Wordsworth (1770-1850)

1. Biographical outline
 France and the French Revolution – radical youth
 1795 – met Coleridge; 1797-8 – travelled to Germany
 1813 – Distributor of Stamps; 1843 – Poet Laureate
2. Publications:
 1793 Descriptive Sketches
 1798 Lyrical Ballads (anonymous): The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere; The Foster-Mother's Tale; Lines left upon a Seat
in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite; The Nightingale, a Conversational Poem; The Female Vagrant;
Goody Blake and Harry Gill; Lines written at a small distance from my House, and sent by my little Boy to the Person to
whom they are addressed; Simon Lee, the old Huntsman; Anecdote for Fathers; We are seven; Lines written in early
spring; The Thorn; The last of the Flock; The Dungeon; The Mad Mother; The Idiot Boy; Lines written near Richmond,
upon the Thames, at Evening; Expostulation and Reply; The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject; Old
Man travelling; The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman; The Convict; Lines written a few miles above Tintern
Abbey
 Groups of poems in the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads: of the supernatural, of human suffering, of children’s
psychology, suspicious of books and intellectualism, and poems that exalt nature.
 1800 Lyrical Ballads revised (Wordsworth’s name only) with his Preface – a definition of poetry, the language of
common people as the medium of writing poetry, the subject matter of literature, mass culture and high culture, the role
of the poet and the function of poetry; other editions: 1802 – on Poetic Diction; 1805.
 The Prelude: 1798 “Was it for this”; 1799, the two-book Prelude; 1804, the five-book Prelude; 1805, the thirteen-book
Prelude; 1850, published posthumously.
3. Literary critics: “philosophical verse is not his real strength” (Gill); “the great marriage” (Bloom); “unity of the individual
consciousness with the divine” (Gill);
4. Definitions:
 The Sublime: Longinus, On Sublimity: “nature made man to be no humble or lowly creature, but brought him into life
and into the universe as into a great festival, to be both a spectator and an enthusiastic contestant in its competitions. She
implanted in our minds from the start an irresistible desire for anything which is great and, in relation to ourselves,
supernatural.” [35.2], “The universe, therefore, is not wide enough for the range of human speculation and intellect. Our
thoughts often travel beyond the boundaries of our surroundings.” [35.3]; Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin
of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to
say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is
a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much
more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure”; “the sublime is an idea belonging to self-preservation”;
“there appears a remarkable contrast. For sublime things are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small;
beauty should be smooth, and polished; the great, rugged and negligent; …; beauty should not be obscure; the great ought
to be dark and gloomy; beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, or even massive”; Kant, Critique
of Judgement: “nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination to a presentation of those cases in
which the mind can make itself sensible of the appropriate sublimity of the sphere of its own being, even above nature”;
the sublime gives us “courage to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature”; “ Sublimity
does not reside in any of the things of nature, but only in our own mind, in so far as we may become conscious of our
superiority over nature within, and thus also over nature without us”.
 Pantheism: a doctrine which equates God with the forces and laws of the universe; God is everywhere and in everything.
 Unitarianism: Unitarianism is a religious movement that stresses free use of reason in religion, holds that God exists in
only one person, and denies the divinity of Jesus and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
5. Quotes:
 Advertisement, Lyrical Ballads 1798: The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written
chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the
purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in
reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness: they will
look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. It
is desirable that such readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary word Poetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand
in the way of their gratification; but that, while they are perusing this book, they should ask themselves if it contains a natural
delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents; and if the answer be favourable to the author’s wishes, that
they should consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own pre-established codes of decision.

 Goody Blake and Harry Gill

1

Oh! what’s the matter? what’s the matter?
What is ’t that ails young Harry Gill?
That evermore his teeth they chatter,
Chatter, chatter, chatter still!
Of waistcoats Harry has no lack,
Good duffle grey, and flannel fine;
He has a blanket on his back,
And coats enough to smother nine. […]
Old Goody Blake was old and poor;
Ill fed she was, and thinly clad;
And any man who passed her door
Might see how poor a hut she had. […]
But when the ice our streams did fetter,
Oh then how her old bones would shake!
You would have said, if you had met her,
’T was a hard time for Goody Blake.
Her evenings then were dull and dead:
Sad case it was, as you may think,
For very cold to go to bed;
And then for cold not sleep a wink. […]
Now, when the frost was past enduring,
And made her poor old bones to ache,
Could anything be more alluring
Than an old hedge to Goody Blake?
And, now and then, it must be said,
When her old bones were cold and chill,
She left her fire, or left her bed,
To seek the hedge of Harry Gill.
  “We Are Seven”
“The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
“So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
 Tintern Abbey:
“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide, “But they are dead; those two are dead!
My brother John was forced to go, Their spirits are in heaven!”
And he lies by her side.” ’Twas throwing words away]; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
“How many are you, then,” said I, And said, “Nay, we are seven!”
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. […]
That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
60 Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
90 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.
 “Resolution and Independence”
 1 There was a roaring in the wind all night;
2 The rain came heavily and fell in floods;          
3 But now the sun is rising calm and bright;          
4 The birds are singing in the distant woods;          
5 Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;          
6 The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;          
7 And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.          
         
