William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Wordsworth’s Life

The 20th-century philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up Wordsworth’s career1

as:
“In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with2 the French Revolution, went to
France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period he was
called a ‘bad’ man.
Then he became ‘good’, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and
wrote bad poetry.”
- this is amusing but unfair.

Having graduated from Cambridge in 1791 (with an undistinguished degree)

Wordsworth returned to France.3

There he fell in love with Annette Vallon, the daughter of a surgeon.

They had a daughter, Caroline, in 1792.

Wordsworth returned to England because war with France meant it was too
dangerous for him there.
However, he kept up correspondence with Annette and evidently intended to marry
her.

In 1802 – a decade later – he decided to marry childhood friend Mary Hutchinson.

- However, before doing so, he took advantage of a temporary Anglo-French peace
to go to France with Dorothy and square things with4 Annette.
Even after this he kept in touch with5 Annette and Caroline.

In 1820 William took Mary to France to meet Annette and Caroline.

Annette finally died in 1841, Caroline in 1862.

1
career – (false friend) trajectory
2
to sympathize with – support, back
3
he had been on a walking tour in France in 1790
4
to square things with sb. – get sb’s approval
5
in touch with – in contact with
Other Events

1770 born in the Lake District

1776 educated in Cockermouth school, Cumberland, with Fletcher Christian6!
1778 mother dies.
1783 father dies.
1787 goes to Cambridge
1793 walking tour of southwest England and Wales. First visit to Wye valley.
1797 collaborates with Coleridge. William and Dorothy move to Somerset to be
near him. Although they were innocently writing poetry the trio was viewed
with suspicion by the local rural population and were monitored by
Government agents as possible French spies!
1798 Lyrical Ballads
1799 William and Dorothy visit Germany and then settle7 in the Lake District
1800 Coleridge moves his family to Lake District to be near the Wordsworths.
1802 marries Mary Hutchinson ( - 1859) and they have five children by 1810
1803 ‘pilgrimage to Ayrshire’ to visit Burns’s grave and sites associated with the
Scottish poet.
1810 falls out with8 Coleridge.
1812 reconciled with Coleridge
1813 Wordsworth appointed9 stamp distributor (financial independence)
1817 Wordsworth meets Keats10 (que rima)
1842 Civil Lists (pension)
1843 appointed poet laureate. From then until his death he didn’t write a single
poem.
1850 dies.

Wordsworth’s best work was all written before 1810.

- Ironically, as his literary abilities declined in the last 40 years of his life his
reputation soared11.

From the 1820s onwards tourists thronged to visit12 the ‘sage of Rydal’ at home.
- Sometimes there were as many as 30 visitors per day, who were usually charged for
tea.

Dorothy was more or less a vegetable for the last 20 years of her life (1835-55), cared
for by William and Mary.

6
yes, the bloke who organized the famous ‘Mutiny on The Bounty’
7
to settle – establish one’s permanent home
8
to fall out with (fall-fell-fallen) – argue with
9
to appoint – (false friend) officially name
10
the young poet tried to intervene during one of Wordsworth’s perorations; Mary Wordsworth laid a hand on
his arm and whispered ‘Mr Wordsworth is never interrupted’.
11
to soar – increase diametrically
12
to throng to visit – visit in great numbers
- She just13 sat by the fire having lost almost all her memory (though she could still
recite her brother’s poems!).

13
just – (in this case) simply
Wordsworth’s Reputation

Wordsworth is hated by liberals because he gave up14 his radicalism and became
part of the Tory Establishment.
- Byron and Shelley were two early critics on these grounds.

Keats admired Wordsworth more than his two aristocratic contemporaries but even
so coined the term ‘egotistical sublime’ to describe some of Wordsworth’s
writing.
- Wordsworth’s poems are almost always about himself.

The Victorians placed Wordsworth alongside15 Shakespeare, Molière, Milton and

Goethe.

Wordsworth poetry became a kind16 of Victorian religion:

“Wordsworth taught people how to feel and how to manage their feelings”.

Partly because of the Victorian hyperbole, Wordsworth’s reputation has fallen

almost continuously since the late 19th Century.

In 1892 James Stephens famously described Wordsworth as,

“A half-witted17 sheep who bleated18 articulate monotony”.

His renunciation of democratic values has come back19 to haunt20 him

- alongside21 the unfair criticisms we have seen regarding his first daughter.

Psychoanalytical critics have accused him of half-repressed incestuous love

towards22 his sister.

