William Wordsworth - An Analysis

To be honest, I'm not really a fan of Wordsworth. I have never managed to get through Tintern Abbey without falling asleep at least 3 times. But some of his poetry is actually some of my favourite poetry and since I had already written this essay I thought I should share it. This is the edited version. I obviously don't plan to share all of it unless I have a very good reason. I hope it helps you appreciate what he has written because whatever we may think now, what he did was really a leap ahead of his time.

William Wordsworth is universally regarded among the greatest poets of English literature. Charles William comments that Wordsworth, along with Shakespeare and Milton form the three great ranges of English poetry while other poets of equal height are mere peaks, thus comparing Wordsworth’s poetic skill to the breathtaking vastness of a mountain range.

At its greatest, Wordsworth’s poetry has a solemn sincerity beyond the compass of the human voice to utter. He does so by arousing a sense of unity of individual life with universal life.

“The shell of his verse ‘murmurs of the ocean from whence it came’; something more than us, more than Wordsworth, more than the poetry of Wordsworth, seems to open up and expand in the sound, as afterwards it withdraws and closes itself in the more expected, but still noble, verse to which it returns.” (Charles William)

In 1798, along with Coleridge, Wordsworth published The Lyrical Ballads which embodied his first major achievements in poetry. The famous Preface to The Lyrical Ballads lays down Wordsworth’s objectives and principles with reference to his poetry. In his own words,

“The principle object… proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men… and to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them… primary laws of our nature.”

Didacticism is another of Wordsworth’s traits and he attempts to draw moral conclusions through his poetry. He was conscious of his moral purpose and made sure the reader did not miss the point. For example, in the Lucy Poem Three Years She Grew he narrates Lucy’s education by Nature and indirectly preaches the idea education of a child and the traits of a human being educated thus. In his own words, “Every great poet is a teacher: I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing.”

In keeping with Rousseau’s notion of the ‘noble savage,’ Wordsworth shows a preference and respect for the humble and rustic life, believing that men are better and uncorrupted when closer to their ‘natural’ state. The poem about a shepherd and his son entitled Michael is a telling example of this:

                “His bodily frame had been from youth to age

                Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks

                He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,

                And listened to the wind.”

Wordsworth describes himself as a “worshipper of nature.” His poetry is inextricably bound with nature as his own upbringing in the Lake District, his way of thinking, his lifestyle and outlook of life are influenced by it.

Natural objects played a significant part in Wordsworth’s emotional life, similar to the part real people play in our lives. They were a source of strength, delight and comfort as he narrates in The Daffodils:

                “And then my heart with pleasure fills

                And dances with the daffodils.”

Another example of Wordsworth’s deviation from the conventions of the time, aside from the points he stresses in the Preface is his introduction of autobiography into poetry as a central theme. For every poet his own experience is the raw material of the creative process but in Wordsworth’s case it is something more. His personal experience is his characteristic subject matter, so that much of his best verse constitutes a kind of diary. Thus Wordsworth in the Preface says, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Wordsworth invites the reader to share the sensations and feelings experienced by the poet – persona, rather than just present them.

Romanticism celebrated the individual and this is evident in Wordsworth’s habit of introducing solitary figures. These figures are shrouded in an air of mystery, evoking sympathy and sometimes also fear. The Solitary Reaper, The Forsaken Indian Woman, Ruth, the shepherd at the end of Michael – all these, and more, sing their own solitary songs or preserve their solitary silences. The natural world too has its lone figures such as The Skylark or The Daisy. Looming above this is the recurrent solitude of Wordsworth himself. His poems often tell of individuals made lonely by their own actions or those of others, arousing in us a sense of our own capacity for solitude and endurance.

                “Behold her, singing in the field,

                Yon solitary Highland lass !

                Reaping and singing by herself;

                Stop here, or gently pass !”                                         (The Solitary Reaper)

Although frequently autobiographical, Wordsworth masterfully presents the experiences and suffering of others. Resolution and Independence, Margaret and Michael are 3 major examples of this. Margaret, for example, echoes Wordsworth’s own relationship with Annette Vallon who he abandoned in France. The poem tells of a woman deserted by her husband, her life prematurely extinguished and her surroundings left to decay. The tale is narrated by a lonely Wanderer. The pathos is real because it is not asserted but felt:

                “Then towards the cottage I returned; and traced

                Fondly, through with an interest more mild,

                That secret spirit of humanity

                Which ’mid the calm oblivious tendencies

                Of nature, ’mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers,

                And silent overgrowings, still survived.”

