Poems of William

Wordsworth
(Selected)
Study Guide by Course Hero

poems of various lengths and rhyme schemes, including some

What's Inside from the famous Lyrical Ballads he worked on with his friend
and collaborator English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It also
examines his posthumously published The Prelude, a massive
j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1 13-part epic in blank verse reflecting on his life and the
development of his writing.
d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1

a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 3

h Characters .................................................................................................. 4 d In Context

k Plot Summary ............................................................................................. 6

c Poem Summaries ................................................................................... 10 Literary Romanticism

g Quotes ........................................................................................................ 26
l Symbols ..................................................................................................... 28
m Themes ...................................................................................................... 29
e Suggested Reading ............................................................................... 31
Wordsworth is one of the most important Romantic writers.
The Romantic movement is generally dated from the last
decade of the eighteenth century through the first decades of
the nineteenth. Some critics point to 1798 and the appearance
of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads that year as the
actual starting point of the movement. Romanticism existed as
a way of thought and looking at the world in British culture as
well as many European countries and the United States. It

j Book Basics
influenced all the arts, not only literature. Writers associated
with Romanticism worked independently, though some, like
Wordsworth and Coleridge, collaborated despite having very
AUTHOR different views. At the time, "Romanticism" was not used as an
William Wordsworth identifier. In the words of Wordsworth scholar Alan Gardiner, "It
is only in the twentieth century that Romanticism has come
YEARS PUBLISHED
into use as a term for a particular set of opinions on thought,
1798–1850
emotion, and art."
GENRE
Among its leading characteristics are the following:
Nature
a close feeling for nature
AT A GLANCE
an interest in expressing the ideas from past literature in
William Wordsworth's poetic career extended from his early
new, more meaningful ways
adulthood in the 1790s until his death in 1850. He wrote
a determination to live by different political ideas and
hundreds of poems in many forms and structures, creating a
encourage changes in society
liberating influence on poetry and feelings as part of the
an emphasis on youth and childhood as purer and more
Romantic movement. This guide analyzes 14 of his best-known
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
useful for understanding than adult wisdom
the search for new horizons and liberation of the passions,
rather than following rational wisdom
a preference for rural over urban living
a reliance on the imagination to create a new reality from
the external world
an emphasis on individual consciousness over collective
expression
a value for land over factory production at a time of great
industrial development
At the time of the 2015 death of M.H. Abrams, a leading
Wordsworth scholar, the obituary writer Christopher Hawtree
observed that whereas in the past, art had reflected reality, in
Wordsworth's poetry it tended to illuminate it from within by
revealing the soul and nature of things. Past ideas were
brought back to life in the Romantic movement, a time of
"continuous political, industrial, and social revolution and
disorder."
Also discussing Romanticism in poetry, critic Ophelia Benson
wrote on Wordsworth that poetry need not be contrasted with
history as the play of fiction against fact. It treats things not as
they are, but as they seem to be to the senses and passions,
worked on by the imagination. Benson, having read Abrams,
says in Wordsworth all is feeling, not fact. Referring to The
Prelude episode where the young boy fears being pursued by a
mountain after borrowing a boat, "It may not be true that a
mountain is full of meaning, but people feel that way, and it
leads to poetry. The poets are alive to natural beauty, an
illusion but a necessary one."
Wordsworth and Coleridge
Though many of Wordsworth's poems speak of the joys of
solitude, he was influenced all his life by external
forces—people, places, and events. Aside from his devoted
sister Dorothy, the closest collaboration came from poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They met as young men in 1795 and
began a literary partnership of great importance. According to
author Margaret Drabble, they "had a highly stimulating effect
on each other; their views on literature and politics were similar
without being identical, and together they conceived the idea
of the 'Lyrical Ballads'... which they published jointly and
anonymously in two editions."
Wordsworth and his sister moved to live closer to Coleridge
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In Context 2
and his wife so the men could collaborate on their work. The
Ballads were to be equally written, according to a plan they had
to emphasize their literary strengths. Coleridge was to write
more of the supernatural poems, and Wordsworth was to write
in the everyday and common speech his friend admired and
encouraged in him. But Coleridge was the more unstable in
character, missing all deadlines and being personally unhappy
and often unproductive. He eventually contributed only "The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner," while Wordsworth produced far
more copious amounts of writing.
Wordsworth dedicated all of The Prelude to Coleridge under
the influence of his friend's appreciation for his poetic gifts,
and the epic can be seen as fulfilling that judgment. Critic and
famed poet Seamus Heaney calls Coleridge "his Virgil ... the
guiding philosophical poet ... the guardian not just of
Wordsworth's well-being but also of his moral being ... his
poetic ambition ... and by now surely focused life." The allusion
is to the role played by the work of the Roman poet Virgil on
Dante's Divine Comedy, in which the ancient serves as a guide
to the pilgrim in the afterlife.
Margaret Drabble credits Coleridge with the development of
Wordsworth's use of long sentences and constructions, often
among his most quoted insights. But the friendship could not
endure. Coleridge, who took opium, "led a tormented and
unhappy life; he suffered from continual ill-health ... he
quarreled with all his friends, including the Wordsworths, and
he lost his poetic gifts." Drabble says Wordsworth may have
been so troubled by his friend's miseries, "his wretched
wanderings ... and dreadful nightmares," that he chose to
cultivate peace and tranquility in his own middle age with a
stable and growing family life and prosperity. The two men
were seriously estranged in 1810 after critical remarks
Wordsworth made were reported back to Coleridge, and their
closeness never fully returned. Coleridge died in 1834.
Coleridge had been an important literary voice on
Wordsworth's poetry. At times he found his friend failed to
distinguish between what critic Geoffrey Hartman calls "self-
established convictions and generally accepted truths" and
mixed the truths of his own perceptions with those of others.
The tendency to what Coleridge called mental "bombast" or
inflated language came to figure in the decline in Wordsworth's
reputation in the decades before his death in 1850, by which
time he was viewed as overly Romantic, tedious, and out of
date.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
Wordsworth and France
Wordsworth was born in rural England and lived most of his life
there, but his experiences in France had a profound impact on
his life and work. He first traveled to France in 1790 for a
youthful hiking exploration. It led to memorable adventures
crossing the Alps near the border areas with Switzerland and
Italy, especially with regard to his experiences with nature. He
returned to Paris in 1791 in the early days of the French
Revolution, filled with expectation for great events and effects
that would change society. The need to leave England and
experience the world was part of his openness to change and
exploration, and he was exhilarated by the sense of
participating in history. One day after arriving in France, he
participated in celebrations marking the first anniversary of the
fall of the Bastille. The prison had become a symbol of the
French monarchy and its abuses of power.
This second residency in France lasted a year. He spent the
year traveling in the country and saw changes in the course of
history that disappointed his ideals about the liberation of
human rights. He had hoped that a republican form of
government could succeed the monarchy without excessive
violence or war. Instead, the "Reign of Terror" of the Revolution
deeply depressed him.
During this year he made friendships that changed him forever.
His romantic liaison with Annette Vallon led to the birth of their
daughter Anne-Caroline in 1792 and gave him an enduring
connection that he openly acknowledged. Although he was
forced by lack of funds to return to England shortly before his
daughter's birth, he wrote of her in his poetry. Years after, in
1802, he returned to France before his own marriage to meet
his daughter and see her mother again. He continued to
support Caroline, as she was called, after his own marriage
and the birth of his five other children.
He also made the acquaintance of Captain Michel de Beaupuy.
Beaupuy was a rarity in late 18th-century France. Both an
aristocrat and an ardent supporter of the Revolution, he further
influenced Wordsworth's nascent political beliefs. In fact, it
might have been Beaupuy who ultimately converted
Wordsworth to France's more moderate Jacobin cause.
Beaupuy's friendship mattered greatly to Wordsworth. He
continued to believe in the ideals of the Revolution, but after
returning to England and hearing of the violence in France late
in 1793, he found it harder to hold to his views. By 1795 he
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Author Biography 3
could no longer support France, and he felt further confusion
over the War of 1812 between France and Great Britain.
Accused in 1821 of having betrayed France, he asserted, "I
have stuck to principles. I have abandoned France and her
rulers when they abandoned Liberty."
As Wordsworth became a famous figure in the literary world,
his youthful ideals about France remained as memories. He
largely stayed in his rural home as he aged, though he did
make several trips abroad and saw his daughter for the last
time in 1837.
The breadth of his vision and experience was considerable at
the time, and the ideals of human vision and betterment that he
associated with France were part of the legacy of the work he
left behind at his death in 1850. As a young man there was little
that was foreign to him in people, and though publicly he
became increasingly conservative in maturity, he learned much
from his long and longed-for connection with France, so near
England and yet so different.
a Author Biography
Childhood and Education
William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland,
England on April 7, 1770. He was the second of five children
born to John Wordsworth, a lawyer and rent collector, and his
wife, Anne. The children lost their mother in 1778, and at age
nine the boy was sent to a local grammar school near
Windermere, England. The setting figures in the first two books
of The Prelude. He was orphaned by age 13, and his education
came under the care of his uncles. In 1787 he entered
Cambridge University, where he began writing poetry. While
studying at Cambridge he embarked on a long walking tour of
France and Switzerland, especially the Alpine regions, that also
figures in The Prelude.
In 1791, after receiving his degree from Cambridge, he returned
to France, which was in the throes of the French Revolution
(1789–99, social and political upheaval of the monarchy and
feudal system). There he fell in love with a woman named
Annette Vallon, who bore Wordsworth a daughter, Caroline, in
1792. The impoverished Wordsworth was forced to return to
England, and after war broke out between the two countries he
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Characters 4

was separated from Vallon for years. Eventually he was

reunited with his daughter Caroline and for many years
contributed to her upbringing. His experiences in France
influenced him greatly in his ideas on the need for liberation of
human rights and reform of living conditions for the people.
Fame and Legacy When the
war ended
Wordsworth was deeply affected by several family deaths. He
lost a beloved brother, John, in 1805 and in 1812 experienced

Publication
Back in England, Wordsworth was influenced by the writing of
William Godwin (1756–1836), who championed the rights of
man and questioned all social controls and authority. The
young poet published his earliest work in 1793 in two
collections, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1795
he went to live with his sister Dorothy in Dorset, England. He
met fellow Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772–1834) and they became fast friends. In fact, he and
Dorothy moved in 1797 to Alfoxden House, near the village of
Nether Stowey, to be close to Coleridge. Both his sister and
Coleridge had strong influences on the development of his
work.
the deaths of two of his young children. After being named to a
post as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, England, he
moved in 1813 to another home in the Lake District in Rydal
Mount, Westmorland. While he was estranged from Coleridge
for a time, the other poet's praise of his work helped to spread
his fame. By the 1830s Wordsworth's home was often visited
by admirers who sometimes numbered in the dozens each day.
He continued to write as a public figure and became poet
laureate of England in 1843, remaining in this post until his
death on April 23, 1850, at age 80. The Prelude was published
by his wife three months later. Among the most influential of all
writers, Wordsworth remains a towering figure of the Romantic
movement and one of the best-loved poets in the English
language.

His first success came with the 1798 publication of Lyrical

Ballads, a collaboration with Coleridge. The landmark collection
marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in English h Characters
literature and included such famous poems as Wordsworth's
"Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
The preface Wordsworth wrote for the second edition became
a Romantic manifesto for poets in many cultures. It included
Michael
his famous description of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow
Michael is a portrait of a simple, devoted family member who
of powerful feelings [that] takes its origin from emotion
cannot adapt to progress that involves dishonesty. When his
recollected in tranquility." It represented a sharp break with the
nephew defaults on an obligation, he is forced to send his only
literature of the previous century, placing great emphasis on
son, Luke, to work in the city. He and his wife, Isabel, wait for
the emotions of the individual rediscovering lost sources of
years for Luke's return. But the son falls under bad influences,
natural wisdom consonant with the divine.
and, tragically, Michael and Isabel die without seeing him again.
Wordsworth began writing his epic autobiographical poem The A stone Michael has set as a marker for a shelter he planned
Prelude in 1798 while living in Germany, and he would continue to build with Luke remains as a tribute to his stoic faith.
writing and rewriting it for a half-century, until his death. He
settled in England's Lake District in the north with Dorothy in
1799 and in 1802 traveled to France to meet with Annette The solitary reaper
Vallon and their daughter. On his return to England he married
a longtime friend, Mary Hutchinson, with whom he would have The solitary reaper is a Scottish girl singing to herself as she
five children, two of whom died in infancy. He went on to write harvests grain. Although the listener cannot understand her
some of his best-known poems, including "I Wandered Lonely song, he finds her voice thrilling and plaintive as she bends
as a Cloud" and "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." Both were over her sickle. He remembers the mysterious encounter long
published in his 1807 collection Poems, in Two Volumes. afterward.

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Characters 5

Girl in "It Is a Beauteous

Evening, Calm and Free"
The unnamed girl in "It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free"
is close to God and nature even though she lacks an adult's
ability to realize this.

Girl in "We Are Seven"

In "We Are Seven," the speaker converses with a young, naïve
girl who insists her family has seven siblings although two of
the children are dead.

Isabel
In "Michael," Isabel is the younger wife of the title character.

Lucy
Lucy in "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known" is the girl about
whom the poet's speaker has a mysterious vision.

Luke
In "Michael," Luke is the only son of a rural family who goes to
the city to find work and is morally corrupted by bad
influences.

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
Full Character List
Character Description
In the poem "Michael," the title
Michael character Michael is an older husband
and father who tends sheep.
The solitary
In "The Solitary Reaper," the title
character is an unnamed girl of the
reaper Scottish highlands who sings as she
reaps.
Girl in "It Is a The unnamed girl in "It Is a Beauteous
Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free" is close to
Evening, Calm God and nature even though she lacks
and Free" an adult's ability to realize this.
In "We Are Seven," the speaker
Girl in "We Are converses with a young, naïve girl who
Seven" insists her family has seven siblings
although two of the children are dead.
In "Michael," Isabel is the younger wife
Isabel
of the title character.
Lucy in "Strange Fits of Passion Have I
Known" is the girl about whom the
Lucy
poet's speaker has a mysterious
vision.
In "Michael," Luke is the only son of a
rural family who goes to the city to
Luke
find work and is morally corrupted by
bad influences.
k Plot Summary
We Are Seven
One of the early Lyrical Ballads, "We Are Seven" narrates a
meeting of the speaker with an eight-year old girl who is simple
and straightforward. She lives in the country near a churchyard
in a small village and, when asked about her siblings, says that
there are seven children in all. Further information reveals that
four of them have moved away or are at sea, presumably
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Plot Summary 6
working, and a brother and sister have died. The narrator
admires the child's beauty and assumes she is not able to
understand that she is, in fact, the only sibling still living with
her mother. To each prompt from him to say there are now five
living, she resists and insists on the number seven. The poem
ends with the little girl unmoved by his words and convinced
she is one of seven.
Lines Composed A Few Miles
Above Tintern Abbey
In this poem from Lyrical Ballads, the poet has returned to view
the church abbey at Tintern after an absence of five years. As
a younger person he formerly enjoyed the beauty of the setting
and the surroundings and kept the memory with him in
succeeding times living in cities with far less peace and
tranquility and natural loveliness. He has retained the memory
of the place and expects to keep it until the end of his days. He
adores the setting of the town and the Abbey along the Wye
River. He remembers as a boy being wilder in his behavior and
needs, and finding peace in places like Tintern. As he matured,
he learned to appreciate nature differently, and now finally has
a more peaceful, even deeper understanding that gives
present comfort.
Michael
"Michael" appeared as a long poem of 491 lines at the end of
Lyrical Ballads. It tells the full tale of a rural family living simply
in the countryside and tending sheep. Michael is an older
husband and father whose younger wife and their only son
Luke work long and hard hours. The wife lights their way with
an old lamp that burns through the night and is known as the
"Evening Star." Michael makes for his son a shepherd's staff,
which the boy uses as he grows into maturity. The family is
troubled when Michael's nephew, for whom he had years
before guaranteed financial support, defaults on the obligation.
To keep their land, the aged shepherd is forced to send Luke
to work in the city to make good on the money. He had begun
to build a sheepfold, or shelter, that will stay unfinished as a
sign of the family devotion until Luke returns to complete it.
Michael and his wife Isabel wait patiently for years after Luke
departs, but he goes very wrong under bad influences in the
city, and they both die at their cottage without ever seeing him
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Plot Summary 7

again.
The World Is Too Much With
Strange Fits of Passion Have I Us
Known A Petrarchan sonnet with rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDC
DCD, "The World Is Too Much With Us" was first published in
Poems, in Two Volumes. It expresses the poet's deep sense of
This poem, published in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in
alienation from the life of his own times. He states a rejection
1800, describes a vision of death that the speaker has for a girl
of the modern economic system with its emphasis on
identified only as "Lucy." It has seven stanzas of four lines with
consumption and purchase, claiming that it has wasted and
consistent rhyming in an ABAB CDCD pattern. The speaker
squandered inherent better qualities of people. They are blind
has formerly loved Lucy and visited her cottage under the light
to what was formerly appreciated in nature (capitalized by
of the moon, which illuminated his horseback travel. At some
Wordsworth), and so are out of step and out of tune with the
point under the influence of the moon, he dreams as the horse
values of life itself. After that denunciation of human behavior
climbs the path and the moon sinks in the sky. Once the moon
in the octet, the sestet following imagines a different way of
vanishes, he is taken with a vision of the girl's death. This
life. The speaker says he might find emotional solace in ancient
"strange fit of passion" frightens him with a sense of
truths, or in myths of gods that previously inspired passionate
inescapable death vanquishing love.
truths.

Ode to Duty It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm

From the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, the ode of
seven stanzas of eight lines each in the ABABCCDD rhyme
and Free
scheme expresses a tension between the need to follow duty
This sonnet has the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDE CED and
and the freer sense of instinct. There is a call to the laws of
first appeared in Poems, in Two Volumes. The poem describes
God and the need to rely not just on a life of ease but to
the narrator walking on a beach with a beloved child. Together
behave according to stricter principles. The poet lived more
they share in a sense of divine beauty and majesty of sea, sky,
easily when younger (he was in his mid-30s when writing the
and sun. The girl does not appear to share in the poet's sense
poem) but has learned to seek stability and peace and follow a
of worship. Yet her childlike nature does partake of the same
duty to higher laws.
divine sense and presence, which seems heightened by her
lack of learned, or adult, consciousness.

Composed Upon Westminster

Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 London, 1802
The sonnet from Poems, in Two Volumes follows a different
Not the usual countryside, but a full view of urban London from
rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA CDD ECE. It has an initial octet
Westminster bridge in the early summer light fills the poet with
and a following sestet. Using the second person, it addresses
joyous impressions in this poem first published in Poems, in
the great English poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost
Two Volumes (1807). It is a 14-line Petrarchan sonnet, with the
(1667) and someone Wordsworth read deeply. The speaker
rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDC DCD. The poem says that
laments the state of English life in his own time as desperately
anyone who would not appreciate the sight would have a dull
needing purification with the help of Milton. Wordsworth says
soul. Nothing yet is moving or alive, as all seems suspended in
the British clergy, state, and culture have deteriorated since
a kind of "silent, bare" spectacle. The sight calls to his mind the
Milton's time. The earlier poet's abilities from the past are like
calm of nature when nothing is disturbed or in motion.
the pure heavens and sea and stars that could aid in restoring

