In William Wordsworth’s poem, The Prelude, he describes how he imagines London to be. He is very descriptive when he touches on what he expects upon arrival to the city, and then realizes London was not the paradise he alluded to earlier in his poem. William Wordsworth use of imagery and diction reflect the city’s natural environment, which he also uses in order to convey his feelings of anticipation and dissatisfaction with what he has discovered. In the beginning of The Prelude, William Wordsworth’s use of exclamation marks in the first few lines reveals his enthusiasm about London. He say’s, “Oh, wondrous power of words, by simple faith/ Licensed to take the meaning that we love! /Vauxhall and Ranelagh! (119-121)” The author states his love for the power of words, and moves on to talk about the gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh. These lines continue the author’s excitement, and he addresses London as if it were a person. The author establishes a relationship with the city based on what he has heard and his writing reflects the passion he feels towards the city.
The author describes the city that he has heard so much of and calls attention to what appeals the most to him. He gives an account of its green grooves, gorgeous ladies, and fireworks magical to name a few. The descriptions convey Wordworth’s keenness to go to the city. Wordsworth emotion is displayed in the words he uses to describe his fancy of the city. In lines 121-139 he marvels at the thought of “gorgeous
Wordsworth is a poet of nature, a poet of morality. Scholar Eugene Stelzig explores this idea more throughout his article, "Wordsworth’s bleeding spots: Traumatic memories f the absent father in The Prelude." Stelzig states that at the same time as being the poet of morality, Wordsworth is also, "a poet of human continuity, of growth and development."(533) Stelzig's word choice relates to The Prelude as a whole, rather than each book in sections. The main reasoning for the autobiographical content within the psuedo-epic is to transcribe the history of what made William Wordsworth into the poet that he was and that he is viewed as. This allows the poem to act as a palimpsest. Revision after
Wordsworth, a romantic poet of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought a unique perspective to poeticism (“William Wordsworth,” 2017). A man who, according to Asha Jain, a writer for Language In India, “… does not approve of sordid pursuits of life.” (Jain). Despite this and many other’s interpretation of his work, there has been a great deal of disagreement among students in classrooms across America when it comes to how to interpret William Wordsworth’s poem, “The World is Too Much with Us.” Some students believe the poem is a lament to the Christian’s lack of appreciation for the world around him or her. Others claim the poem paints a picture of humanity’s ignorance at large. On the one hand, those who consider the poem
Prompt: In the passage below, which comes from William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” the speaker encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. Write an essay in which you trace the speaker's changing responses to his experiences and
Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This
William Wordsworth begins his poem by calling out to another poet of an earlier time period, “Milton! Thou should’st be living at this hour:”(1). Wordsworth calls forth Milton because he knows that London is need of serious revisions. Wordsworth then portrays London, “she is fen of stagnant waters: altar, swords, and pen, fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower”(3-4). With a combination of both word play and imagery Wordsworth is able to express his perspective of London. He displays how the growth in beginning to plateau as he uses, “she is fen of stagnant waters”. He then uses words like altar, sword, pen, fireside, and heroic wealth of hall and bower to represent larger pieces of London. The altar represents London’s religious practices, sword represents the military engagements, pen represents the literature, fireside is the society that he sees himself in, and the heroic wealth of the bower is the economic struggle of London. Wordsworth is afraid that the citizens are in too much of a haze to remember their goals, “Have fortified their ancient English dower of inward happiness. We are selfish men”(5-6). He then makes another call to Milton to help the city recover, “Oh! Raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power”(7-8). Wordsworth then begins to further complement Milton, “ Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free”(10-11). Wordsworth portrays a city that is no longer able to recover without a great leader. He speaks very highly of Milton and believes that he would be the right man for the task and that he would be able to bring the “ancient English dower” back into London. Milton was a man of his word and paid great attention to all classes of individuals in London, “ In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart the lowliest duties on herself did lay”(12-13).
The poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, 1, July 1798” is deeply rooted in its author’s personal history. It was written by the poet William Wordsworth after taking a walking tour along the Welsh Borders with his sister, Dorothy. In the summer of 1973, Wordsworth visited North Wales when he was still quite young and anxious, with the world on his shoulders. He was, at that time, still new in his profession, with very radical political views, as well as an estranged father to an illegitimate child in France. He was only twenty-three years old then. Five years later, when he returned to
Bringing forth the fact that Wordsworth finds such “tranquil restoration” when he reminisces over these fond times and sights that it would also inhibit in him a feeling of “unremembered pleasure.” And though Wordsworth finds no sense of absolution with modern society, he doesn’t hate it for what it is. In fact, he simply just gives off this feeling that he simply doesn’t belong in cities or towns and instead jells more into natures embrace. Another reading post by Jaqueline coincides with Wordsworth’s views of the natural world. This is on full display when she herself mentions that she can heavily relate to the component of memory that that uses nature as a backdrop to fuel “current joys, hopefulness for the future, a sense of wholeness, healing and a knowledge.” The appreciation of such a connection is breathtaking and harkens back to the “aspect more sublime.” (37) which we also discussed in depth during last week’s lecture session. Jaqueline also brings up the fact that Wortdsworth doesn’t “mourn” the fact he has lost that connection to nature, that he simply must be happy with both who he is and how his nature with the world around him has matured since those days have come and passed. Exhuming the idea that Wordsworth has come to terms with the mankind’s overall evolution and relationship with the natural world. That is a past point brought up in my C3
If you read the through the poem, just the lines on the paper, you can clearly see that Wordsworth is upset at the contemporary society and how materialistic the human race has become. This is shown in the lines “Getting and spending, we lay waste to our powers” and “We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon”. Here he is speaking of how humans only want more materialistic thing,
He does this to create character in nature. Another literary element Wordsworth uses is similes. For example, Wordsworth writes, “The winds that will be howling at all hours, / And are up-gathered like Carr 2 sleeping flowers” (7). He uses a simile to compare how the flowers look like they are sleeping, giving it a human quality.
William Wordsworth uses meaningful, metaphorical phrases which gives the poem a lot of detail and helps us understand the overall message of the poem and the feelings of the poet.
Wordsworth is known for his introspection, often writing about feelings and emotions, mortality and nature. Wordsworth’s The Prelude is a seminal work. The poem is about the growth of the poet’s mind. It is autobiographical and deals with different periods of Wordsworth’s life, such as his childhood, his time at Cambridge and his residence in France. The poem features Wordsworth reflecting on his experiences and feelings. The poem acts as a look into how he views himself as a poet. In The Politics of the Epic: Wordsworth, Byron, and the Romantic Redefinition of Heroism, author Paul Cantor contends that despite the use of epic writing, the poem itself is vastly different from the epic. “It is written in an elevated blank verse that often has a Miltonic ring, it contains epic diction and epic similes, and it shows many other signs of Wordsworth 's attempt to work within the established epic tradition. But if one looks at the beginning of the poem, where the epic poet traditionally invokes his Muse, one can see how radically Wordsworth differs from his predecessor” (Cantor, 377). The poem, Miltonic in its style and diction, does seem to mimic the Miltonic epic style, at least somewhat. This does not mean, however, that
The Prelude brought a new meaning towards poetry, for this autobiography was all done in a poetic style. Each volume was a different and the work in its entirety stayed true to the core of William’s soul. The works exposes William’s most inner thoughts and evoked a form of freedom Wordsworth was denied when he was younger. Wordsworth used nature to describe the way he felt or to describe how an event unfolded. Nature was Wordsworth’s way of connecting what he felt and saw with his audience.
One can argue that William Wordsworth believes that memory can be utilized as an anecdote that is able to cure someone’s pain, while a writer such as Thomas Hardy would disapprove of this Wordsworthian ideal by believing that memory is simply a “shroud of gray” (Vernooy). This claim can be supported as true when Wordsworth’s Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey is examined more closely. Within this piece, Wordsworth states, “These beauteous forms/Through a long absence, have not been to me/As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye/But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din/Of towns and cities, I have owed to them/In hours of weariness, sensations sweet (Wordsworth 23-27). Here, Wordsworth provides a detailed description about how nature is able to provide a safe-haven for him in a time when Britain’s cities are looking to industrialize more than ever. By personifying nature during this time of economic crisis, Wordsworth is creating an outlet that aids him in moving forward.
In the first stanza, the poet introduces the attractive and striking grove where he enjoys nature and at the same time also has “sad thoughts”. The second stanza explains why there are “sad thoughts”. The reason is because nature linked human soul to her fair works, and the soul run through me and the thought of “what man has made of man” makes me grief. Wordsworth draws the phrase “to her fair works” from the last of sentence to the first, which emphasizes the “fair works” of nature.
Wordsworth over emphasizes the imagery throughout the poem. The speaker makes note of how the birds “hopped and played” with “pleasure”, and how the flowers enjoy all of the air that they breathe. The apparent intentions of the natural environment are strictly pure. Wordsworth personifies these parts of nature (the flower, the birds etc.) to pull the focus onto their “actions”. The natural environment does not have ill intention in anything that it does. These overly positive “scenes” that are portrayed are what set up the intended reader to see the contradiction that Wordsworth creates. The setting of the poem is anthropomorphized, which makes it easier for the speaker to relate to their surroundings. Wordsworth also projects how he feels onto the environment with this personification as well. The poem is riddled with pathetic fallacy, and Wordsworth uses this intentionally to draw attention to the fact that human nature and the natural environment are not all that different. The speaker is careful to not make blunt statements about how the different parts of the environment feel, but instead turns to speculation. Wordsworth intentionally included this to further develop the contradiction that the speaker feels: both connected and disconnected to the natural environment.