Ezra Pound commented,

“Mr Wordsworth never ruined anyone’s morals, unless, perhaps, he has driven
some susceptible persons to crime in the very fury of boredom.”

14
to give up (give-gave-given) – abandon
15
alongside – next to
16
kind (n.) – sort, type
17
half-witted – stupid, idiotic
18
to bleat – make a plaintive sound like a sheep
19
to come back (come-came-come) – return
20
to haunt – torment
21
alongside – together with
22
towards – (in this case) for
 Lyrical Ballads

The title ‘Lyrical Ballads’ is almost an oxymoron.

Lyric:
a poem about feeling
expressed by the poet as personal and individual and
addressed to the reader in the manner of a private and intimate conversation

Ballad:
narrative poem
usually presented from an anonymous point of view
narrating the fate23 of characters in relation to public and historical events, such
as war.

Interest in ballads had been growing since Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry (1765)

This interest in the popular tradition was the bedrock24 of Robbie Burns’s poetry
- however, while Burns could appeal to popular nationalist sentiment by writing in
Scots, there was no obvious dialect for Wordsworth to write in to tune into a
similar sentiment.

Lacking this, he wrote in colloquial Standard English (as opposed to ‘poetic

diction’).

In any event he – like Burns – was writing for the urban middle class,
- not the common people, who didn’t read poetry.

Lyrical Ballads
 Written in reaction against his own earlier poetry (couplets and ornate).
 Main tenets:
o Language should mimic that of ordinary people in statements of strong feeling;
o Poetry focuses on states of emotion rather than25 on making political points;
o Tragic compassion.
 Power of nature to give access to joy and love.
 Questions of voice and perspective challenge the reader.

Nature means several things in Wordsworth’s poetry: it can mean

1. physical nature (a.k.a.26 the Great Outdoors),
2. the sense of unity or connection between everything (a.k.a. ‘the Force’ in Star Wars),

23
fate – (in this case) fortunes
24
bedrock – basis, foundation
25
rather than – as opposed to, instead of
26
a.k.a. – also known as
3. a divine ‘presence’ in Nature, like Mother Nature.
Originality?

A critic in The Guardian once compared Lyrical Ballads to punk rock in terms of its
challenge to27 convention.

There is not a single character in Lyrical Ballads whom the Augustans would have
deemed worthy of28 poetic effort.

Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads was the first serious attempt29 by a poet to
explain and justify his method;
- in a sense the first real document of literary analysis.

Perhaps the greatest originality of the Preface was its new conception of ‘the Poet’.
- he was different from other men in his deep sensitivity, his powers of expression
and his specially gifted consciousness.

In other words the poet was a man apart, subject only to self-imposed constraints,
an outsider both mentally and socially; a Byronic hero.
- Both Percy Shelley and Byron played his part to the full.

However, according to Robert Mayo there is nothing very original in Lyrical Ballads
and it is mostly an imitation of popular verse written to make money (as
Wordsworth states30 in letters).
The variety of subjects and styles
the themes of nature, simplicity and humanitarianism
were commonplace in books of popular verse:
“... the more one reads the popular poetry of the last quarter of the 18 th Century, the
more he is likely to31 feel that the really surprising feature32 of these poems in
the Lyrical Ballads (as well as many others) – apart from sheer literary
excellence – is their intense fulfilment of an already stale33 convention.”

Poetry about rural life had certainly been common in the latter half34 of the 18th Century:
- Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village (1770)
- Crabbe’s The Village (1783)

We can even look back to Gray’s Elegy (1751)

27
challenge to – defiance of, confrontation with
28
deemed worthy of – considered meriting
29
attempt – effort
30
to state –say, confirm
31
is likely to – will probably
32
feature – characteristic, aspect
33
stale – tired, clichéd
34
latter half – second half
 Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on
Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, 13 July 1798

The Title

In 1798 William revisited the Wye Valley with Dorothy. This gave rise to35 Tintern
Abbey.

The title is not actually36 true:

- he wrote the poem after he got home from the walking holiday, not in the Wye Valley.
- Notice that walking was a political act: peasants walked, gentlemen rode or travelled in
coaches.

The title implies37 a description of a landscape: a prospect poem38 (‘topographical

poem’)
- but in fact the landscape only appears in the first stanza of the poem.
In other words the poem alludes to39 a specific time and place but goes on to elude40 that
location.

The poem is principally concerned not with space but with time and memory.

What would be the implication of a poem written about a ruined abbey in the 1790s?
Does the abbey have a symbolic function in this poem?