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
value to English life, which Wordsworth criticizes as being
presently like a swamp.
The Solitary Reaper
This poem from Poems, in Two Volumes is a lyrical ballad of 32
lines. Four stanzas have eight lines apiece, and the rhyme
scheme is usually ABAB CCDD, although the first and third
lines of the first and last stanzas do not rhyme closely.
Wordsworth is said to have been inspired by a hiking trip to the
Scottish Highlands, during which his friend Thomas Wilkinson
heard a solitary woman working in the field singing in the local
Gaelic dialect of the region. He could not understand any
words, but the effect haunted him and remained in his mind as
something exotic and moving. Her song is as indecipherable to
a human ear as it is to any animal's. Its beauty will remain long
after the chance seeing and hearing of her by the hiker. The
poet repeats his friend's experience closely, as if it were his
own.
My Heart Leaps Up (also called
The Rainbow)
The short single-stanza poem from Poems, in Two Volumes
has irregular rhyme and unusual structure in its nine lines. It
states for the poet an important truth that children are more in
touch with the truths of nature and existence than adults. They
"father" mankind as they are less likely to have lost a natural
connection to the divine. Seeing a rainbow and having an
emotional reaction to it is a reminder of the tie of God to man,
as in the rainbow shown to the Biblical Noah after the flood.
The poem expresses deep feelings of wonder and awe as a
child might have at nature and creation.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
The poem, first published in Poems, in Two Volumes and later
revised, is composed of four six-line stanzas with rhyme
scheme ABABCC in each stanza. The poet derives great
emotional pleasure and joy from remembering a vision he had
of many daffodils seeming to dance in the wind during his
walks in the countryside. He is active in the start of the poem,
like the clouds, flowers, and waves of a lake, but later is still
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Plot Summary 8
and pensive. His inner eye calls back the image of nature when
he is alone, and he achieves a unity with the daffodils as they
move to a natural music and gladden his heart. The inner
experience of the flowers gives him a unity outside of himself,
as he can remember it at will.
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
The "Ode" from Poems, in Two Volumes is more than 200 lines
long and includes stanzas of different lengths and irregular
rhyme schemes. It expresses Wordsworth's philosophy on the
growth of children into adults and the loss of pure connections
to nature and the divine. The first stanzas accept with dismay
the inevitable loss of vision and understanding an individual
feels as he grows from childhood into maturity. The poet then
puts forth his belief that souls are not new creations at birth.
They have instead some connection to another far-off
existence, where they are close to God and have wisdom that
becomes lost as they grow older. Life is shown in all its human
activities as an alienating and blindingly destructive process for
the soul of the adult. Children are described throughout as
wise seers and visionary philosophers of a certain kind. The
final stanzas attempt to offer consolation to adults for the
remaining years of their lives if they can keep a connection
with the purity and openness of their original souls. Nature is
the refuge that is always open to the soul. Through nature one
can recapture not youth, which is gone, but a fitting end to life
that all people may share together philosophically. The death
that children cannot conceive for themselves attempts to be a
consoling reality for the adult world.
Surprised by Joy—Impatient as
the Wind
The sonnet, published in the 1815 Collected Poems, contains 14
lines divided into the beginning octet and the sestet that
follows. They are linked by the emotions the speaker feels as
he moves from joy to sorrow. He begins impatient to share
some joy, perhaps from nature, but realizes that the one he
wishes to share it with is dead. That realization makes him
wonder how he could ever feel joy without the person, so he
must remind himself of the loss, since it is final. He comes to
see that the great pain of remembering the death of the
beloved one years after could be matched only by the original
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
pain he thought at the time was supreme. The initial joy has
vanished, and only the memory remains.
The Prelude
The long 13-part epic is known as The Prelude, but
Wordsworth had never decided on any title as such at the time
of his death in 1850. The poet referred to it as his "Poem to
Coleridge," subtitled "Growth of a Poet's Mind." Wordsworth
worked on the poem for years and initially completed it in 1805
but continually revised it for the rest of his life. It was published
posthumously by his wife three months after his death.
Divided into "books" of different lengths and in hundreds of
lines of blank verse, each individual book carries a title
pertaining to a period of his life. In totality the poem is a record
of his emotional and spiritual development. Some versions of
the poem split Book 10 into two separate books, for a total of
14; this study guide considers the version with 13 books.
Books 1 and 2 focus on the poet's childhood and youth. He has
left living abroad to return to his native area in northwest
England and will find the most appropriate and meaningful
themes for his writing. He speaks of his first years and
experiences such as feeling guilty for temporarily stealing a
boat. He came to understand nature more and more, an
important part of his growth as a poet.
By Book 3 he is mature and attending classes at Cambridge
University. His times as a student are mixed, since he does not
fully concentrate on the courses or even his fellow students.
He enjoys their company but also treasures his solitude.
Book 4 finds him vacationing and growing in his Imagination.
He tries to understand himself and his shadowy perceptions
more, and he relates the incident of a brief meeting with a poor
wandering discharged soldier, one of many such solitary
people he will come across.
His episodic education continues in Book 5 as he narrates the
influence the visionary poet Coleridge has had on him. He
relates a vision that is a strange combination of the Spanish
epic Don Quixote he had been reading and a dream of a
mysterious Arab on a camel.
Book 6 moves from Wordsworth's experiences in England to
abroad. He describes long excursions and hikes in the
European Alps at the borderlands of France, Switzerland, and
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Plot Summary 9
Italy. He is thrilled as well to be in France, where the Revolution
has already changed human life greatly.
The poet returns to London in Book 7 after his adventures in
Europe. It relates the urban life there, contrasting reality with
the life of the imagination.
Book 8 alternates descriptions of London life with a rural
existence in the country. It shows his love of nature and its
relationship to a love for humankind.
Book 9 brings the poet back to Europe and the turmoil of the
French Revolution. His friendship with the officer Michel
Beaupuy is very important here. Book 10 (in some editions, split
into two books) continues to describe his residence in France
and the struggle of the factions involved in the Revolution.
Back in England he spends his time in political and
philosophical readings to build his optimism in the future of
mankind.
Book 11 gives personal insights into the mental and emotional
struggles of the poet following his return to England. He tries
to find a balance between Reason and Passion and ultimately
finds meaning in "spots of time"—memories of events he
witnessed long past that give him direction and inspiration for
art in the present day.
In Book 12, the conclusion of Book 11, the poet gives his solitary
reflections on historic Salisbury Plain in the south of England.
He considers the ancient people who once lived there and the
varieties of human nature.
The epic poem concludes in Book 13. Wordsworth repeats his
great love for nature as supreme teacher and authority as his
imagination is able to remember emotions and reflect on them
to find meaning. He praises all he has explored and learned
with others.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
c Poem Summaries
This study guide examines 15 of William Wordsworth's best-
known poems. In addition to looking at his 13-book The Prelude
as a whole, the guide further breaks down the most frequently
studied books of this epic poem for the purpose of summary
and analysis.
"We Are Seven"
Summary
Wordsworth's first significant collection of poems, Lyrical
Ballads, appeared in 1798 and included "We Are Seven." It is an
early poetic tale narrated in a ballad format of 16 four-line
stanzas in ABAB rhyme scheme and a final stanza of five lines
in an ABCCB pattern. The poem relates a simple conversation
between an adult and a small girl of eight with whom he speaks
in a country town. The speaker asks about her family and
learns she is one of seven children. She explains that two are
at sea and two others are living far away. Furthermore, two
have died and are buried in the nearby churchyard. She
remains with her mother.
The speaker tries to make her see that according to his view
there are five siblings. She does not agree and numerous times
insists, "We are seven," since she has a child's lack of
comprehension for the finality of death. The speaker cannot
change her mind; the dead brother and sister remain part of
the living family for her.
Analysis
The early poem contrasts supposedly adult wisdom with
childlike naivete. The speaker assumes the child does not
understand death as he does, asking rhetorically, "What should
it know of death?" This superior and patronizing view is
undercut by the girl's insistence. She has adjusted to the death
of her siblings, which was not unusual at that time, and shows
love and devotion to their graves as well as to her mother.
Their deaths are not something she avoids, and her closeness
to them means that in her mind they remain part of the family.
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Poem Summaries 10
The poem might seem morbid or death-obsessed, but, in fact,
it is the speaker who keeps returning to the subject and cannot
accept the child's peace of mind, though she seems much
more adjusted and accepting than he does. The poem does
not define death or convince either the girl or the reader that
the speaker knows more about it than the child does. The
question "What should it know of death?" thus rebounds on the
speaker. While he uses "it" to depersonalize the supposedly
uneducated child, she emerges as more sophisticated than he,
more human, and less lonely. In fact, she has companionship
with her mother and her own duty to tend the siblings' graves.
She does not appear morbid, but wise.
"Lines Composed a Few Miles
Above Tintern Abbey"
Summary
The precise title of the poem popularly known as "Tintern
Abbey," part of the Lyrical Ballads, is "Lines Composed a Few
Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye
During a Tour July 13, 1798." The poem is in blank verse
(unrhymed), with lines of different lengths. The most frequent
arrangement of syllables is iambic pentameter: one unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed one, repeated five times for a
total of ten beats, as if saying "hel-LO" five times. This pattern
is frequently used by Wordsworth and others in many poems
because it resembles a pattern of normal conversational
speech, especially when narrating a story.
In it the poet narrates in a long, unrhymed work of 160 lines the
effects of nature on him. He originally visited the church abbey
at Tintern on the banks of the river Wye at age 23 and
returned after five tumultuous years. The poem makes a strong
contrast between the more unpleasant times spent away from
nature in busy towns and cities and the peaceful, uplifting
effects of gazing on the Abbey from above.
The impressions the scene make on the poet give him, after
five years of uncertainty, a sense of relief through the deeply
felt impressions of the outer world on his inner self and mind.
Inspired by his beloved sister and addressing her in the poem,
the poet sees Tintern Abbey and its surroundings as a source
of joy and eternal comfort. He concludes by acknowledging the
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
presence of his sister, and he voices the hope that if she
outlives him, she will remember him at Tintern, over the Abbey,
alongside the river, and at peace with all.
Analysis
"Tintern Abbey" has a mixed mood and sense toward nature,
being overtly autobiographic and closely following the lives of
the Wordsworth siblings. The poet had first known and found
pleasure in seeing the Abbey five years before, voicing his
attitudes toward it in the poem. He apparently has had many
experiences since he was first there. As he has grown, many
doubts have filled his mind about "this unintelligible world," "in
lonely rooms and mid the din of towns and cities" where he
was unhappy and troubled. The depth of his feelings grows
when he is absent from natural beauty, but it returns in force
when he places himself in a spot of beauty like the Abbey and
acts upon his surroundings to recall the memories that nourish
him. He speaks of the "mighty world of eye and ear," referring
to the melding of his perceptions with his own creations and
impressions. Through this process he both perceives his
surroundings and also half-creates them from memory.
The poem is very much of this world but also has a strong
orientation toward death and what the poet conceives of it. He
takes comfort from the vision of the place for the time when he
will die and become only a "living soul." He directs his cares
toward his sister, seeing in her presence with him at Tintern
the certainty that after his death she will carry with her the
memory of their shared appreciation for the place. He ends the
poem by expressing the highest devotion to his sister, telling
her these beauties "were to me more dear, both for
themselves, and for thy sake."
Wordsworth calls himself a "a worshipper of Nature" (his
capitalization) for the first time in the poem, but this worship is
a complex relationship of impressionistic acceptance and the
action he takes upon it for his own purposes. "Tintern Abbey,"
even seen from afar, was obviously among the richest source
of emotions, fears, hopes, and beliefs that Wordsworth
included in his Lyrical Ballads.
"Michael"
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Poem Summaries 11
Summary
"Michael" is an extended ballad, pastoral in nature, dealing with
rural life and shepherding. A long poem of 491 lines, it
appeared at the end of Lyrical Ballads. The story involves an
aged father, Michael, and his younger wife, Isabel. The couple
has one son, Luke, whom they raise lovingly to take over their
property with devotion to the simple ideals they have lived by.
Their setting is lonely and isolated as they concentrate their
lives and energies on themselves. The story seems familiar as
part of the folklore of the area, which as the poet says is,
"homely and rude," meaning down to earth and unpolished.
The story is of a man who became a father late in life and the
cares he and his somewhat younger wife take to form the
family bond. They became legendary for the great work they
expended on their rocky land and their devotion to it. Isabel
hung a lamp "by the chimney's edge," which became a familiar
sign in the area. It signaled their uncounted hours of labor,
called in the poem "a public Symbol of the life the thrifty pair
had lived." Their homestead was called by all "The Evening
Star."
Michael, the father, gave great attention to the child as a baby
and youth, sharing duties with his wife, so that Luke grew up
with two close parents. Michael and Luke often sat by a huge
oak called the Clipping Tree and tended the sheep. When Luke
was old enough, he had to be sent, against all their desires, to
work in the city to pay off an obligation Michael had incurred in
good faith. Years before he had to stake his ownership of his
land because his nephew had run up debts by ill luck, and no
one else could help. To hold it for Luke, he would have to come
up with a large sum or have the land seized.
The family struggles emotionally with the decision to separate,
but both parents eventually find peace with sending Luke to
work in the city for another relative, in the hope he can earn
enough to settle the legal claim. To comfort them all, Michael
lays a large rock at the spot where he promises Luke they will
together build a new sheepfold, or shelter for the sheep, upon
his return. Nothing will touch the spot in his absence. But after
a time Luke falls victim to the temptations of city life, loses his
direction and family devotion, and disappears. Michael and
Isabel wait faithfully for their son, but their own lives reach their
end, and he never returns. Michael is comforted by his loyal
dog for some years, but he dies at 80, and Isabel follows him
three years later.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Poem Summaries 12

In time everything changes around their land, The Evening Star
cottage is demolished, and they live on only in legend. But the
stone placed by the father for his son, as well as the giant oak
tree, remain as reminders they were there at all.
Analysis
"Michael" has great power and strength in its form of pastoral
legend. It may seem material for song or visual portrayal since
the details in almost 500 lines are so vivid. Unusual for
Wordsworth, it deals more with actual images of objects than
impressions given on a receptive mind. In fact, the land he
describes is so isolated and difficult that is seems contrary to
the usual green and lush surroundings of the poems normally
so suggestive to his mind. But this may be for greater effect:
the poet narrates a story of intense devotion, even fanatical
love of the land and family. At the time of its composition in
1800, the poem's story is already dealing with changes in
ownership of land in England under the Industrial Revolution
when properties were bought and consolidated and often long-
standing ownership ended.
Michael's family is small, but tightly united and bound to each
other. The story has distinct echoes of the Bible and the aged
fatherhood of Abraham in one story and the sending off of
Joseph into captivity in another. This gives greater depth to the
poem, which might otherwise seem mostly a folktale of a time
and place.
and hard as the land where he has laid the one stone his son
could take as a sign of faith in human relationships, even if
Luke does not fulfill his part of the promise.
As in the "Ode on Immortality," the fear of loss and
abandonment that the parents suffer in sending Luke away
and see realized is finally too deep for tears in old age. The
poem ends in stoicism and acceptance of changes in life and
humanity, but the parents at least are true to each other, to the
land, and to their son. The silent sheepfold stands as witness
to their love and faith.
"Strange Fits of Passion Have I
Known"
Summary
This poem, published in the second (1800) edition of Lyrical
Ballads, has seven stanzas of four lines with tight rhyming in an
ABAB CDCD pattern The speaker discloses that his love for a
girl named Lucy had been so strong that he even imagined her
death. He wants to tell her that once, while traveling to be with
her at her cottage, he came under the spell of the moon as it
traveled along with him and descended over the roof as he
approached it. In a kind of trance induced by the emotions of
the moment, his acknowledges the fear that she would die. The

There is much attention given to all aspects of the family life, feelings are so intense that it is not clear who, precisely, the

how they live, and how they light their surroundings and spend beloved girl is, nor if she is still alive.

their time, including the devoted mother. Clear symbols are

given in the lamp, the tree, the stone for the sheepfold never
built, the debt that can never be paid, the dog that replaces
Analysis
Luke in its loyalty to Michael, and the eventual disappearance
The poem has an intense mixture of devotion and dread. The
of their presence from the land—which remains after they are
poet's feelings are so full of complex and clashing elements
gone. Through these images, Wordsworth praises the duties
that he mixes them into an ultimately morbid picture of loving
inherent in the rural way of life as opposed to the variabilities
someone so much that her absence becomes necessary to
of existence away from it. His pessimism may cloud for readers
imagine, as well as her presence.
the love of the family members, since one senses as the story
unfolds that it will end badly.
Lucy in the poem has lived so close to nature, like a flower in
daily bloom, that awareness of her natural mortality must also
Tears are shed in the story, but at the end, adult strength of
be faced. It is the moon itself that induces a vision through a
character remains. Michael can die knowing his land was as
kind of dream state the poet calls "Kind Nature's gentlest
much his as it ever was during his lifetime, just as his fierce
boon" (or gift). He had invested such passion in her life that
paternal devotion outlasts the temptations that lead his son
perhaps inevitably the realization that all things age, change,
astray. What could seem sentimental instead stands as flinty
and die has to be brought to him as well, through an altered