[…]
         
15 I was a Traveller then upon the moor;          
16 I saw the hare that raced about with joy;          
        17 I heard the woods and distant waters roar;          
        18 Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:          
        19 The pleasant season did my heart employ:          
        20 My old remembrances went from me wholly;          
        21 And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.
         
[…]          
         
            29 I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;          
            30 And I bethought me of the playful hare:          
            31 Even such a happy Child of earth am I;          
            32 Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;          
            33 Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
            34 But there may come another day to me--          
            35 Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.          
         
            […]          
         
            43 I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,          
            44 The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;          
            45 Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
            46 Following his plough, along the mountain-side:          
            47 By our own spirits are we deified:          
            48 We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;          
      49 But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.          
         
[…]          
       64 Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,          
       65 Nor all asleep--in his extreme old age:
       66 His body was bent double, feet and head          
            67 Coming together in life's pilgrimage;          
            68 As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage          
            69 Of sickness felt by him in times long past,          
            70 A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.          
         
[…]          
            85 A gentle answer did the old Man make,          
            86 In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:          
            87 And him with further words I thus bespake,          
            88 "What occupation do you there pursue?          
            89 This is a lonesome place for one like you."          
            90 Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise          
            91 Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes.          
  92 His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,
  93 But each in solemn order followed each,
  94 With something of a lofty utterance drest--
  95 Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
  96 Of ordinary men; a stately speech;
  97 Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,
  98 Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.
  99 He told, that to these waters he had come
100 To gather leeches, being old and poor:
101 Employment hazardous and wearisome!
102 And he had many hardships to endure:
103 From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
104 Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance;
105 And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.
106 The old Man still stood talking by my side;
107 But now his voice to me was like a stream
108 Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;
109 And the whole body of the Man did seem
110 Like one whom I had met with in a dream;
111 Or like a man from some far region sent,
112 To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.
113 My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
114 And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
115 Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
116 And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
117 --Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
118 My question eagerly did I renew,
119 "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"
120 He with a smile did then his words repeat;
121 And said that, gathering leeches, far and wide
122 He travelled; stirring thus about his feet
123 The waters of the pools where they abide.
124 "Once I could meet with them on every side;
125 But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
126 Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may."
127 While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
128 The old Man's shape, and speech--all troubled me:
129 In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
130 About the weary moors continually,
131 Wandering about alone and silently.
132 While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
133 He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.
134 And soon with this he other matter blended,
135 Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
136 But stately in the main; and, when he ended,
137 I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
138 In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.
139 "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
140 I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!"
  The Prelude:
Of genius, power,
Creation and divinity itself
I have been speaking, for my theme has been
What passed within me! Not of outward things
Done visibly for other minds – words, signs,
Symbols, or actions – but of my own heart
Have I been speaking, and my youthful mind.
(Prelude 1805: III. 171-6)
There are in our existence spots of time
Which with distinct pre-eminence retain
A fructifying virtue, whence, depressed
By trivial occupations and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds –
Especially the imaginative power –
Are nourished and invisibly repaired.
Such moments chiefly seem to have their date
In our first childhood. (Prelude 1799, I. 288-96)
on the shore
I found myself of a huge sea of mist,
Which, meek and silent, rested at my feet: …
(1805: XIII. 42-44)
and from the shore
At distance not the third part of a mile
Was a blue chasm; a fracture in the vapour,
A deep and gloomy breathing-place through which
Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
Innumerable, roaring with one voice!
(1805: XIII. 54-59)

Bibliography:

Alexander, J. H. “Wordsworth”. The Penguin History of Literature. 5. The Romantic Period. Ed. David Pirie, London: Penguin Books, 1994,
151-184.
Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. London: Dent, 1969.
Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.
Gill, Stephen. Introduction. Wordsworth. The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Hazlitt, William. From On Shakespeare and Milton.
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/NOA/pdf/27636_Roma_U11_Hazlitt.pdf
McEathron, Scott. “Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads”. A Companion to Romanticism. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1999, 144-156.
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch, New York and London: Noton & Co, 2001.
Schneider, B.R. Wordsworth’s Cambridge Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. “William Wordsworth, The Prelude”. A Companion to Romanticism. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1999, 179-190.
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/363.html