How does Wordsworth describe the language he claims to have selected for his poems?

How does he describe

the language used by "many modern writers"?

2. What sorts of "incidents and situations" does Wordsworth claim to have chosen for his poems? How does he
believe such incidents can be made interesting? Why does he choose situations from "humble and rustic life"?
What is the presumed state of the "essential passions of the heart" in that condition? What is the relationship
of these passions to language? To the "forms of nature"?

3. What, according to Wordsworth, is the relationship in his poems between feeling and action?

4. According to Wordsworth, "one being is elevated above another in proportion as he possesses" what
capability?

5. What are some of the causes, "unknown to former times," combining to reduce men's minds "to a state of
almost savage torpor"?

6. What does Wordsworth think of the distinction between the language of prose and metrical composition?
Why?

7. What are some of the characteristics of the poet? What is his relationship to his "own passions and
volitions"? What is the relationship between his feelings and the "goings-on of the Universe"?

8. What sort of truth does poetry give? How is this truth communicated? To what tribunal does it appeal?

9. Of what is poetry the image? Under what one restriction does a poet write? What sort of information may he
expect his reader to possess?

10. What sort of song does the poet sing? What is his metaphorical relationship to human nature? What does
he do for the "vast empire of human society"? Why, according to Wordsworth, can't the scientist do the same?

11. How is the poet "chiefly distinguished from other men"? What characterizes his "passions and thoughts and
feelings"? With what are they connected?

12. What, according to Wordsworth, is the "great spring of the activity of our minds"?

13. Poetry is defined by Wordsworth as a spontaneous what? From what does poetry take its origin? Then
what happens? In what mood is "successful composition" carried on?

14. Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads" may be read as a treatise that displaces the French
Revolution's three main ideals (liberty, equality, fraternity) into a theory about the way in which poetry is
composed and the effects it ought to have. What, then, are the "Preface's" theoretical equivalents to liberty,
equality, and fraternity (i.e. brotherhood)?

"Expostulation and Reply" and "The Tables Turned"

15. What is "wise passiveness"? Why is "wise passiveness" an important element in William's argument in
favor of "nature" and against Matthew's emphasis on "culture"? How would you summarize the two
characters' arguments?

"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

16. The three stages of what M.H. Abrams has called "The Greater Romantic Lyric" are a) description of the
scene; b) analysis of the scene's significance with regard to the problem that troubles the poet; and c) affective
resolution of the problem that has been articulated. How would you apply this three-stage pattern to "Tintern
Abbey"?

17. In what sense does "Tintern Abbey" offer readers a "religion of nature"? What are some of the specific ways
in which nature works as a substitute for traditional religion?

18. What is the role of "affective memory" in "Tintern Abbey"? How, in other words, does this kind of memory
help Wordsworth's lyric speaker first to recognize his problem and then to resolve it?

19. What is the importance of "surmises" to Wordsworth? Why, that is, does he offer conjectures about
"hermits" dwelling in the wilds, and so forth?

20. See line 40 - why has the world become "unintelligible" to the speaker? What has happened to him over
time?

21. Compare lines 45-49 to Blake's idea of "looking through the eye" rather than with it. What does
Wordsworth appear to mean by "an eye made quiet" and by referring to our ability to "see into the life of
things"?

22. How is this poem pantheistic?

23. What is the difference between the pleasure the speaker took in nature as a child and the pleasure he
draws from it now? What does the poet gain from his reflections on the past?

24. What role does the speaker's "dear friend" (his sister Dorothy) play in the poem? Why is it important that
she is present as an addressee? What does her presence imply about the model of the self that Wordsworth
offers in "Tintern Abbey"?

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways"

25. How does the poem express a democratic sense of subject matter?

26. What do the "star" and "violet" metaphors for Lucy have in common? How do they differ? What do they
imply about Lucy's qualities and the necessary way to discern them? (Note that this is not the only
Wordsworth poem in which flowers and stars are paired - see, for instance, "My heart leaps up.")

"A slumber did my spirit seal"

27. Who is "she"? What is the subject of this poem?

"Lucy Gray"

28. Why is it important to Wordsworth's speaker that Lucy (along with some characters in his other poems) is
solitary? What is the value of solitariness?

29. What is the meter of this poem? What effect does it have upon the subject matter?

30. This poem turns into a "ghost story" of sorts. What point may be drawn from this turn of subject
concerning Lucy's value or qualities when she was alive?

"Three years she grew"

31. How does Wordsworth's view of nature in this poem (and others) differ from that of Christian theology?
How does his view of nature differ from that of William Blake?

32. What will be the relationship between the child and nature? Is it a different one than is posited for the
speaker? If so, how?

33. On what note does this poem end? Compare it to the great odes by Wordsworth - "Tintern Abbey" and
"Intimations of Immortality."

"Resolution and Independence"

34. How does the speaker describe himself early in the poem? How does the natural setting accord with that
description?

35. How does the poet-speaker characterize the old man's language? What effect does it at first have upon the
speaker?

36. What effect does the second iteration of the old man's words have upon the speaker? Why does it have that
effect? What does the speaker gain from the old man's explanations, qualities, and presence?

37. How might this poem be interpreted as a comment on the power and limitations of words and, hence, of
poetry and poets?

"I wandered lonely as a cloud"

38. How does the sensation of something "natural" lead the speaker to imaginative vision? How does
Wordsworth's "poetry of nature" in this poem transform itself into the "poetry of self-consciousness"?

39. In what sense is this poem an epiphany for the speaker? How permanent is the feeling he describes - to
what extent can it be sustained or revived? What role does memory play in this poem?

40. Why is it unusual to use a word like "host" in connection with daffodils? What is the word's biblical
connotation?

41. Why does the speaker connect daffodils with the stars?
"My heart leaps up"

42. What does "piety" mean in the context of this poem? Can you add anything to what the Norton editors say
on this point?

43. What does the phrase "the child is father of the man" imply about the speaker's hopes for his future
connection with nature? Is the phrase entirely optimistic? Why or why not?

"The Solitary Reaper"

44. As with "Lucy Gray," why is it important to Wordsworth's speaker that the Reaper is alone, singing by
herself? What is the value of solitariness?

45. What seems to be the difference in degree of self-consciousness between the solitary singer and the poem's
observer-speaker? How, also, does the poem exhibit "democratic sensibilities"?

46. How is this poem both mimetic (i.e. an imitation of something) and expressive at the same time? Consider
the phrase "the vale profound." Why is it significant that the vale is "overflowing with the sound" of the
woman's voice?

47. Why does the speaker offer us imaginative, exotic interpretations in his attempt to describe the solitary
reaper's singing? Does it matter that he cannot understand her words? What does he understand?

"Sonnet composed upon Westminster Bridge, 1802"

48. What value does the speaker obtain from almost personifying the city? What is the relationship between
the city and nature? Where does the speaker's power to see the city as he does come from?

"Intimations of Immortality"

49. Divide "Intimations of Immortality" into the three stages of the Greater Romantic Lyric. Give line numbers
for each stage. a) What is the scene described in this poem? b) What does the speaker realize he has lost, and
how does he analyze the implications of that loss? c) At what resolution does he arrive?

50. Describe Wordsworth's "myth of pre-existence" in "Intimations of Immortality."

51. When the speaker of "Intimations of Immortality" says, "trailing clouds of glory do we come," what does the
word "glory" mean with reference to traditional Christian iconography? What is the source of the "light" that
this word alludes to?

52. In "Intimations of Immortality," how is the speaker's description of the boy's play-acting a narrative about
the self-alienation involved in the act of socialization? In what sense is the boy already beginning to lose his
freedom, as Wordsworth would define that term? In what sense do the phrases "light of common day" and
"shades of the prison-house" help Wordsworth describe this loss?

53. What two kinds of self-consciousness are described in "Intimations of Immortality"? Which type is more
desirable? Why?
54. What differences, if any, do you find in this ode's "affective resolution" compared to the one in "Tintern
Abbey"?