Tintern Abbey forms a kind of bridge which links the purely autobiographical poems with those that concern themselves with the “still, sad music of humanity.” Through “Nature,” it merges not only inanimate nature but human nature as well.

Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Jane Austen’s most popular novel, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ deals with the theme of love and marriage in the rigid social structure in England in the early 19^th century.  It tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, two of the most timeless and popular characters of literature.  Austen sets the theme of the novel in the very first sentence, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

We are first introduced to witty and passive Mr. Bennet and his comical and garrulous wife.  Mrs. Bennet constantly complains of the condition of her poor nerves as she has five daughters to marry off.  Jane always sees the good in people, Elizabeth is sensible with a quick wit and their father loves them both.  Their younger sisters, Mary, Kitty and Lydia bring out much of Jane Austen’s humour.

Mr. Bingley and his friend, Mr. Darcy enter this sleepy neighbourhood and set the story in motion.  Austen brings out the troubles faced by women due to the inheritance laws at the time.  They were forced to marry wealthy men in order to secure their future.  On the death of Mr. Bennet, his property would pass to his cousin Mr. Collins as he has no male heirs.  Thus, there was no room for love or choice in making a match.  Women had to settle for what they could.  Thus, when Elizabeth rejects Mr. Collins’ proposal, we see that she is unlike other women of her time.  She refuses to compromise on her belief that nothing but the deepest love would make her marry a man.  However, her friend Charlotte is more practical and being the eldest among many siblings, she accepts Mr. Collins.

In the mean time, Elizabeth develops much hatred for Mr. Darcy as she thinks he is arrogant.  Mr. Wickham tells her more lies about Darcy that adds to her prejudice against him.  The class structure in England led land owners like Mr. Darcy to believe they were superior.  However we learn later in the novel that both the protagonists were under false first impressions of each other and the people around them.  Elizabeth was proud of her judgment of character but in her prejudice she had not noticed that Mr. Darcy was in fact a kind and generous man who was only looking after the best interests of his friend while Wickham was sly and unreliable.

When Lydia elopes with Wickham, Elizabeth and Darcy are finally brought together and they manage to overcome their pride and prejudices.  In portraying Lydia’s situation, Austen also subtly criticizes the society that condemns an entire family for the foolishness of one sister.  Austen’s quiet humour in dealing with characters like Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley serves to provoke change in society.

The beauty of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is in the way Austen has shaped her characters, especially the two protagonists.  They seem to grow through the novel.  They overcome their faults and they are dynamic and multi-layered.  Both Darcy and Elizabeth refuse to compromise on their convictions and Elizabeth is unlike any woman of her time.  She is willing to risk everything for what she truly believes in, at a time when women were helpless and dependent.  She has strong opinions and the wit and sharpness to express them even in the face of spiteful remarks.  Mr. Darcy is proud but as Charlotte says, he has the right to be so.  Like Mr. Collins, Darcy’s first proposal is condescending and Lizzy rejects him like she did with Mr. Collins.  However Mr. Darcy manages to change and amend his actions and Elizabeth sees him for what he truly is.

Thus Jane Austen melds together her criticism of society and her skilful use of language and humour to create memorable characters.  With each reading, the novel seems to grow with oneself and that is what makes Pride and Prejudice a classic.

THE SLAVE'S DREAM by H.W. Longfellow

Beside the ungathered rice he lay,

His sickle in his hand;

His breast was bare, his matted hair

Was buried in the sand.

Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,

He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams

The lordly Niger flowed;

Beneath the palm-trees on the plain

Once more a king he strode;

And heard the tinkling caravans

Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen

Among her children stand;

They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,

They held him by the hand!--

A tear burst from the sleeper's lids

And fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode

Along the Niger's bank;

His bridle-reins were golden chains,

And, with a martial clank,

At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel

Smiting his stallion's flank.