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
state of consciousness.
The motion of the horse's hoofs has a kind of hypnotizing
effect on the speaker, together with the rise and fall of the
moon as it disappears over Lucy's cottage. Somewhere in this
mixture of the real and the imagined, the ultimately tragic fate
of his beloved emerges as a possibility. No matter how intense
his love for her may be, they are both creatures of nature and
therefore susceptible to the end of life and end of passion.
Verbal irony, saying one thing and meaning another, arises in
calling his dream of death, imagined or not, "kind." It may be a
release and relief from his intense passions, or a morbid trick
to heighten the experience of love by shadowing it with death.
"Ode to Duty"
Summary
The poem from the second (1800) edition of Lyrical Ballads
moves through seven stanzas of eight lines in ABABCCDD
rhymes to describe a person caught between his desires to live
according to his own will and the realization that there are
higher principles he ought to follow. Wordsworth prefaces the
poem with a quote from the Roman philosopher Seneca (c. 4
BCE–65 CE): "I am no longer good through deliberate intent,
but by long habit have reached a point where I am not only able
to do right, but am unable to do anything but what is right."
The poem initially recognizes the existence of Duty as coming
from "the voice of God" and requiring obedience to avoid "vain
temptations" in life. Some people are able to find the proper
balance and not be troubled in their self-judgment, but the poet
sees in himself someone who earlier on did neglect higher duty
in favor of his own wishes. He paid no attention to "unwelcome
tasks" that he should have completed. However, at this point in
his life he has made the free choice to dedicate himself and
find comfort and peace in following the higher duties.
Analysis
The poem, unusual for Wordsworth, has no references to
external nature but is fully in the mode of self-introspection.
"Ode to Duty" provides no specific examples of what the
speaker did previously to lead him, in more maturity, to the
realization that he has been too self-indulgent. He is, for some
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Poem Summaries 13
reason, resolved to judge himself more sternly since he has
been led to recognize higher principles and truths. Some lucky
ones, he says, don't question their own positions and live
carefree lives than he can do. But he is not one of these people
and is willing to surrender excesses of freedom for self-control
and discipline.
The poem speaks to Wordsworth's need to achieve reflection
and accord with the truths of life through his poetry. The
speaker consoles himself in the feeling that after youthful
turbulence he can find "repose which ever is the same" and
satisfaction at following certain laws that are powerful and
stern. The reader is not told specifics about these principles
but is given only the certainty that the speaker feels them.
Thus the possibility of finding similar refuge from the cares and
unmet desires of the world might be discovered by readers,
too. Whatever cares and losses life may have for people, the
poet seems to have found a path away from blindness toward
serenity. This path may be open to all who, like he, make a
rededication to truth and duty.
"Composed Upon Westminster
Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802"
Summary
"Westminster Bridge" was first published in Poems, in Two
Volumes (1807). It is a 14-line Petrarchan sonnet, a form with
the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDC DCD.
Leaving the world of nature, the speaker reflects on the view of
London that inspires his understanding of the potential for
beauty in ordinary life. The octet (first eight lines) introduces a
picture of London in beautiful and visual terms of splendor. The
city, seen from afar from a bridge, is something splendid, clean,
and unmatched by any other sight. The following sestet (six
lines) move the picture ahead, imagining the river and the
houses lying along it as alive with the hearts of the people in
them. Their lives are suspended before the day begins and life
continues. Only the Thames River itself is moving, and all else
seems in a magical sleep.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Poem Summaries 14

ways. Their hearts have been captured by the commerce of life

Analysis around them, and with nothing left of nature, the powers of the
sea and air have been lost. People are said to be unmoved by
"Westminster Bridge" contains unusual praise from
life around them and feel forlorn. He can only imagine having
Wordsworth for city life. Normally he would find a
lived at an earlier time by a "creed outworn," like that of pre-
concentration of people and buildings and commerce
Christian pagans. He would have found inspiration, solace, and
oppressive, but in the poem through some magical
truth in visions of ancient gods and men in their ever-changing
transformation there is only calm and peace. But clearly the
majesties.
potential for noise and disruption is present. The air is clean
and unpolluted, but the poet knows full well that soon enough it
will be foul and smoky again. No one seems awake or alive, and
the river flows on its own. While people do not move the river,
Analysis
soon enough they will be present going about their business
The poem contains some ideas and lines for which
and trade on it, and all will change. There is deep calm, but the
Wordsworth is most famous. "The world is too much with us,
poem speaks of the "first splendor " of the sun, and the reader
late and soon, getting and spending" is often quoted as an
knows the calm of early morning cannot last. If the houses are
essential rejection of contemporary life by the Romantic poets.
now all "asleep" and the "mighty heart" of the city lies still, that
Modern life, it says, is crass and commercial, paying no
abnormal state cannot and will not last for long. The city only
attention to truths that previously mattered. This idea
wears this beauty like a "garment" that has been put on to
expresses deep alienation and even pain at having to live in a
cover something else by the day's first light, yet London at the
time that holds none of the ancient beliefs that formerly gave
time was already a thriving and throbbing metropolis. Nature is
people hope. The phrase "We have given our hearts away"
powerless against the energies of the city once it awakens, so
makes it clear that the poet feels deep sadness and loss at
at least the speaker has been given the privilege of being in
living in his own time. Wordsworth's youthful idealism was
this place at the right time to see the beauties of nature that
based on his love of nature and hopes for human betterment
reassert themselves once the city stops its fast pace and
during the French Revolution. This idealism led him to conclude
hurry. The end of the enchantment is not shown but is clearly
that the first years of the new 19th century were deeply
sensed.
injurious for the well-being of mankind. Excessive
industrialization and spoilage of the land convinced him there
was little to rejoice over or hope for. He says that both "late
"The World Is Too Much With and soon," people have become powerless to recapture
meaning for lives that are fully "out of tune."
Us"
Yet the poet still stands in some pleasant and perhaps
unspoiled place near the wind and the sea where he can yearn
Summary for ancient truths and beauties. He wishes he had lived to
believe in the eternally changing powers of Proteus, the
Another Petrarchan sonnet with eight lines in ABBA ABBA ancient god of rivers and seas. This god could prophesy, if held
form, followed by a sestet of CDC DCD, "The World Is Too against his will, but constantly changed forms, making the
Much With Us" was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes. discovery of truth all the more difficult. Triton was another sea
In it the speaker complains of his dissatisfaction and alienation god who held the power to calm waters. Both figures are
from his own life and expresses the wish to have lived in a invoked by the poet, who apparently still has some hope that
different moment, when belief would be more possible. He better news may yet come, though surely not easily.
feels his life, within a modern economic system, dominates and
destroys his powers by substituting "getting and spending" for
all of nature.

He speaks in the first-person plural "we" and "us" to indicate a

similar alienation of people in general from simple truths and

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Poem Summaries 15

geographic distances kept them apart all their lives. Yet the
"It is a Beauteous Evening, power of love is so apparent in the poem that it takes on
religious overtones, showing the depth of Wordsworth's
Calm and Free" feelings. He does not "convert" his daughter or ask anything of
her, but accepts her nature as it is.

Summary
"London, 1802"
This sonnet, with the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDE CED,
first appeared in Poems, in Two Volumes. In the first octet, the
classic sonnet format presents the scene of man and girl
walking by a calm and gentle sea in silence. The child is very
Summary
dear to the speaker. He relishes every moment being spent
This sonnet from Poems, in Two Volumes follows the rhyme
with her, "quiet ... and breathless," so that the majesty of God
scheme ABBA ABBA CDD ECE, with an initial octet and a
can make itself known. The next six lines address the child
following sestet. The poem clearly expresses great
directly and provide assurance to her that although she is
dissatisfaction with English life. The two parts of the sonnet
young and perhaps naïve in formal worship, she is close to God
begin by denouncing English vices in the management of
at all times.
religion, political power, and culture ("altar, sword, and pen"),
claiming that all aspects of contemporary life are no better
than a bog or swamp of decay. The speaker addresses the
Analysis great poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost (1667), so that
his memory can reinvigorate England with proper "manners,
Wordsworth was the biological father of a nine-year-old girl,
virtue, freedom, power." Speaking in the second person, the
Caroline, whose mother was a Frenchwoman he had a
speaker describes Milton as having had a pure soul and poetic
romantic affair with during his time in Europe. He had to return
voice "like a Star." Yet he lived a common, even ordinary life,
to England before Caroline's birth in 1792, but he maintained a
full of good cheer and purpose and achievements. This is what
close and affectionate contact with her mother, Annette Vallon,
Wordsworth's time needs.
who raised the child in France. In the summer 1802 the poet
went to the French coast with his sister to meet his former
lover and their child. They spent peaceful times becoming
acquainted, especially walking in the evening at the seashore
Analysis
near Calais on the Channel. Until the end of his life Wordsworth
Wordsworth clearly felt free to denounce what he saw as the
contributed significantly to Caroline's raising; she eventually
decay of life in his time. Having been born and raised in
married and had two children. He later married a childhood
moderate conditions, he found the means to travel while young
friend and had five children, three of whom grew to adulthood.
and support himself in order to learn of the world outside his
His wife and family, his sister and their friends, all knew of
rural native surroundings. His youth under the influence of the
Caroline, and her own children are French descendants of the
French Revolution was exciting and held promise for change
poet.
and human betterment, but in a relatively short time, he felt

The poem expresses his deep love for the child in significantly disillusioned by politics and human affairs and saw in his own

religious terms. Wordsworth greatly valued all family relations English life and society much to criticize in the hope of

as part of the human condition. They reflected man's ties to improvement.

the divine and were a source of familial wisdom and strength.

The poem is unusual in the immediate and passionate
Raised as an English Protestant, Wordsworth was not formally
invocation to long-gone John Milton, whose poetic and spiritual
religious as an adult. Annette and Caroline were French
powers from a century and half before Wordsworth thought
Catholics at a time when the branches of Christianity were
were lacking all around him. The poem speaks with remarkable
very distinct and not particularly tolerant or accepting. He and
directness and force, calling out in its first words and
Annette would have had difficulty in marrying, and political and