The River Wye is the real name of a waterway in the West of England.
However, is it relevant that Wordsworth focuses his poem on a river called ‘why?’?
What is the symbolism of rivers?

35
to give rise to (give-gave-given) – generate, result in
36
actually – (false friend) in fact
37
to imply – suggest
38
prospect poem – topographical poem, 18th-century genre in which a landscape is described and moral reflections are
attached to it. The poetic equivalent of a landscape painting.
39
to allude to – refer to, suggest
40
to elude – avoid, circumvent
Structure

1. First Stanza. Tintern Abbey begins as a prospect poem. However, after a brief
description it becomes a meditation on:
epistemology: how knowledge of the world is acquired, and
psychology: how experience is stored in the form of memory and utilized in the
mind.

2. Second Stanza (to l. 49). Wordsworth’s concern is not so much with the scene41 itself
but with the sensations it has generated. Nature, it seems, offers humankind (‘we’) a
kind42 of insight43 (‘We see into the life of things’) in the face of mortality (‘we are laid
asleep’).

3. In the third stanza (to l. 111), he begins to consider what it would mean if his belief in
his connection to nature were misguided44, but stops short45; seeming not to care
whether the connection is valid or not.

4. Fourth Stanza: (to the end) Addressing Dorothy.

41
scene – (in this case) panorama, landscape
42
kind (n.) – sort, type
43
insight – profound understanding
44
misguided – wrong, mistaken, erroneous
45
to shop short – stop abruptly
Time

‘Tintern Abbey’ is about the ways that we change over time,

and the ways that we try to figure out46 just47 when and how and why we’ve changed.
In short, it’s about trying to square48 the person you used to be with the person you’ve
become.
- When did I become the person I am now?
- Why don’t my memories measure up with49 the facts?

Now the narrator has returned he can measure how much he has changed by how little the
natural landscape has changed.
- the natural world is seasonal and essentially timeless, but human life is time-bound, not
seasonal and cyclical but rather50 heading towards age and death (“red nature/green
nature”).

Nature is presented as an unchanging moral constant in a changing amoral world.

- This is disingenuous since the valley was in fact experiencing rapid change.

The poem is about subjectivity and time

- about what time does to subjectivity.

The passage of time is felt through the relationship between memory and loss
- through the memory of what we have lost.
- part of what has been lost is one’s earlier self.

The narrator sees but no longer feels what he once did

- this fills him with “a sad perplexity” (l. 60).

The fact that nothing has changed in the landscape measures how all the change that he
perceives is in himself.

46
to figure out – determine, discover
47
just – (in this case) exactly
48
to square A with B – make A compatible with B
49
to measure up with – coincide with
50
but rather – by contrast it is
Inward Focus

This is the first poem in which Wordsworth, instead of51 focusing on the external world,
examines his own consciousness.

It is the first of his major works to be explicitly autobiographical.

At the time of Wordsworth’s first visit in the summer of 1793 he was an anxious,
aimless52 and disillusioned young man:
- the father of an illegitimate child to a woman in revolutionary France,
- the recent author of two unnoticed poems, and
- a political radical beset with53 concerns54 about Britain’s entry into the war against
France.

On his return he has matured, gained perspective.

The poem expresses Wordsworth’s central ideas about

nature,
perception and
spiritual growth.

51
instead of – rather than, as opposed to
52
aimless – without direction
53
beset with – troubled by
54
concerns – worries
Memory & Nature

The memory is not just55 of five years before.

Wordsworth remembers a more direct contact with nature, a time when “nature... To me
was all in all” [ll. 73, 76].
- The senses were more than enough; there was no need for the “remoter charm” [l. 82]
of thought. But this is no longer the case.

There is consolation for this loss.

There is a gain which has balanced it and is “abundant recompense” [l. 89], and that is
thought.
Wordsworth perceives a nature from which ‘humanity’ is no longer absent.
It is this which he ‘hears’ when he ‘looks’ [ll. 90-91].

Nature is not now something to be passively perceived [ll. 103-8],

but is ‘infused’ with the perceiver [l. 97].
- There is a list of spectacular natural objects and events (sunsets, ocean, air and sky),
which concludes “And in the mind of man” [l. 100].

In the second half of the poem a religious vocabulary (‘spirit’, ‘soul’, ‘prayer’, ‘faith’,
‘blessing’, ‘worshipper’, ‘holier’) is applied to nature and its interaction with memory.

This is a movement towards the sublime – the experience of a power in nature that is
greater than oneself – and it culminates with moral restoration.

There is a desire to store up experience, so that what happens now (which includes the
experience of remembering) will be remembered in the future.

