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Appreciating Poetry

Great Poets and their achievements

William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 - April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years that was revised and expanded a number of times.

It was never published during his lifetime, and was only given the title after his death. Up until this time it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

William WordsWorth - The Nature Poet -William Wordsworth was born in 1770 and died in 1850. Wordsworth is considered "The greatest of the romantics". "The poets displayed their reaction against the critical intellectual spirit and formal language of the Augustan age," during the age of Romanticism.

The Romantics were influenced by the ideals of the French and American Revolutions and their work reflects a delight in all that is spontaneous and unaffected in nature and in man."

Wordsworth's poetry is a "Spontaneous overflow of emotion and thoughts recollected in tranquillity" Having achieved strength by communion with the Nature spirit."

Wordsworth derived serene pleasure from nature. Getting freshened and motivated by the grandeur of nature his thoughts enthraled in words flowing spontaneously in "a tone of conversational rhythm with neatness" Being caught in a Trance like State he sees the beauty of a flower, isolated and unseen.

"A violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye" or a host of golden daffodils." Visual sensations of words don't commonly occur by themselves". The tied imagery or verbal images are eloquently used in Wordsworth's poetry.

Variations in the rhythm pattern and the creation of visual and auditory images entice the reader, sweeping the reader into the poet's domain. "she dwelt among the untrodden ways" is remarkably simple yet complex.

The multiplicity of association around each image and the dramatic contrast between the images" highlight the simplicity of imagery; yet reflecting "complex emotional effects" by the single line "untrodden ways". The word "untrodden" giving the sense of unspotted, giving the main exceptional qualities.

Purity and modesty of the maid is intensified by comparing her to a Single Star when only one is shining in the sky". Wordsworth has commonly used the "iambic tetrameter" and iambic trimeter dividing in to three iambs. One unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Fair as/a star/when only one/.."

The rhythm of the speaking voice as in the poem "I wondered lonely as a cloud ..." and the longer lines carrying the tone of long movements.

The minute details of nature the existence of beauty, rhythm and rhyme instilled in Wordsworth's poems; caught in "a trance like" state, freshened and motivated enthralling his thoughts and ideas flowing spontaneously in the form of poetry.

Mrs. C. Ekanayake,
Retd. Specialist Teacher Eng.,
St. Anne's College,
Kurunegela