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
punctuation with a plea for help from the past. Educating and
improving the human condition through the insights of
literature were paramount to Wordsworth, who understood
that Milton's example was one that his own time could learn
from to overcome what he saw as the overriding selfishness
and impurity of people's motivations. Milton "dwelt apart" from
any vices of his own time. As Wordsworth often acknowledged,
he had not similarly been always free from such vices but was
always struggling to set himself on the right path to Duty and
truth, the example he sees in Milton is especially significant.
"The Solitary Reaper"
Summary
The ballad of 32 lines was published in Poems, in Two Volumes.
It has four stanzas of eight lines following ABAB CCDD except
in the irregular first and third stanzas. There, the first and third
lines are in a type of imperfect rhyme, for example, rhyming
"field" and "herself," that makes the poem stand apart from
other ballads.
The poem narrates a chance encounter in the Scottish
highlands with a woman working in the fields to harvest grain.
She sings in the local Scottish dialect a particular and haunting
song that is incomprehensible to the listener and the speaker.
The song is all the more memorable to him since it is so
mysterious. It seems to remind him of far-off lands and events,
though he has no idea why or how. The simplicity of the woman
and her song make a deep impression on the speaker, and he
feels respect for her work and her peace with herself and with
nature. He passes her by, taking the memory with him.
Analysis
The ballad is essentially romantic for the impact on the senses
and memory of something exotic and unknowable. It is typical
of Wordsworth's poetry, embodying his famous description of
"emotion recollected in tranquility." From a time removed from
direct experience, he recalls an event that actually happened
to a friend, Thomas Wilkinson, as if it were his own. The woman
alone at her constant work also calls back something deep
from her past, or that of her people, and makes of it something
beautiful.
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Poem Summaries 16
In the busy world that the poet often despaired of in his works,
such truthful and pure moments of beauty are rare. It is not he
who sings or even hears her sing, but there is a type of
companionship and sharing of all three people—the original
listener, the singer, and himself—that is deeply felt and
meaningful.
Wordsworth often wrote of solitary figures, outcasts, orphans,
even the disabled in some way (using words now considered
offensive, like "idiot" and "mad"). In his general questioning and
frequent rejection of traditional society, Wordsworth looked for
figures such as the singing, workingwoman he never saw to
represent a purer way of being. His all-encompassing
imagination could make something as humble and unknown as
the "melancholy strain" the woman sings the material for his
own poetry. It's interesting to note that he never actually
describes the song or attempts to say what it sounds like,
except that it is "thrilling" and "plaintive." Only the impression of
it counts and it is up to the reader to ponder and, perhaps,
make beauty out of in turn.
"My Heart Leaps Up" (also
called "The Rainbow")
Summary
This short poem from Poems, in Two Volumes combines the
experiences of youth and maturity. In a single stanza of nine
lines with the unusual rhyme pattern ABC CAB CDD, it
ascribes great importance to having a strong reaction to
nature. In particular, a rainbow in the sky causes the speakers
heart to "leap up." The poet remarks that he felt this way as a
child as well as an adult and hopes he may always have that
receptivity to make life worth living. The poem proclaims a
state of childhood as being, in fact, "father of the Man" as he
grows into part of a natural linkage of all the days of one's
existence.
Analysis
In a short number of lines, the poem includes key elements of
Wordsworth's beliefs. The leaping of his heart at the sight of a
rainbow comes from the beauty of seeing all colors of the
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
spectrum with the human eye. The immediate pleasure of such
an experience enchants a child seeing it for the first time, as it
may all the rest of one's life. The poet is now an adult, still
marveling at the sight. He remembers the first time he saw a
rainbow and completes the circle of his life by predicting—or
praying—that he will continue to marvel at such things as he
does now and into his old age, or he will feel his life will have
ended if he cannot.
In religious terms, the rainbow is a covenant, or agreement,
between God and His people, promising freedom from fear of
another catastrophe such as the Flood survived by Noah and
his family in the Biblical book of Genesis. The poem's line "The
Child is father of the Man" extends the poem's religious
overtones by establishing a sort of Romantic trilogy parallel to
the Christian belief in God as a three-part being. In
Wordsworth's scheme the child brings the blessing of the
response to imagination from within to serve as a fathering
entity for the adult man. All three factors—the child, the father,
and the imagination connecting them—are bound "by natural
piety."
This piety never denies validity to orthodox Christian beliefs,
but it gives the reader evidence of a type of a different holiness
centered in words. Christians pray with words, repeating
familiar prayers they have known since childhood. The
"rainbow" poem in its concise form is a spontaneous prayer, as
well. It can be read as a contrast to "The World Is Too Much
With Us," which wishes for some old creed to give faith to the
alienated modern man. In "My Heart Leaps Up," the rainbow
instead gives reassurance and hope arising from a
spontaneous, magical element of the world around us.
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
Summary
This poem originally appeared in the 1807 Poems, in Two
Volumes, and a revised version was published in Wordsworth's
Collected Poems in 1815. It has four six-line stanzas with an
ABABCC pattern. The poem relates the experience of a
narrator who is walking alone along a lake bordered by what
appear to be vast numbers of daffodils. His movement is
overshadowed by the intense activity of the flowers, which
dance and whirl together with the motion of the water. As he
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Poem Summaries 17
watches, he is struck by what seems to be the laughing mood
of the flowers and their energy. The memory stays with him
long afterward. When he falls into deep or absent thought, in
"vacant or in pensive mood," the daffodils "flash[es] upon [his]
inward eye" and fills his heart with such pleasure that it
"dances with the daffodils."
Analysis
This famous poem contrasts the solitude of the poet with the
uncountable multitudes of nature. Its lines are built upon the
differences of states of being. The poet is at first lost in
loneliness so deep that he can compare it only to a remote
cloud. He finds himself wandering, without purpose or
direction, like a random apparition. Suddenly he is thrust back
into life and motion by "a crowd, a host" of flowers. The
intensity of their color must have struck him, since not all
flowers are as bright or elaborately formed as daffodils, a high-
intensity yellow with numerous petals and a deep sculpted
center. As he watches they come to life and assume emotions
as well as motion. They seem to laugh and exult with glee in
their vividness—the word "dance" or "dancing" is repeated four
times, three for the flowers and once for the accompanying
waters.
The lonely gazing of the poet contrasts vividly in a negative
sense with the vital life of the plants and waves. By the last
stanza his quietude has returned, but the solitude he admits to
as he lies alone is not loneliness but a "bliss," as he has
impressed the life of nature on his imagination. The poet does
not act immediately, if at all, to his memory. He does not say
that the flowers will inspire him endlessly to write many poems,
nor that he remains as happy as he was on originally seeing the
daffodils. But he apparently has the time to reflect in peace
and quiet about the memory, and in fact he has written this
poem to record its flow of joy to himself.
"Ode: Intimations of
Immortality"
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
Summary
This long, multi-part poem, originally called simply "Ode,"
appeared in Poems, in Two Volumes. It moves in over 200 lines
through many stanzas of different lengths and rhymes to cover
the entire range of a human life.
Wordsworth prefaces the poem by quoting his own "My Heart
Leaps Up":
The child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural
piety.
The first stanzas of the "Ode" recall happier times when as a
child all seemed sunny and hopeful but which are now for the
poet much darker. "Things which I have seen I can now see no
more" trouble him, since he misses the undiluted optimism of
childhood when a falling-off of powers and pleasures in life
seemed impossible. So glorious is youth that the poet, writing
as an adult, may believe "our birth is but a sleep and a
forgetting," meaning the soul emerging at birth with the body
has already been part of some other existence. It carries with
us some traces and shadows of a previous state nearer to God
who endows each with "clouds of glory." The glorious clouds
accompany the child into earthly life, only to fall away and be
replaced with the disappointments of maturity.
Each stage of growing up is described negatively as taking on
the limitations and roles that one must play. As he grows, the
poet says, he must learn these disappointing lessons while
keeping inside vague memories and visions of the exalted state
he previously led and hopes to find again.
The poem describes a continual tension between the
difficulties of life and the falling away from "that immortal sea
that brought us hither," which always remains a beautiful ideal.
The adult must find his own "philosophic mind," even in old age,
to cope with the inevitable loss of childhood. Nature offers him
the refuge he seeks as he closes the poem by saying:
To me the meanest flower that
blows can give
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Poem Summaries 18
Thoughts that do often lie too
deep for tears.
Analysis
Wordsworth worked and reworked this long poem over time. It
contains much that is essential to his mode of thought and
belief. He understands that children share unique powers not
eternally available to adults. In that sense, the child is a father
or wiser original of the adult —a point he also makes in the
poem he quotes, "My Heart leaps Up." Children do not think of
dying or limitations on their time or powers and may see the
external world only as part of themselves. As they leave behind
childhood and are shown playing the necessary roles of
society and family, they are beset with questions and doubts
unknown and foreign to them originally.
The tone of the poem is intensely spiritual, indicating a
previous existence that is unknowable. Immortality can only be
"intimated" or hinted at, guessed, or sensed. The poet claims
growing into maturity involves engaging with the external world
more than a child still finding its way would, since the young
believe their potential lies within.
The poem obviously comes from an adult mind, not a child's,
for it is up to the grown poet to devise poetry as a means of
discovering what is left of himself and affirming his existence.
Children are portrayed as not needing to ask questions and go
back into memory, even involuntarily, to find a way to
understand their place. Their memories come from them, not
the reverse. That task is reserved for later, when in tranquility
time permits the adult the power to write about and mine his
existence.
The famous line "Nothing can bring back the hour / Of
splendor in the grass" reveals an acceptance of loss, since
experience takes the place of first-hand excitements.
The line became widely known in the mid-20th century when
used as a title for a highly romantic Hollywood film about the
tragic disappointments of life for small-town American
teenagers exploring maturity in a restrictive atmosphere. In
1961, when the film appeared, the charged sexual
suggestiveness of Wordsworth's line may have changed the
purer meaning he intended of a lost innocence and wisdom
combined. It did, however, show the intensity of life the young
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
seek and spoke to an emerging American teenage generation.
The poem notes with acceptance or resignation "the clouds
that gather round the setting sun" as life draws to a close, but
it urges comfort and consolation for what may be remembered
and still felt. The adult has "what remains behind; / ... In the
faith that looks through death." Wordsworth even thanks the
human heart for its "tenderness, its joys, and fears," since this
proves the adult, and eventually the aged person, can still have
highly meaningful "thoughts that do often lie too deep for
tears." The sufferings of the heart can find their peace in age
and philosophical acceptance, the poem concludes.
In his autobiographical verse Wordsworth will often describe
the fears and terrors that did strike him when the external
world touched his youth. But in the "Ode," written as a young
adult mid-way through his life, he can place himself in a larger
universal frame. He sees in the "Ode" that the human fate and
condition are shared by all in an existence he can only assume
is not all there is in creation. So, shedding great amounts of
tears, as children often do, must cease when the adult comes
to see the thoughts and fears that grown-ups learn to deal with
and absorb. The "Ode" is full of such tensions and doubts, like
great sadness too touching even for (childish) tears.
"Surprised by Joy—Impatient
as the Wind"
Summary
This sonnet is a later work, published in the 1815 Collected
Poems, with 14 lines divided into an octet and a sestet.
"Surprised by Joy" portrays a deep sadness, moving from joy in
the first line to acceptance in the last lines of final loss of his
"heart's best treasure." An unspecified death has taken
someone to a "silent Tomb," and yet the speaker was able to
feel some joy in an experience that he wished to share. But
grief prevents him from doing so, since he realizes the person
he wants to tell of his joy is gone. The sestet reflects that
despite the immense sorrow brought to him now of the loss
that spoils his enjoyment of the experience, he has also
forgotten the initial, even deeper sense of pain from knowing
he will never see her again. That memory overwhelms him in its
immediacy and carries him backward in time.
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Poem Summaries 19
Analysis
Wordsworth's beloved youngest daughter from his marriage to
Mary Hutchinson had died suddenly in June 1812. Following a
long period of mourning, when he first felt connected to life
again, he was brought back to grief by the sense of
permanence surrounding the loss. In the poem his deep
parental sorrow contrasts with the lively first line. Surprise was
often important to the poet. He valued spontaneity and
immediate reaction to experiences, as these feelings became
stored in memory and would flow with genuine feeling at the
moment of poetic creation. Romantic lyricism favored
immediacy of reaction rather than a controlled or planned
adherence to behavior, so there appears to be value in his
enthusiastic behavior to whatever experience caused him to
feel a "transport" of emotion outside of himself.
However, his interest in human psychology leads him to realize
that the loss of his daughter is something that will remain with
him even if he might one day move to a point where he could
enjoy life again. He is still susceptive to the loss and even
senses puzzlement with himself and guilt for having been
"blind" to her memory. He permitted himself a rapid entry of joy
that took him away from the memory of her as fast as a wind
might blow the air. He feels very deep sorrow again, yet he is
able to classify and distance himself from it with a comparison
of the greater distress he felt when she died.
It may be a way of coping with loss to measure how dreadful
the absence is on some imagined scale. The child's death
seems bound to be always the deepest pain, so perhaps as
time goes on he will amass other checks on joy in realizing
Catherine is gone. He may then find some consolation in his
remaining life by dealing with them in a similar manner of
analyzing his feelings.
The Prelude
Summary
The long epic poem is known as The Prelude, but Wordsworth
had never decided on any title as such at the time of his death
in 1850. The poet referred to it as his "Poem to Coleridge,"
subtitled "Growth of a Poet's Mind." He saw it as a different
sort of epic, not like the classical ones dealing with the exploits
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
of a hero in the external world. His poem was about his poetic
sensibility as it developed from experiences from his early
childhood on. Wordsworth worked on it for years and initially
completed the poem in 1805, but he revised it continually for
the rest of his life. The 1805 edition has 13 sections called
books, while the 1850 edition has 14 books—he divided Book
10 into two parts. Both editions are studied today, though this
study guide focuses on the version with 13 books.
The thirteen books of The Prelude are different lengths and in
hundreds of lines. All the parts of the epic are in unrhymed
blank verse, related in a conversational style and for the most
part in the natural diction and speech patterns of ordinary
people. Its stanzas do not follow patterns, unlike those in his
many lyrical poems.
Each book carries a title pertaining to a period of his life, his
hopes, and his experiences, as well as other information. In
totality the poem is a record of his emotional, spiritual, and
lyrical development from earliest times and his interactions
with those closest to him, especially his sister Dorothy and his
collaboration with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The
narrative thread of his life is related with repeated reflections
on the nature of humanity in general. Strong belief in people
and their powers to create lives for themselves is mixed at
times, especially at the end of the poem, with praise for the
divine order.
Books 1 and 2, titled "Introduction—Childhood and School-
Time" and "School-Time (continued)," focus on the poet's
childhood and youth. He has left living abroad to return to his
native area in northwest England, and there he will find the
most appropriate and meaningful themes for his writing. He
speaks of his first years and experiences such as feeling guilty
for temporarily stealing a boat and enjoying a sublime pleasure
in ice-skating. He describes how he came to understand nature
more and more and to rely on it in his imagination, which now
takes him back to those times.
By Book 3, "Residence at Cambridge," he is mature and
attending classes at Cambridge University. His times as a
student are mixed, since he does not fully concentrate on the
courses or even his fellow students. He enjoys their company
but also treasures his solitude. At university he comes to feel
his calling to develop into the poet who is writing The Prelude.
He says, "Each man is memory to himself." Wordsworth spends
much time traveling at every opportunity, since the classroom
restricts him, even though he enjoys great books and the
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Poem Summaries 20
traditions of the university.
Book 4, "Summer Vacation," finds Wordsworth vacationing and
growing in his imagination. He tries to understand himself and
his shadowy perceptions more. He also relates the incident of
a brief meeting with a poor, wandering discharged soldier, one
of many such solitary people he will come across.
Book 5, "Books," continues his episodic education and narrates
the influence the visionary poet Coleridge has had on him. He
describes a particular vision he has had, a strange combination
of the Spanish epic Don Quixote (by Cervantes, published in
1605 and 1615) he had been reading and a dream of a
mysterious Arab on a camel. The Arab gives prophecies about
the natural world and of man, art, and the quest for meaning.
The book develops the theme that men are caught between
the dream of immortality and acceptance of limitations. The
death of the poet's mother leads him to speak at length about
the importance of a nature-based education for children, away
from too much reliance on book learning. Rather, his belief is in
some sort of previous existence in which children have already
absorbed knowledge from nature, their "native continent."
Book 6, "Cambridge and the Alps," moves from Wordsworth's
experiences in England to abroad. He leaves his education for
other places and narrates long excursions and hikes in the
European Alps at the borderlands of France, Switzerland, and
Italy. He and his friend manage to cross the highest mountain
pass almost by chance, showing the supremacy of the
Imagination. He is thrilled as well to be in France, where the
Revolution has already changed human life greatly.
Book 7, "Residence in London," returns the poet to London
after his adventures in Europe. It explores in detail the urban
life so different from nature, and shows all aspects of streets,
fairs, theatres, stores, churches, and the multitude of daily life
at that time, c. 1795. There is a continual contrast of the
Imagination with Reality.
Book 8, "Retrospect: Love of Nature Leading to Love of
Mankind," alternates descriptions of London life and rural
existence in the country Wordsworth so loved. Great contrasts
are shown, especially the long tradition of the shepherd's
trade, from classical times to Wordsworth's own present. The
poet relates a love of nature to a love for mankind—not in an
idealized state, but the everyday life of both individuals and
society.
Book 9, "Residence in France," brings the poet back to Europe.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
France is in the midst of the turmoil of its revolution, but
Wordsworth does not pay as much attention to political events
as to human ones. His friendship with the officer Michel
Beaupuy is very important because of all he learns from the
young man before he dies in the fighting and violence.
Book 10 (in some editions, this is split into Books 10 and 11, and
each subsequent book has a later numbering scheme)
continues "Residence in France" with details about the internal
struggle in the country of the factions involved in the
Revolution. Wordsworth is disillusioned by the failure of reform