Before him, like a blood-red flag,

The bright-flamingoes flew;

From morn till night he followed their flight,

O'er plains where the tamarind grew,

Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,

And the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar,

And the hyena scream,

And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds

Beside some hidden stream;

And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,

Through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues,

Shouted of liberty;

And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,

With a voice so wild and free,

That he started in his sleep and smiled,

At their tempestuous glee.

He did not feel the driver's whip,

Nor the burning heat of day;

For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep.

And his lifeless body lay

A worn out fetter, that the soul

Had broken and thrown away!

Probably the best loved of American poets the world over is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was born on February 27^th 1807 in Portland, Maine. At the age of 22 he was launched into his career as a college professor. In 1834, he was appointed to a professorship at Havard. Upon the death of his first wife, he came to Cambridge and to the new professorship. He was given honourary degrees at the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge, invited to Windsor by Queen Victoria and called by request upon the Prince of Wales. He died on March 24^th 1882.

”Of all the suns of the New England morning,” says

Van Wyck Brooks, “he was the largest in his golden sweetness.”

A slave is one who is owned by another, and deprived of all rights and freedoms. The slave is dependant on the whim of the owner, who may generally force him to service and in principle, may usually dispose of his life.

The slaves in southern U.S. were forbidden by law to receive any education or acquire property and thus could rarely attain on their own, the means to buy their freedom.

Aside from domestic work, slaves were also instruments of production on farms, in mines and in factories owned by the master. The master provided them food and clothing. Punishments for misdemeanour were common.

The Slave’s Dream by H.W. Longfellow is a poem about one such slave who escaped despite the odds. The poem begins with the Slave lying on bare earth. Too exhausted to continue his work of gathering rice, the Slave was in the dreamy swoon of sleep, bare-chested, his tangled, unkempt hair buried in the sand, still clutching his sickle. In the mysterious shadow of sleep, he dreams of Africa, his home, his Native Land.

In his dream the slave sees the river Niger flow with all its majesty. He sees himself as the king he was. One can imagine a valiant warrior king striding through the plain, beneath priest like palm trees, listening to the distant tinkling of caravans down a mountain road.

In his dream, his mind wanders to his wife, the dark eyed queen of his land, standing amongst their children. He sees his children embrace him, kiss his cheeks, their little fingers clasping his hands. He does not know where they are, dead or alive, or whether he will ever see them again. His worry and longing for his family makes a tear drop from his eyes onto the sand.

He dreams of how he used to ride along the banks of the Niger with the wind on his face; the rich king of his land with golden bridle reins clanking as though he were going to war. Each time his horse would leap, he could feel his sword’s steel sheath strike the horse’s hide. Then, he was the one holding the chains, now he is bound by them.

Before him the flamingos like a blood red flag soared through the air. He followed them from dawn to dusk along the course of the Niger, over plains where the tamarind grew. He continued his hunt till he reached a village of caffre huts, where the Niger emptied into the ocean.

He dreams of how he heard the lion roar over its prey at night, the hyena scream and the sound of a river horse trampling reeds by an unseen stream. These familiar yet distant sounds passed through his mind like a great drumroll heralding a victorious king.

The forests were not bound by the will of another and the innumerable voices of the forest shouted of liberty. The Desert was its own master, untamed and free and when he hears it cry in its wild voice he starts in his sleep. In his sleep, he smiles at their exaltation, almost as though he is going to join them in their ecstatic delight.

The driver, a merciless superior in-charge, whips him for being asleep when he is supposed to work and the sun beats down ruthlessly upon him. But he is stolid towards the pain for Death had brightened up and beckoned him into the Land of eternal Sleep. His soul had left the confines of his body.

I love this poem for its simplicity. There is no judgment, no protest, no criticism. Whatever Africa may have been and whatever it may have became today, it will always have an unspoiled beauty and Longfellow has captured it in this poem.

SWIMMERS by Louis Untermeyer

I took the crazy short-cut to the bay;

Over a fence or two and through a hedge,

Jumping a private road, along the edge

Of backyards full of drying wash it lay.

And now, the last set being played and over,

I hurried past the ruddy lakes of clover;

I swung my racket at astonished oaks,

My arm still tingling from aggressive strokes.

