are two types of ballad, the long ballad stanza, which Wordsworth uses in ‘Simon Lee’ and ‘The Solitary Reaper’, and the short lyric ballad stanza, which he uses in ‘The Fountain’ and ‘Anecdote for Fathers’. Whereas blank verse has lines of regular length, since each line is ten syllables long, ballad stanzas vary in length from eight syllables to six syllables. Ballads often rhyme. Wordsworth’s most frequent rhyme scheme is ABAB. The appeal of the ballad stanza to Wordsworth is that it is designed to be chanted or sung, and this oral appeal expresses the intense emotions often articulate in Wordsworth’s poetry. The ballad is the absolute opposite of popular Augustan poetry, in choice of vocabulary, rhythm and content, so when Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads had a mixed reception when it was published in 1798. With regards to content, the ballad was traditionally used to tell a story, often of a folk or mythical hero. The focus was on the personality of the hero and the deeds, heroic or infamous, that he accomplished. Wordsworth adapts the ballad tradition ingeniously by using un-heroic characters like Simon Lee and the little boy in ‘Anecdote for Fathers’ in his ballads. In Augustan literature lofty ideas, such as meditations on ideal beauty and God, were deemed fit only for poetic forms like Odes or heroic couplets. Wordsworth instead uses the ballad to

Sonnets in this selection:• ‘The World is too much with us’

illustrate his political and philosophical ideals, such as in ‘Expostulation and Reply’ and ‘The Fountain’.

MetaphorUnlike some nature poets, Wordsworth does not go to meticulous lengths to describe natural scenes in intense detail, nor does he use unusual metaphors or strange comparisons. Instead, he concentrates on simple, vivid descriptions. Metaphors are simple and clear, as in ‘The World is too much with us’, where the ‘Sea bares her bosom to the moon’. The sea is personified here in rudimentary terms as a woman who is exposed in a safe and wholesome manner to the moon. In ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ Wordsworth uses another simple simile to describe how London wears the morning’s radiance ‘like a garment’, while the river Thames is personified as a male who ‘glides at his own sweet will’. In ‘Nutting’ Wordsworth uses a slightly more elaborate figurative system by describing the green rocks first of all as ‘fleeced with moss’ and then as ‘scattered as a flock of sheep’. Although Wordsworth extends the metaphor, the meaning is still effective and easy to follow; it helps us visualize the scene and lends the young boy connotations of being a shepherd of nature (or, in an alternative reading, a sort of wolf or predator?).

CharacterizationWordsworth’s poems are memorable for their realistic, emotionally astute characters. Lyric poets tend not to concentrate so much on character, as novelists tend to take this literary trait as their own, so it is Worth noting Wordsworth’s use of character, which can be explained by the Romanic poet’s concentration on the individual. The Old Huntsman in ‘Simon Lee’ is a character who suffers, but unlike previous writers, Wordsworth wants us to empathize with Simon. He wants us to appreciate that he is not just writing a story for the sake of it, nor that he his characterization should be responded to by an abstract, distanced intellectual appreciation. Readers of Wordsworth’s poems are meant to use their imaginations to feel the ‘tears’ in Simon’s eyes, the ‘settled quiet’ of the man in ‘Old Man Travelling’ and the ‘joy’ of the young boy in ‘Nutting’.

Literary Technical TermsAll fields of study have technical terms, whether we are studying plants, people or poems. Make sure that you understand what each of these terms mean. A good way to make sure you are able to use the term is by making up examples in your head. If you decide to highlight the use of one of these literary techniques in an assessment essay, make sure you explain what effect it has upon the audience and if it undermines or compliments the poem’s thematic content.

Simile: A simile is when a writer compares one thing to another using like or as. It is used to compare two different things which share one quality.

Example: The tree looked like a sad old man.

Explanation:The author describes the tree as looking like a sad old man. If this line were in a poem, it could provoke a mood of loss and sadness. On the other hand if you found this phrase in an adventure novel, it could create a sinister and creepy atmosphere.

Metaphor: A metaphor is when a writer describes two unlikely things as literally sharing a quality. Instead of saying “x is like y”, a metaphor uses “x is a y”.

Example: The stars are the midnight sky’s necklace.

Explanation:This metaphor creates a vivid image of the stars in the night sky. If this metaphor were in a poem, it could provoke a romantic mood. It also encourages ideas of luxury and magnificence. This metaphor could also be used to describe the night sky above a wealthy city.

Alliteration: This is when two words begin with the same sound.

Example: The fast fox flew over the fence.

Explanation:The repetition of the ‘f’ sound evokes the speed and movement of the action described in this sentence.

Assonance:This is when the middle of two words share the same vowel sound.

Example: The boat roamed the deep blue sea.

Explanation:The repetition of the ‘oh’ sound in ‘boat’ and ‘roamed’ and the ‘ee’ sound in ‘sea’ and ‘deep’ helps to describe the depth of the sea and the long voyage the boat will make.

Consonance: This is when two words share the same consonant sounds.

Example: The rocket scuttled up its ramp.

Explanation:The repetition of the ‘k’ and ‘t’ sound in ‘rocket’ and ‘scuttle’ imitated the mechanical sounds of the objects describes in the sentence.

Caesura: This is a pause or a break in the rhythm of a line. In means ‘to cut’ in Latin. English poems often have pauses in the middle of lines, and this is especially true of blank verse. A skilful poet will vary the placement of caesurae in his poems.

Example: I find no peace, || and all my war is done ;I fear and hope, || I burn, and freeze like ice ;I fly aloft, || yet can I not arise ;And nought I have, || and all the world I seize on.(From Wyatt’s I Find no Peace)

Explanation:The pattern of caesura in this poem builds up a clear rhythm which expresses the contrast between the poet-lover’s hopes and his current suffering.

Enjambment: This is when the sense of a line runs on into the next couplet or stanza.

Example: her shaved headlike a stubble of black corn,her blindfold a soiled bandageher noose a ringto storethe memories of love(From Heaney’s Punishment)

Explanation:The enjambment takes place here between lines 4 and 5. The sense carries on from the first to the second stanza, but the gap between the two might represent the ‘hanging’ of a noose, as the subject describes in the poem may have been executed by hanging. It might also describe the gap between the subject’s memories and the poet’s understanding.

Rhetoric: This is a broad term which includes many techniques, but it basically means using the repetition of a certain sentence structure to increase the impact of a phrase for the reader.

Example: You’re beautiful when you’re angry, you’re beautiful when you’re sad.

Explanation:The repetition of the word ‘beautiful’ and the pronoun and verb ‘you are’ makes the phrase easier to remember and more persuasive. It would make a good line in a song (but a rubbish line for a poem!).