without violence, and he returns to England to find his country
and France are now officially enemies at war. He will devote his
time to political and philosophical readings to build his
optimism in the future of mankind. He does not give up his
beliefs in liberty and a better life, and famously remembers "to
be young was heaven" during the days of the Revolution.
Book 11, "Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored,"
gives personal insights into the poet's mental and emotional
struggle following his return to England and the need to rebuild
his life as a poet. He moves between Reason and Passion and
tries to find the balance. Finally he finds meaning in "spots of
time," memories of significant minor events he witnessed long
past. These now give direction and inspiration for his art.
Book 12, "Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored
(concluded)," is the continuation of Book 11. It includes
Wordsworth's solitary reflections on historic Salisbury Plain in
the south of England, which he refers to as "Sarum's Plain." He
contemplates the ancients who built Stonehenge, the
prehistoric monument made of standing stones that is located
on the plain, and the varieties of human nature.
Book 13, "Conclusion," ends the epic poem as Wordsworth
repeats his great love for nature as supreme teacher and
authority. The Imagination is able to remember emotions and
reflect on them to find meaning. The poet gains supreme
insight as he climbs Mt. Snowdon in Wales—an experience
from 1791 that he places here for its metaphorical power—and
sees light and truth. He praises again all he has explored and
learned with Coleridge, his sister, and the great minds of the
past.
Analysis
Nicholas Halmi, the editor of a critical collection of the poet's
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Poem Summaries 21
work, declared, "Wordsworth thought of the poem less as an
epic ... than as an extended and essentially private
conversation poem addressed to Coleridge and seeking to
justify Coleridge's faith in his ability."
The Prelude was composed by a 30-year-old man looking back
on the effects of nature on his development as an individual
living in society and as an artist. It unfolds as an extended
discourse with himself and those closest to him (especially his
sister and his best friend), and it explores his growth into the
figure who could make an epic from a poet's life. While the
public was familiar with many of Wordsworth's lyrical works,
The Prelude was not, itself, well known during his life. It was
future readers who would come to understand its complexity.
The poem is sometimes called an introduction or
autobiography of the life of the poet. With its emphasis on the
subconscious mind and the long-term effects of experiences
from childhood that reappear as visions and dreams, it has
been seen as having psychological and philosophical insights
on the nature of humanity. It is not systematic or
straightforward in time or organization, but at the end it makes
a synthesis of the universal spirit of the divine and the power of
poetry and the imagination to express it.
In the Romantic period, with its emphasis on individual feelings,
using literature to "confess" was a frequent approach. The very
first "Confessions" were deeply religious, written in Latin by St.
Augustine in 400 CE. The saint confessed his childhood sins
as a way to justify his conversion to become one of the
"fathers" of the Catholic Church. Centuries later, the French
writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) published his
Confessions in two parts, in 1782 and 1789, and he influenced
Wordsworth and others who followed. Rousseau also
confessed to youthful failings, in his case humiliating ones, but
wrote of his development into a philosopher who was also very
concerned with education of children and the purification of
negative influences from society.
Following Wordsworth's example, other Romantic and
Symbolist poets in the 19th century often spoke freely and
frankly of their lives. Charles Baudelaire in France and Walt
Whitman in the United States used their lyrics to describe all
manner of extreme personal experiences, often related to
substance or sexual topics. The process of confessing events
in one's life and using literature, especially poetry, as a means
to explore either the individual or a representation of men and
women of society is now very much accepted as part of
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
literary expression.
Wordsworth explores both himself and his surrounding society
in The Prelude. Whereas the first books of the poem often
relate his youthful fears and indiscretions, he included in the
final books of the poem more mature information about the
political situation in France and England, changing and
extending the arc of the autobiography to cover the world
around him. He had a firm sense of time and place but did not
follow them in a regular fashion. Imagination was the key to
reflection on experience in all eras and locations of his life. The
Prelude is a "profession" of the poetry he felt he had been
created and chosen to write.
The Prelude, Book 1
Summary
Book 1 opens the narrative with the poet deciding to leave his
life outside England and return to his native area in the Lake
District, away from cities and more open to the elements.
There he will be able to develop the philosophic ideas for his
poems by being in close proximity to the land and nature he
knows best. Book 1 gives details on the many possibilities for
poetic inspiration that Wordsworth considered, "the hope / Of
active days, of dignity and thought, / Of prowess in an
honorable field." He thinks of British or classical themes and
various approaches that would provide subject matter and
inspire his thoughts. Ultimately, he realizes that returning to the
River Derwent in the northwest of England, in the heart of the
Lake District, he might find the best sources for memories that
could lead to new poetry. There he might find "a dark / Invisible
workmanship that reconciles / Discordant elements" and leads
him to "the harmony of music" he seeks. He recalls all the
terrors and the excitements of his youth there, giving details
about an incident in which one evening he impulsively
"borrowed" the boat shepherd left tied up on the lakeshore. He
now recognizes this as a youthful act of thievery that, in fact,
terrorized him. He felt himself pursued by the cliff at the shore,
which seemed to follow him and make him aware of his
transgression until he turned around and brought the boat
back where it belonged.
The rest of Book 1 describes his early childhood and his
maturation as a schoolboy and the ways in which he went
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Poem Summaries 22
beyond more traditional education and began opening himself
to nature and truths of existence. As he grew in age and size,
his soul also grew under divine influence and inspiration, and
nature was his primary companion among his "boyish sports."
His education and stimulating home life opened a world to him
of joy and eternal beauty, "drinking in a pure / Organic pleasure
from the lines / Of curling mist" and other beauty in the land
and clouds above. He speaks of the journey ahead of him as a
process of creation and finding the proper themes for his
poem. In his words, "Gleams like the flashing of a shield. The
earth / And common face of Nature" gave him access to
"rememberable things."
Analysis
The first book of The Prelude is an exciting and passionate
introduction to the person Wordsworth became. Writing at the
midpoint of his life and remembering events of his early
childhood and schoolboy years clearly gives him pleasure and
vindication for the themes he chooses to pursue.
Book 1 begins with a search worthy of an adult roaming the
world in ways a child could not. But he soon shifts into great
detail about events that, in fact, only a child could be excited
about. No adult would spend such time fleeing across a lake
thinking he was pursued by a moving cliff, but to a child this
fear goes beyond the real into an impression never to be
forgotten. Fear and joy both drive the creative impulse in
Wordsworth the poet, and he finds the way as an adult to
conquer any possible lethargy and fear—and, perhaps, residual
guilt at having taken a boat, even temporarily, that was not his
property. The book makes it clear in its invocation of Coleridge
as "O Friend"—the fellow poet who inspired him to find his
calling—that he will spare no effort or detail to give a full
portrait of the influences that have worked upon him to solidify
that calling. Just as, in his imagination, a menacing form can
follow him in the stolen boat, so these influences can be made
into the stuff of literature.
The last stanzas explain that he chose to begin his epic very
early in his life to give as complete an indication as possible of
his poetic path. He asks his dearest "Friend" to bear with him
as he may be guilty of having "lengthened out with fond and
feeble tongue a tedious tale." An individual life is thus
recognized as perhaps inspirational only to the one who has
lived it. This concept is, however, a limitation on his theory of
poetry. If Romantic verse is so deeply felt by the person
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
creating it, how will others share in the experiences, no matter
how common they may be? Wordsworth knows he may expect
"harsh judgments," but perhaps selfishly he notes that the 600-
plus lines in the first book may have completed a circle of
remembrance of childhood to reinvigorate the adult mind. He
admits the theme will be "the story of my life, the road lies plain
before me." His search for an epic theme sought in all aspects
of the past thus comes down best, he confesses, to himself.
The Prelude, Book 2
Summary
Book 2 deepens the story of Wordsworth's education. He
came to greatly value time spent in solitude as a way of gaining
knowledge and depth at the same time as he joined other boys
in boisterous and often very physical explorations of the
beauties of nature in the lakes and mountains. Like a baby
nursed by its mother, he found great sources of fortitude and
wisdom in absorbing all that was around him. It is this
nourishment that helps him to build his inner self and, in time,
to offer that self to others in friendship and love. He achieves a
balance of the external and internal, being acted upon and
taking action, which develops the visionary ability he will need
all his life as a poet.
He comments wistfully on the passage of time as inevitable
change alters the conditions of life and gives rise to the start of
adult disillusionment. He notes in his native market town that a
familiar local figure who was a foundation stone of his
childhood vision of life has been removed, and the little stall
from which she sold everyday items in a humble booth has
been replaced by a "smart Assembly-room ... elbowing the
ground that had been ours."
Analysis
Book 2 is a vital part of The Prelude because it moves along
swiftly from childhood into adolescence and prepares to insert
the youthful Wordsworth into the university atmosphere at
Cambridge, where he will fully enter the world of others.
As time moved on and his adventures increased and matured,
the poet was able to find meaning in comparing the process to
the one by which he and other babies are nourished. The child
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Poem Summaries 23
will become the young man, able to give as he once was given
what he needed. He sees his maturation as a manifestation of
the truth that the universe is not a state of passive reception,
but the proper balance of action taken. His growth feeds his
poetic vision: he is like "an agent of the one great Mind /
Create, creator and receiver both." That is, the imagination of
the poet receives impressions and transforms them to mirror
the great and infinite Mind it perceives in nature. Seeing
himself distinct from his inspirational friend Coleridge, with his
more urban upbringing and sophistication, Wordsworth, at the
conclusion of the book, rededicates himself to nature. "In
Thee," he says, "I find / A never-failing principle of joy, / And
purest passion." At this point, in a roundabout fashion, he has
taken the reader through important and indicative moments in
his formation, to the point where his dedication to making an
epic of his life will get underway.
The Prelude, Book 4
Summary
The events of Book 4 are significant because they lead to the
poet's eventual realization of what will become his special
vocation—his calling to poetry. The book describes his return
to his native area for a summer break after a time spent at
university, where his inner needs were not met in the company
of others. He feared that the wisdom and beauties he had
absorbed as a child had faded forever, leaving him ill at ease
with his adult self. He knows he must reconnect with the
feelings of his purer youth and with himself as well as with
others. He feels a kinship with ordinary people and begins to
sense his task to record his thoughts while he can.
The Prelude is epic in its scope but has no real hero, and the
lines reveal a kind of modesty and humility toward nature. His
thoughts are in constant flux while he is young and forming his
views. He can well remember the sense of everything changing
around him as he moves from the previous state of quiet unity
to a sense of things passing and blurring his senses like
someone bending "from the side / Of a slow-moving boat upon
the breast / Of a still water, solacing himself / With such
discoveries as his eye can make," At the point of taking a break
from his formal studies, he is still forming an understanding of
himself and others. Truth and reason are blurred. The poet still
knows man to be a "creature great and good," but the actuality
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
of it all is doubtful.
Analysis
The period described in the book is made up of various turning
points and perspectives. It is the like a person sitting in a boat
gliding over life and seeing only indistinct and perplexing partial
elements of a whole. The young person, who has recently been
in lectures at a great university, is far from certainty in any
knowledge.
The Prelude, as a whole, does not have great or heroic
moments or deeds but, rather, an ongoing honesty and humility
in dealing with things Wordsworth cannot yet fathom. The poet
is the first to admit, "it would demand / Some skill, and longer
time than may be spared" to reach the level of self-knowledge
he desires. He has raised the issues, and he is the one charting
his own development. Still, he willingly admits to confusions
about the nature of man and his own self. In the succeeding
hundreds of lines he gives a detailed account of being part of
lively groups of the young. Yet he separates himself when
nature repeats its glories for his eyes and senses and gives
him a heart full of feeling chosen, a "blessedness" in being, as
he puts it, "A dedicated Spirit." In his supposed vacation, he
finds a path to a path not yet clear, but in process.
The Prelude, Book 6
Summary
Book 6 recalls, from the perspective of a decade later, the
exciting adventure young Wordsworth had exploring on the
European continent with a friend in 1790. The unmoving
mountains and their majesty inspired him to spend time in
France, Switzerland, and Italy in the highest elevations of
Europe.
Wordsworth purposely does not narrate the trip step-by-step
or day-by-day but, instead, gives the general sense of the
impressions made on the young man. Mount Blanc, on the
French-Italian border, especially thrills the travelers at first
sight. The poet experiences the purest sense of both emotion
and reason, and he relishes it both alone and with his hiking
companion. They continue their ascent and eventual descent
without realizing that in fact they have gone through the
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Poem Summaries 24
Simplon Pass and crossed the mountain. The experience
somehow remains a significant and transcendent
accomplishment. He comes to understand that it is perhaps
even more exciting to have traversed the Pass without
knowing it because his imagination can now reconstruct the
scene and the sight. Nature triumphs when men permit it to
give them impressions, and the power of imagination is primary
when acted upon. The poet feels an "invisible world of
Greatness" in which hopes of "our destiny, our nature, and our
home" are realized even in the disappointment of having
missed the crossing "as in a cloud."
Being in France during the triumphant early days of the
Revolution then sweeping the country also gives the poet the
greatest reasons for joy. He hopes the Revolution will bring
dramatic change in the human condition, a hope he attempts to
convey in his poetry.
Analysis
Book 6 has a memorable sense of anticlimax. In a way that
might strike a modern reader as up-to-date, Wordsworth
undercuts his great achievements and shows, instead, a human
compromise. He accepts an experience even when, or perhaps
especially when, it does not measure up to expectation.
Something odd and unexpected exists in the story of the poet
and his friend wandering rather cluelessly through a famous
site. They, in fact, have to be told by an unnamed peasant man
that they have gone through the highest pass on the Continent
without knowing it. Wordsworth was not famous for a sense of
humor or absurdity, yet the passage has a kind of situational
irony to it as the heroic is replaced at this summit of
development with some unsophisticated anti-heroism.
The reader may find it hard to believe that such a feat can be
done in a kind of mental cloud and can wonder what effect
Wordsworth hopes to achieve by including it. A strong contrast
exists with his sheer excitement at being in France at the very
moment of the Revolution, with its great potential for changing
the conditions of life, and then climbing to the top of the
continent and failing to see where he was. Wordsworth being
Wordsworth, he can process the experience in terms of the
unlimited powers of Imagination and the wisdom to accept that
anticipated events are seldom matched by actuality. He can
still end the book with a passionate invocation to the "ever-
living Universe / And independent spirit of pure youth" that
somehow brought him to such a moment of perception, even if
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
his human limitations are ever-present.
The Prelude, Book 11
Summary
In Book 11 the poet moves from depression and despair over
the breaking of his hopes for great events to come from the
French Revolution, to the realization that those hopes were
false. France and England went to war as enemies, and his
dream for the betterment of man seemed empty to him.
Wordsworth was saved from deepest despair by his
developing love for Mary Hutchinson, whom he had long known
and who became his wife and mother to his children. She
brought him back by her humility and simplicity and her
goodness and love for nature.
The famous image of the "spots of time" appears in this book.
The image conveys the idea that memory can soothe the
external disturbances of the mind, just as poetry lives on long
after events recorded in it have taken place. The poet can see
himself rescued by the sensitive nature of his creative soul
when he recalls two specific occurrences. At first he
remembers coming upon the site of an execution when he was
a small child on horseback and being deeply afraid when the
scene is worsened by the figure of a woman being tossed
about by the wind as she attempts to carry a water jug. Then,
he relates, he experienced at Christmas time a particularly
depressing view atop a misty mountain, only to learn soon
afterward that his father had died and he was an orphan.
Wordsworth's faith and human connectedness enable him to
deal later with such memories, revisit the places, and transform
them to affirm life.
Analysis
"There are in our existence spots of time" is one of
Wordsworth's most significant observations and beliefs. It may
lack the immediate and personal drama of great joy found in an
idea such as the "clouds of glory" found in the "Ode." But in its
abstraction, it is also very real. The poet must dig very deeply
into his past, which he never hesitates doing. And in this book,
as The Prelude begins its final arc of development, he
synthesizes many important points into a single strong and
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Poem Summaries 25
general observation. Now it is clear why he has spent the time
and energy narrating moments of awareness and clarification.
He has experienced doubts and delusions, disappointment and
dark fears, but throughout it all, the goal has remained clear.
The "spot of time" is vital because it has invigorating strength
against "false opinion and contentious thought." Such
resistance is important for Wordsworth because he has gone
out of his way to engage opinions and troubling thoughts all his
life. He senses that if he continues to do this, he will eventually
get past the memories he rejects and, instead, gain an
illumination of what is good and lasting. So while a "spot" of
time may appear minute or less than the high point of a
mountain, it nevertheless "lifts us up when fallen."
Again, as happens so often in Wordsworth's poetry, it is
childhood to which we are returned through spots of time.
Childhood provides moments that are captured in memory
when the content is least and the receptivity the greatest.
Later, the more experienced adult returns to those moments
and meditates with grown-up abilities on how they have
worked on his consciousness and what direction they may
point him to now. Finding the "spots" is not an easy task, as
The Prelude shows in its thousands of lines, but the adult
makes the strong effort to get back to a childhood vantage
point and is richly repaid.
The Prelude, Book 13
Summary
The final book of The Prelude describes the power of
Imagination as the highest faculty of humans. In 1791
Wordsworth and a friend climbed the tallest mountain in Wales,
Mt. Snowdon (c. 1000 meters). Over a decade later, he
remembers the event as Book 13 begins. With their guide and a
few stray animals, they ascend in bad weather. Suddenly the
fog breaks, and they see the majestic view of a bright moon
above and illuminated mist and mountain leading to the sea
beyond. The poet sees the scene with the greatest delight,
seeming to find in it an imagined presence of his own soul and
a confirmation of the presence of God or some other divine
force.
In such emotions he finds signs of truth and hope. He looks
back on his life from the older viewpoint and justifies his
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Quotes 26