Message: that the memory of pure communion with nature in childhood works upon56
the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion has been lost,
and
- that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers compensation for the loss of that
communion.

In Tintern Abbey, memory is more effective than immediate experience in bringing on a

transcendental state of understanding.
- In immediate experience, we are too distracted by our senses.

However, memory is never as intense as immediate experience;

- it is always “dim and faint” (l. 59), so, ironically, it is only a feeble substitute for the
real thing.

55
just – (in this case) only
56
to work upon – affect, influence
Originality? Revisited

Is this just57 a restating of Blake’s views on innocent and experience?

The ‘sense sublime’ that ‘rolls though all things’, including all ‘thinking things’ is, as
many critics note, a pantheistic life-force, an echo of the ‘One Life within us and
abroad58’ celebrated by Coleridge in The Eolian Harp (1795).
- it is also similar to Manley Hopkins concept of God through Nature.

Other Considerations

 It concludes the second edition of Lyrical Ballads.

 Blank verse: unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called English heroic verse, a ten-
syllable line and the usual rhythm of English dramatic and epic poetry. Full of
enjambments and different placed caesural pauses to reflect changing feeling and
thought.
 Conversational qualities from Coleridge.
 Two climaxes in the poem:
o The affirmation of the value of memory which allow59 access to a quasi-mystical
‘blessed mood’ (l. 38);
o The acceptance that time is past and the weighing up60 of lost joys against new
gifts.

Tintern Abbey is certainly not a ballad and is much closer to being an ode614.

Tintern Abbey was only included in Lyrical Ballads because Wordsworth finished it
just in time for its inclusion.
- It doesn’t fit very easily with the other poems.

57
just – (in this case) simply
58
abroad – (in this case) outside us
59
to allow – permit, enable
60
weighing up – pondering
61
ode – a serious lyric poem celebrating a specific event or subject
Tentativeness

Notice Wordsworth’s deliberate withdrawal from a statement of absolute conviction

- this is characteristic of the Romantic mode:
To them I may have owed another gift (l. 37)
If this / Be but a vain belief (ll. 50-51)
and so I dare to hope (l. 66)

Notice how often arguments are expressed in the negative

- with ‘no’, ‘not’, ‘nor’ or ‘un-’

Although the speaker seems to include Dorothy in the system of transformation brought
about by recollections of nature, she is not allowed to speak
- he is actually62 just projecting his own experiences onto her.

The real Dorothy is excluded from the system described by the speaker.

Vagrants

There is a surprising amount of controversy around the line:

“wreathes of smoke ... Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods [17-20]

New Historicist Jerome McGann sees this as a political statement since in the 1790s the
ruined Abbey was “a favorite haunt63 of transients and displaced persons”.
- the ‘happy cottagers’ are in fact, not so far removed from64 the homeless vagrants.
- however, there is in fact no comment in the poem upon the conditions of vagrants who
lived in the Abbey at the time.

In any case the smoke that Wordsworth could see didn’t come from vagrants’ or hermits’
fires but from charcoal burning for the incipient iron industry!

In his Observations on the River Wye (1782), which influenced Wordsworth, William
Gilpin mentions both the charcoal burning as the source of the smoke and the vagrants
living in the Abbey.
- indeed65 Prof. Philip Shaw argues that Tintern Abbey “seems simultaneously to
acknowledge and efface66 in its mention of ‘vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods’.”

62
actually – (false friend) in fact
63
haunt – place frequented by a specified person or group
64
to be far removed from – be socially and economically distant from
65
indeed – (emphatic) in fact
66
to efface – erase, minimize
I Wandered67 Lonely As A Cloud68

Some critics have expresses discomfort with the first line (and title):
- at least in England clouds are rarely69 ‘lonely’.

Indeed, we know that the poet was accompanied on this walk by Dorothy, though he has
painted her out70.

A generous interpretation would claim that the speaker is not troubled by the absence of
other people.
Rather, he is ‘lonely’ in the sense that he feels separated from the world around him
- a separateness that is emphasized by the comparison with a cloud “That floats on high
o’er vales and hills”.

Dorothy may have saved ‘Daffodils’ from turning into doggerel71 from the first line.
- Legend has it that72 Wordsworth originally wrote, “I wandered lonely as a cow” and
that the last word was only changed to ‘cloud’ on the insistence of his sister Dorothy!