Tennis was over for the day -

I took the leaping short-cut to the bay.

Then the quick plunge into the cool, green dark,

The windy waters rushing past me, through me;

Filled with a sense of some heroic lark

Existing n a vigour clean and roomy.

Swiftly I rose to meet the cat-like sea

That sprang upon me with a hundred claws,

And grappled, pulled me down and played with me.

Then, held suspended in the tightening pause

When one wave grows into a toppling acre,

I dived headlong into the foremost breaker,

Pitting against a cold and turbulent strife

The feverish intensity of life.

Out of the foam I lurched and rode the wave,

Swimming, hand over hand, against the wind;

I felt the sea's vain pounding, and I grinned

Knowing I was its master, not its slave.

Back on the curving beach I stood again,

Facing the bath-house, when a group of men,

Stumbling beneath some sort of weight, went by.

I could not see the heavy thing they carried;

I only heard : 'He never gave a cry-

'Who's going to tell her?' 'Yes, and they just married-'

'Such a good swimmer, too... And then they passed,

Leaving the silence throbbing and aghast.

A moment there my frightened heart hung slack,

And then the rich, retarded blood came back

Singing a livelier tune; and in my pulse

Beat the great wave that endlessly exults.

Why I was there and whither I must go,

I did not care. Enough for me to know

The same persistent struggle and the glowing

Waste of all spendthrift hours, bravely showing

Life, an adventure perilous and gay,

And death, a long and vivid holiday.

Louis Untermeyer was born in New York. Instead of going to school, he preferred to stay home and listen to his mother read him stories from various literatures of the world. His regular absence from school affected his performance and he left high school without completing it. At this point, he joined his father's jewelery store. Along with designing jewelry, Untermeyer never forgot his passion for poetry and literature and in 1911 he published his first book. He then decided to concentrate entirely on writing. Over the next fifty years, he wrote, edited and translated over a hundred books. In 1956 he was awarded a gold medal by the Poetry Society of America. Untermeyer died on 18th December, 1977.

'Swimmers' by Louis Untermeyer is an allegorical poem which focuses on life and death and discusses the closeness of the two. It shows that the fact of death cannot diminish life and that we must live life to the fullest. At one level, the poem also shows the conflict between man and nature. It brings out the poet's extreme optimism and energy.

The poet persona is not worried about deep, philosophical questions such as why he was born and where he must go when he dies as he is focused on the battles of life. The poem shows us that just as the sea is endless, the hardships in life are also infinite. Life is a perilous adventure. It stands for battles, thrill and pushing oneself to the limit. People who realize this know that there is no easy way out. Like Ayn Rand says, "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence - and it pertains to living organisms. The existence or non-existence of inanimate matter is unconditional - the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death."

The soul is timeless and death is only a parting with one's body. In life, people become attached to their comforts, identities and beliefs and take them for granted. They live in the belief that these materialistic things will last forever and are afraid to let go of them. People invariably dread dying because they know that these comforts which make them feel secure cannot be taken into the afterlife. On the other hand, those who stand up and face hardships, who "dive headlong into the foremost breaker" have nothing to lose when they die.

The sea is a symbol of all the battles of life. The poet doesn't care if he wins because in facing a stronger opponent he becomes stronger himself. His aim is the struggle and not the reward. He is so optimistic that for him, death itself is the reward for "the feverish intensity of life," for him Death is a long and vivid holiday. This poem reminds us that life is transient and death is eternal. Everything in life is uncertain except death. Nobody can tell what the future holds but everyone knows that if one is born, one must eventually die. Death is the necessary salvation and release from the endless circles of life.

Thus death is not the end but the beginning of a new existence, the rest that comes after one had breathed one's last and a vivid holiday only if one has struggled in life.

The 'Swimmers' are the people who do not get washed away by life's challenges. They, like the poet persona, treat death as a shore of the ocean that they must reach after the long, hard swim of life. They live Life to the hilt and hence don't cringe from Death. Imagine for a moment that you are immortal, you would live forever but one by one everyone around you would die. The world would change through the ages while you remain caged in the same body for eternity. The poet makes us see that just as Life is a gift, Death is not doom, but a gift that breaks the spirit free from the shackles of life.