prioritizing love over fear. Wordsworth exalts the role of
Imagination as the theme of the The Prelude, a path to endless
life and the Infinite. He is so affected by the visual impact of
the moon and the mountain that "like a flash" he looks at the
scene and also recognizes the power of his mind to be free of
life's negativity. Instead he can find the "absolute strength of
Imagination," which has been his goal throughout all the books
of the poem.
Analysis
It would be difficult to overemphasize the lyricism and joy of
the concluding pages of The Prelude. Wordsworth has been in
such deep communion with himself as well as with Dorothy and
Coleridge, his two great influences. He has examined himself
for all his heroic and anti-heroic, even blameworthy acts. Now,
when the final illumination occurs, it is much more than
success in climbing the highest mountain he can find. This
"flash" is also critical in making the final realization that
Wordworth's poet's mind is itself a peak he has been trying to
scale. As the mist falls away and the moon shines with magical
force, the validity of Wordsworth's acceptance of being a
poet—a soul "dedicated" to thousands of words and
lines—becomes unquestionable. "We have traced the stream /
From darkness ... and followed it to light / And open day," he
proclaims. The soul finds and expresses love as Imagination
recalls "spots of time" and events. The long process ends in
Book 13 with love conquering fear and doubt so that "the mind
of Man becomes / A thousand times more beautiful than the
earth / On which he dwells."
This ending is perhaps surprising since so much of the poem
exults over the beauty found in nature. But now the final aim of
The Prelude becomes an acceptance of the solace found in a
beauty exalted somewhere above the earth. To quote the
poem's last line, it is found in a place of "substance and of
fabric more divine," that is, in man. Wordsworth has shown he
is that man, but he need not be the only one.
Ironically, the adult speaker thinks he understands death in a
way the simple child cannot. But while he repeats the
traditional view of heaven for dead souls, the girl has utter
conviction her siblings are still with her.
"These beauteous forms, /
Through a long absence, have not
been to me / As is a landscape to
a blind man's eye."
— Narrator, "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey"
The poem focuses on the return to the abbey after a long
absence, during which the speaker fears he has lost his
youthful powers of emotion and perception. But he discovers
great meaning still and realizes he has not lost the vision.
"Nay, do not take it so—I see /
That these are things of which I
need not speak."
— Narrator, "Michael"
The intense emotions of the paternal bond go beyond what
can be said. As in much of Wordsworth, there can be
intimations of things for which no words would be adequate.
Michael must not try and console Luke as he is sending him
away from his home, even for a good reason, but the gesture
signals the family's end, and the son senses it. In the "Ode to
Immortality," the poet in the last line speaks of "thoughts that
do often lie too deep for tears," which describes this scene in
"Michael" as well. The absence of tears is more eloquent than
their presence.

