William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

"We Are Seven"

• death should be kept from children since they are furthest from it; yet, this little girl knows well about it because two of her brothers and sisters have died. The others have gone away.  Until recently, a newborn child had only about a 50% of surviving until adulthood. She has no one to play with. Hangs around graveyard because they are the only ones around. Unity between life and death.

 

 

"The Tables Turned"

• For the culture of the Wife of Bath's era, a person was supposed to follow authority over ones own experience.
• From the Enlightenment forward, true knowledge comes from experience. The scientist was to gather knowledge from nature, not from books. The Romantics kept this trait and applied it to their personal lives.
• Urges his friend to quit studying and come play.

"Let Nature be your Teacher" (16)
• You’ll learn more from it than from other men. Romantic view of nature centered around its power.

Lines
Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798

• Beauty of Tintern Abbey has sustained him through the years
• Woods, mountains, rocks ~ wilderness of nature
• During Enlightenment, poets used reason, precision, & rationality to describe nature.
• (80) - Romantics seek other things. He responds to what he saw with "An appetite; a reeling and a love."
• Has reflective attitude about nature. Feels it’s part of him, that humans are in harmony with it and do not need to progress to another spiritual level to have communion with God.
• (27) "sublime" - Unity with Divine can be found in nature.
• (106) "half create, / And what perceive." He perceives what is in nature, but he also projects his own feelings onto nature. This is an example of romantic projection.

"Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known"

• The speaker of the poem is going to see his girlfriend Lucy when he is struck by a "strange fit of passion."  He is suddenly afraid that Lucy might be dead.
• This kind of panic is not unusual.  If my toddler isn't visible in the daycare when I go to pick him up, I immediately start to be afraid that somebody has taken him.  Not that that's ever happened. 
  

"The Ruined Cottage"

•  The cottage that falls into disrepair reflects the spirit of its owner, Margaret.  Her husband ran off to war.  She fell into depression; their children died, and the cottage fell apart around her. 
  

"Michael: A Pastoral Poem"

• Michael is a shepherd; his wife is Isabel; their son is Luke.
• The Latin word for shepherd is pastor, just as in modern English a pastor is a shepherd to a Christian 'flock,' a church.
• It is related to the word pasture.
• Thus pastoral poems typically involve shepherds, pastures, and flocks of sheep.
• The life of this family on the farm is a simple, happy one.
• When the son Luke goes to work for a rich man, he gets into trouble in the complicated urban life and has to flee the country.  His parents die from grief.
  

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

• What flower keeps the cloud company?
• When we are alone, we can still commune with nature.
  

"Ode: Intimations of Immortality"

"Ode:
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

• Based on Platonic doctrine. Learning is recollection; you know everything before you are born & forget it when you’re born.
• "The Child is Father of the Man" - The adult you become is the offspring of the child you were.
• Everything seemed glorious when he was a child.  He's lost the wonder he felt when the world was new to him.
• Cost of enlightenment shatters dreams because you must have a reason now for believing in something.
• Getting in touch with child within him

• Platonic doctrine. You’re born with knowledge but cannot access it. During infancy/youth, you walk in light and recollect best. As you grow older, enter common light.

• Earth is mother. Father is sky.  He is more spiritual than the mother.  This is an ancient doctrine.

 
• Stanza 7, child is closer to Divine. Begins to play part/absorb role of others around his as he ages.

• "Thou, over whom thy Immortality / Broods like the Day" - Genesis 1 says the spirit of God was brooding over the face of the deep.  Likewise our own spirit ("Immortality") broods over us to give us life.

• Recapture youth by frolicking outside.  Find the "splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower"

"Ode to Duty"

"Elegiac Stanzas"

"The world is too much with us" 

• By "world," Wordsworth means the human world of society and economics, not the natural world.
• We waste too much time making/spending money.
• We are cut off from nature and therefore have lost touch with ourselves. We are controlled by commerce.
• The impersonality of Enlightenment diesm makes him lonely. God has set things up & does not intefere with our lives. The universe does not care what happens to us.
• He would rather be a Pagan with an "outworn creed" (a view that has been disproven), – He could then worship the gods of Nature. He’d rather be a pagan so he wouldn’t feel that nature doesn’t care about us.
• If he were pagan, he could visualize gods controlling nature and wouldn’t feel so lonely.
• Proteus, God of Sea, has ability to change his shape so any animal that arises from sea could be Proteus.
 

"Surprised by joy"

• Wordsworth experienced the tragedy of losing a 4-year-old daughter to death.  He thought he would never be happy again, so he was suprised to find himself happy one day.
• When he does feel joy, he then feels guilty for forgetting his sorrow.  This is called survivor's guilt.
  

"Mutability" 

"Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways"