William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the most well-known
poets of the First-Generation Romantics. William Blake, Samuel Coleridge and
Robert Southey are the other famous poets of the period. The First-Generation Romantics are characterised by their shift in style and subject manner from bombastic
eloquence and elevated personalities, to simple colloquial language, nature and
the focus on the common man and woman.
Although Wordsworth and Coleridge co-authored an
anthology entitled Lyrical Ballads, they were two very different men. Wordsworth
was straight-laced and rather “dull”, according to Shelley and Byron. He had actually
started off as being very daring and nonconformist. He sympathised with the
French Revolution and anarchy, but he was later let down by the ensuing Reign
of Terror and the rise of the despotic Emperor Napoleon. He changed and became the
opposite of the free spirit he had been. His conservative nature, however, did fit in very
well with the subsequent Victorian bigotry.
William Wordsworth is best known for his deep appreciation
of nature. He lived with his sister, Dorothy, in the Lake District and was
passionate about the natural beauty there. I’m sure many of you have read or
heard the lines about the daffodils.
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| Daffodils "Beside the lake" |
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
The poem ends with Wordsworth’s famous idea of “emotions
recollected in tranquillity”. He believed that when we experience an
overwhelming emotion, we should store it in our hearts and then when we are
alone and in the right mood, we would be able to feel it all over again through
our “inward eye” and revive the same experience.
…
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
(Full poem here.)
As I mentioned, Wordsworth’s devotion was for nature, so it
is understandable that his poems on love, even the love for a woman, would be seen
through nature. She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways is a prime example of this. Here
he praises a beautiful young woman by associating her with the beauties of
nature.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
One of my favourite love poems written by Wordsworth is the
ethereal touching, She Was a Phantom of
Delight. The poem starts with a spiritually elevated quality:
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Read the full poem here.
William Wordsworth loved nature, almost as though it were a
human being: "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her"
I would say that Wordsworth’s passionate lover was nature
itself. The following lines seem to be those
uttered by a sensual lover in a paroxysm of ecstasy.
If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake.
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| TinternAbbeybyAnthonyDaniels |
Tomorrow I’ll be looking at William Wordsworth’s friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From the natural to the supernatural.
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