Dorothy’s actual presence confirms the accusation that ‘Daffodils’ is a simpler, more
concise version of Tintern Abbey.
 Both poems deal with the restorative effect of remembered moments.
 Both suggest that pleasurable experiences often have their most profound effects
after they have been absorbed and contemplated.

This poem is unusually happy for Wordsworth: there is no sense of death or despondency

Despite the fact that he liked writing about flowers, Wordsworth had no sense of smell.

Form: The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme:
ABABCC. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.

67
notice how wandering – condemned as an aberration, straying from rectitude in the 18th Century – is here the
poets means of participating in nature
68
Britain’s 5th favourite poem in a recent survey.
69
rarely – seldom
70
to paint sb. out – omit sb.
71
doggerel – unintentionally idiotic poetry
72
legend has it that – according to legend
The Unity

The poem’s main73 brilliance lies in the reverse personification of its early stanzas:
the speaker is metaphorically compared to a natural object, a cloud and
the daffodils are continually personified as human beings
This technique implies an inherent unity between man and nature.

Indeed, the unity links

 microcosm and macrocosm (the daffodils and the stars)
 the heavenly ‘host’, the animistic (‘spritely’) and the terrestrial
 the inanimate waves and the living daffodils

Notice how both the daffodils, the waves and the human heart/mind all dance (as do all
four stanzas).

The alchemical imagination of the poet transforms a lesser substance – the colour of the
daffodils – into a greater wealth, something like metaphysical joy.

Though the experience of the ‘outer’ eye was joyful, the experience of the ‘inward eye’
was more joyful.

Wordsworth calls this “an acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe... by which
[mankind] knows, and feels, and lives, and moves”.
- here he is daringly paraphrasing Acts 17:28, where St. Paul tells the Athenians that in
God “we live, and move, and have our being”.

73
main – principal, primary
Symbolism

Daffodils are traditionally associated with the approach of spring.

From this point of view the unexpectedness of encountering the daffodils on a stormy74
day is partly because winter is still being felt, though spring is promised;
- every lonely cloud has a silver lining75, if you like.

One could also point out76 that daffodils are associated with Narcissus, who fell in love
with his own reflection.

Is Wordsworth commenting on his own obsessive introspection?77

- It’s unlikely78, the poet took himself far too79 seriously for that!

Wordsworth’s Interpretation of Nature

Through the power of nature the poet transcends nature’s material forms and
contemplates a higher, more divine state of being.

Wordsworth’s poetry is surprisingly undescriptive of nature because what he is interested

in is his emotions aroused by scenes of nature.

He is interested in the influence of the natural world on human consciousness.

Nature teaches moral truth through our emotions.

Wordsworth believed in a ‘universal benevolence’ in Nature:

nothing could be further from Darwinian Nature.
- this is pastoralism, re-written.

74
stormy – tempestuous
75
every cloud has a silver lining – all difficulties bring some compensations
76
to point out – mention
77
what Keats called Wordsworth’s ‘egotistical sublime’
78
unlikely – improbable
79
far too – much too
Journeys

Notice the journey

- First ascent from walker through the clouds to the stars
- then down into the waves on the lake and
- into the human mind.

Three stages of human life:

childhood,
youth and
maturity
have three different states of awareness.

In childhood nature is enjoyed through physical activity, there is no conscious

awareness of the natural world.
In youth nature is enjoyed in emotional intensity
In maturity a ‘sense sublime’ replaces the corporeal fire;
- through it the poet can apprehend the great soul of the universe.
There is also a journey from loneliness to blissful80 solitude.

The poem is an example of Wordsworth’s doctrine of poetry as “emotion recollected

in tranquillity”
- here the emotion is the poet’s unexpected gaiety at seeing the daffodils, and
- the tranquillity would be the vacant or pensive moods when he suddenly
remembers them.

The fact that memories can surprise us with pleasure like this is what Wordsworth
is noticing and celebrating.

Bibliography

William Wordsworth: Selected Poems by Sandra Anstey [Oxford Student Texts,

2006]
Wordsworth by Martin Grey [York Notes Advanced, 2003]
Lyrical Ballads by Steve Eddy [Yrk Notes Advanced, 2009]
The Poetry of William Wordsworth by Alan Gardiner [Penguin Critical Studies, 1987]
Notes on Wordsworth’s Poetry by John Booth [Coles, 1976]
Lyrical Ballads by Celia de Piro [Oxford Student Texts, 2006]
Romantic Literature by John Gilroy [York Notes Companions, 2010]
Companion to British Poetry: 19th Centuries by William Flesch [Facts on File, 2010]

80
blissful – ecstatic, euphoric