g Quotes
"'Oh mercy!' to myself I cried, / 'If
"A simple child ... / What should it
Lucy should be dead!'"
know of death?"
— Narrator, "We Are Seven" — Narrator, "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known"

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Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
The poem shows the power of impressions on the mind and
imagination. With no indication of the condition of the beloved
Lucy, the poem gives a sense of enchanted danger when the
moon vanishes and painful thoughts of death emerge in a
"sweet dream." The dream may or may not be an illusion.
"Awful Power! / I call thee: I myself
commend / Unto thy guidance
from this hour."
— Narrator, "Ode to Duty"
The poet resolves to lead his life with more of a sense of moral
duty, even self-sacrifice, in his role as a receiver and also
creator of truth. The "power" may be awful, but it is also full of
awe.
"This city now doth, like a garment,
wear / The beauty of the morning;
silent, bare."
— Narrator, "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3,
1802"
The observer of London marvels at its seemingly unspoiled
state in the early morning hours. Before the mobs fill the street
on the way to work and smoke fouls the air, the humble streets
seem dressed in great finery.
"The world is too much with us;
late and soon / Getting and
spending, we lay waste our
powers."
— Narrator, "The World Is Too Much With Us"
This famous line expresses an alienation from the time in which
the speaker exists. There is no escape, for both late and soon
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Quotes 27
the problem exists: people think only of material objects and
have lost the exertion and awareness of their powers in the
universe.
"Listen! The mighty Being is
awake, / And doth with his eternal
motion make / A sound like
thunder—everlastingly."
— Narrator, "It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free"
While walking along the seashore with the daughter he has
only seen once, and in a foreign country, the poet feels a unity
with her. Both can be in God's presence, he says, since that
power is eternal and everlasting. The beauty conquers all
divisions.
"Milton! Thou should'st be living at
this hour: / England hath need of
thee: she is a fen."
— Narrator, "London, 1802"
This very specific poem makes a loud call for social and
political reform by calling on the epic poet John Milton more
than a century after his death to help rescue England and its
culture from an odious swamp.
"The music in my heart I bore, /
Long after it was heard no more."
— Narrator, "The Solitary Reaper"
Although the man hearing the reaper bending over her work in
the field cannot understand a word she is singing, he is struck
and taken by the beauty of her song's strange power. He
respects her and her exotic melancholy music, and he will
carry it in his heart into the future, like a poet.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
"The child is father of the man."
— Narrator, "My Heart Leaps Up" (also called "The Rainbow")
This essential insight from Wordsworth is part of his belief that
adults must recognize the roots of their lives and that creative
powers do not lie in their present selves but in connecting to
their past. The poet consistently holds children to be closer to
God and truth, as their imagination is purest. Adults, both
middle-aged and elderly, are descended from the early days of
open perceptions and should try to recapture those insights.
"They flash upon that inward eye /
Which is the bliss of solitude."
— Narrator, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
The poet had been lonely until being kept riotous company by
dancing flowers waves. These images from nature lightened
his mood at the time. But he most realizes the power of nature
when later, and alone again, his mind can rediscover the vision.
It is this inward eye that is most precious for poetry.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a
forgetting: / ... our life's Star, /
Hath had elsewhere its setting."
— Narrator, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
Wordsworth expresses a mystical sense of the origin of
individual life. Children at birth are said to carry with them
some intimations of other knowledge so that they recognize
things as beautiful even without knowing them. This memory
seems to connect with some other existence, but the most he
can say about it is that we come from God "trailing clouds of
glory." Nothing will vanish forever, just as people do not come
from nothing, hence the "intimation" of immortality.
"What dwelling shall receive me?
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Symbols 28
In what Vale / Shall be my harbor?
Underneath what grove / shall I
take up my home?"
— Narrator, The Prelude, Book 1
The massive epic begins the journey of the poet in a backward
sense. He is now grown but still seeking a place to locate his
deepest feelings about life. He sees that he will wander always
in search of the right "vale" and theme, and he begins with
these words the lifetime search that will fill the long poem he
dedicates to Coleridge to show his poetic development.
"A lasting inspiration ... / what we
have loved / Others will love, and
we may teach them how."
— Narrator, The Prelude, Book 13
Among the final of the thousands of lines in The Prelude, here
Wordsworth recognizes that he and his generation are not the
first nor will be the last. As in the "Ode to Immortality," he
knows other poets will attempt to express their feelings and
may succeed: "Other palms are won," he says, but he would
like his work to be an inspiration for others. He wants to show
how love can conquer fear in the maturation of a life open to
receiving impressions from nature and ready to act according
to duty, order, and truth.
l Symbols
Light
In the pastoral ballad "Michael" the poet uses objects relating
to light to symbolize the determination and faithful nature of
the couple as they cling to their land. Isabel hangs an old rustic
lamp from the chimney to provide light in the cottage. It
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
becomes known all over the region to those who see it, and
they call the home "The Evening Star." Just as that star in the
sky provides direction and possibly hope to viewers, the simple
structure of their cottage is there as a beacon. All know and
revere it, as it never alters.
The son, Luke, at first also guided by the light of faith and
determination, undercuts the power of the family when he fails
to save the home by earning money to discharge a debt. He
never returns to his faithful parents, and they eventually die. All
is obliterated of their presence except for the stone left by
father Michael to give Luke a reason for coming back and the
huge oak beneath which the father and son sat to shear the
sheep. The light of The Evening Star is extinguished, like so
much else in the life of the country people, becoming a symbol
of change and loss.
The Rainbow
In the brief lyric "My Heart Leaps Up," Wordsworth gives the
reader another of his many symbols from nature. The rainbow
is a central symbol of the power of faith to call forth an
emotional reaction. The sign to the Biblical Noah of the divine
covenant promising the return of life is also symbolic to the
poet as both child and man. The young boy, who is "father of
the Man," and the adult looking ahead to his old age, see the
rainbow as a symbol of continuity and faith. It is a sign given by
nature to all men who raise their eyes to see what is there to
inform them. The round nature of the rainbow's arc symbolizes
in the poem the binding of all of life's days in a "natural piety."
Each part of life holds its place to encompass the arc of
heaven, including those days still to come. Those days are
hidden from sight, as the rainbow can only be seen in its half
shape across the horizon, for human eyes can never see all of
the divine at once.
The Solitary Figure
Wordsworth often describes his own solitary adventures, as he
does in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Solitary figures also
appear frequently in his poems, like the "Solitary Reaper." He
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Themes 29
describes the importance of solitude for his emotional and
intellectual development from childhood in The Prelude, Book
2. Solitude is for the poet both a means of experiencing nature
without distraction and for processing his poetic visions. For
example, in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," his initial
loneliness is transformed by nature's gift to him of the field of
dancing daffodils. When he later recalls the flowers, he
describes the "inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude."
Wordsworth often wrote of solitary individuals as part of his
rejection of a traditional, monetary-based society and the
supposed wisdom of accepted ideas. Like the solitary reaper,
these figures seem more focused and pure in their isolation,
closer to the childish and natural states he idolized.
m Themes
Beneficent Nature
Wordsworth expressed deep connections with nature—a word
he personified by capitalizing it—in many of his works. He did
not go to nature to find specific, striking impressions for the
sake of novelty, as poets of the century before him often did.
Nature was not picturesque to him in precise terms, but as a
great entity that helped shape and form people's lives.
Nature's influences begin in early childhood, when there are
the fewest obstacles to receiving impressions. Readers see
this in "My Heart Leaps Up," which tells of the joy brought to a
young child at the sight of a rainbow, a joy he will try to
recapture and keep in his maturity. The child open to nature in
fact is the "father of the Man," as the poem says—one of
Wordsworth's most important statements on the power of
immediate impression and reaction to nature throughout one's
life. The epic poem The Prelude explores in thousands of lines
the changing tides of nature upon a person, from youthful
exaltation to the adult fears of the loss of powers and
alienation from the natural world of God.
Few precise descriptions of the earth itself, or flora and fauna,
are found in Wordsworth's poems. The emotions and feelings
caused by interaction with nature are his primary emphasis.
Furthermore, not all in nature is immediately good or
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide
beneficent, as fear is a constant presence in life for him. In the
first Book of The Prelude, the poet as a young boy steals a
boat but soon falls into terror when the high crags around the
lake seem to come to life and pursue him, "like a living thing."
The boy is terrified and keeps the image with him into
adulthood. Nature has the power to shape and mold a person
by such "interventions," as the mature poet calls them.
Ultimately the fears caused from an overpowering nature are
transformed into love that is part of divine wisdom. Nature is
the great source for replenishing the open Imagination.
The Magic of Childhood
One of Wordsworth's most famous poems is the "Ode:
Intimations of Immortality." This complex work examines the
differences between childhood and mature lives. It posits a
clear preference for the time in life when the young self is
closest to God and the external world. The child rarely thinks
of death, a concept also seen in "We Are Seven." But as a
child's unspoiled powers are changed by the demands of an
adult life in society with others, the powers fade and may lead
to unhappiness.
The "Ode" calls the child "the best philosopher," closest to all
that is good in life. But as time must go on, "Nothing can bring
back the hour / Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower."
So much of the epic poem on Wordsworth's vocation as poet,
The Prelude, narrates incidents from childhood that formed the
man. While many involve fear and disillusion, ultimately youth is
glorified as the state the old can relive in memory to create
poetry such as his. Many other children people Wordsworth's
lyrics and ballads. Among the sweetest are the blind, the
vagrant, and the orphaned, the survivors of trauma, those who
sing and tend to the graves of departed siblings, those who
face up to dangers, not forgetting them but being instructed by
them. They maintain a precious presence in life as proof of
divine truth and an order in which children "father" adults to
creation. The splendid works to which the poet aspired are not
something a child can produce, but the experience and
memory of childhood is the essential inspiration to those
works.
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Themes 30
The Power of Politics
Readers know much about Wordsworth's life. His times
included political change and upheaval for much of his 80
years, and it is clear that he was much involved with the
general affairs of his time. He did not enter politics or
government as such when he was young and most idealistic.
Although greatly interested in the conditions of life, he learned
the most from extensive travel to foreign countries as well as
in Great Britain. He often praised a life of solitude for the bliss
of introspection and tranquility, but he was also living fully with
others and deeply concerned with conditions of life, including
politics.
The poet went to France just at the time of the Revolution after
having been there first to climb and explore the Alps. He
returned from 1791 to 1792 and made a commitment to the
more moderate of the revolutionary parties. For Wordsworth
the new sentiments of liberation and human rights being
struggled over were of the greatest interest, deepened by the
personal relation he established with the mother of his
daughter Caroline. But soon enough, his high ideals and
excitement about the events were greatly diminished. He
strongly disapproved of the violence that erupted, the
executions and bloodshed and cruelties. He returned to
England when his own finances compelled him to, and when
the two countries went to war in 1793 he felt torn in loyalties.
He could not return for almost a decade until going back to see
his daughter when she was nine.
As Alan Gardiner writes in The Poetry of William Wordsworth,
his "emotional commitment to the French Revolution ... left him
bewildered and distressed." Wordsworth had deep feelings for
rural England as well and feared the effects of the Industrial
Revolution that was already changing the face of the land.
Many of the poor people suffering in his poems were caught
and impoverished by land speculation and development.
Gardiner discusses the strong influence on both Wordsworth
and Coleridge of William Godwin's philosophical Enquiry
Concerning Political Justice (1793). Godwin expressed extreme
views at the time, calling for the abolition of government in
general. An idealistic believer in justice and equality in the
extreme sense, Godwin believed all men were good in nature
and had been corrupted to the point that all authority needed
to be swept away by reason, though how this would happen
was never clear.
Poems of William Wordsworth (Selected) Study Guide Suggested Reading 31

With no prospect of real change in England's political system,

Wordsworth began in the next years his serious collaboration
with Coleridge and wrote hundreds of poems, including many
of his most famous. He also built an active family existence as
the father of five. As he grew older the radical self faded. He
moved closer to the political establishment and the accepted
religion. He allied himself with members of the nobility in his
northern British region and received at age 43 a position in the
government in charge of the official revenue stamps that had
to be affixed to all documents. It was a type of bureaucratic
monopoly that brought him and his family a measure of
economic security. He became involved in real estate
speculation as well and, for the last decades of his life, a
conservative ally of the state. His poetry was viewed as less
relevant by changing tastes of the time, even when he was
appointed the poet laureate of England in 1843. English poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley, a more radical Romantic figure,
denounced him as a "beastly and pitiful wretch" for his mature
politics, far more conservative than the youthful idealism he
initially expressed and for which Shelley was ready to die.

e Suggested Reading
Abrams, M.H., editor. Wordsworth: A Collection of Critical
Essays. Prentice-Hall, 1972.

Davies, Damian, editor. William Wordsworth, Selected Poems.

Everyman, 1994.

Drabble, Margaret. Wordsworth. Evans Brothers, 1974.

Gardiner, Alan. The Poetry of William Wordsworth. Penguin,

1990.

Halmi, Nicholas, editor.Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose. Norton,

2013.

Heaney, Seamus, editor. Essential Wordsworth. Ecco, 2006.

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