A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

- By Chandan Kumar Singh

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility"

             ~ By William Wordsworth

1. Introduction: Wrodsworth as a poet -

Wordsworth himself admitted that his earliest poems were composed at school, which were "A Tame imitation of Pope's versification". This is of course the simple and plain recognition of the still surviving in print of the earlier poets. At the university, Wordsworth wrote some poems which appeared as "An Evening walk" 1793 and "Descriptive Sketches" (1973). In style these poems snow the Wordsworthian instinct for Nature "Lyrical Ballads" published in 1798, a join collaboration by Wordsworth and Coleridge, was the first Specimen of his poetic Genius, we may quote the following lines from "Biographic Literaria" to show the shift in the test and temperament of the poets of Romantic revival:

"It was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr Wordsworth, on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day. And to excite a felling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us" (Vied D.J Enright and E D Chickęra: in sritical text worthworth- preface to lyrical ballads, Oxford university press, new Delhi.)

The volume is a landmark as it is the Prelude to the Romantic Movement. During the year 1798-99 Wordsworth wrote some of his greatest poems. "Michael" The Old Cumberland Beggar", "Lucy Poems are worth mentioning. The poems are striking in their moving restraint delicacy of touch. "The Prelude" records Wordsworth's development as a poet. He describes his experiences with a fullness, closeness and laborious and anxiety that are strange in our literature. It was intended to form a part of vast philosophical work called "The Recluse". The excursion lacks the greatness of the finest part of the prelude. Its nine books are rather Monotonous and prosaic. "The Solitary Reaper", "The Green linnet", "Daffodils" show the height of Wordsworth's poetic output, "Ode on the Intimation of Impartiality" and "Resolution and Independence" are the off Quoted Philosophical poems of Wordsworth.

In the preface to the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads", Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. It reveals a lofty conception of dignity of that art which is "the breath and final spirit of all knowledge" and which is the product of "the spontaneous over flow of powerful feeling" taking in origin from, "emotion recollected in tranquility". The virtues of the poet are on a level with the dignity of his art. To Wordsworth he is a man "Possessed of more then usual organic sensibility'" and one who has also "thought long and deeply". It partly elucidates Wordsworth's sense of his on importance. It is better to categorize Wordsworthian dogmas into two groups concerning;

(a) The subject

(b) The style of poetry.

Wordsworths decleares his options for incidents and situations from common life to be oblained from "humble and rustic life". It is show because according to Wordsworths the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in common-life emerging out of common situations. Nevertheless Wordsworth does not agree to color ordinary things which should be presented to the mind in usual aspect of his work.

Wordsworth's views on poetic style or diction are revolutionary. He insists on that poem should contain little diction or style. According to him him "poetry should be written in ordinary every day speech of the real language of man in a state of vivid sensations". He asserted, "There neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of poetry and metrical composition". "The sphere to which Wordsworth own practice as a poet justifies his theories is a question which has centered the criticism of the critics.With reference to his subject matter he justifies his avowed declaration as a number of his poems deal with humble and rustic life. However, he sometimes fails Wordsworth's style is free from banality prosaisms under a strong emotion stimulus. It is touchingly simple with reference to "Lucy Poems".

Form 1805 to 1815 when Wordsworths vitality was being sapped by domestic misfortunes, his optimism shaken by the stablishment of the French empire and the victories of Nepolian and his imagination fatigued by the demands he made upon it, he found a noble inspiration in moral poetry, in the thought of duty and in the energy with which he attacked the Emperor. He had already written some fine patriotic sonnets; he now wrote many more and composed his great poem. "The excursion" in which he expounds his faith by the device making a philosophical pedlar refute the pessimism of a recluse who has turned misantanthropist because he has seen his dreams of social regeneration shattered by the set-back of the Revolution.

Unfortunately, after the fall of Napolean words worth found no noble cause to serve. A new tyranny weighed upon Europe, that of the Holy Alliance, which surpassed by force of liberal aspiration of the peoples. Wordsworth himself had become conservative and was frightened by the most legitimate attempts at reform. His poetry reflects his fair of change and is stamped with mistrust. Its inspiration grew colder and more rear, but at intervals unfit his death in 1850 some noble sonnets scattered through his work or included in the series called the Ecclesiastical sonnets and the river Dudden.

It was only by degress that his poetry captured public opinion. If impressed at once some chosen spirits, who were transformed by it, but it was not until 1830 that it was widely recognized by his compatriots, or that England found in it the mirror of her inmost fillings. In the interval she had listened chiefly to the epic tales of Walter Scott and the sombre violence of Byron. But Wordswoth's careful reading in the book of nature his lessons in sentiment and imagination, finally took place. It was a well deserved triumph. Few lines have been so entirely and undividedly consecrated to poetry and through poetry to the education of the sprit as Wordsworth's. He had not been content merely to possess imagination himself but had held it his duty to awaken and to clarify the imagination of his readers: he tried to direct their steps towards poetry. Perhaps no man has played so well, so constantly and so nobly as he the part of poetic guide.

2. Wordsworth's poetic career - Wordsworth's poetic career consists of four periods. He gives an account of the growth of his mind in the prelude or growth of a poet 's mind and tin tern abbey. These poems show a definite development in Wordsworth's conception of nature and human life.

First Period - Wordsworth's early years were spent in solitude among the hills the "ceaseless music" of derwent filled. his soul and gone him an gone unconscious for etaste of the calm that nature breathes among the hills and groves" in the book-1 of the prelude Wordsworth describes his feelings and impression of his childhood .he begins the second book of the prelude with a description of the tumultuous joy and eagerness of boyhood in its sports among a rich and varied scenery. During this boyish stage nature was;

"But secondary to my own pursuits

And animals activities, and all

Their trivial pleasures".

His early inter course with natural object developed in him a calmness and tranquility of soul which was to be a character of his feature in later years:

"The visible scene

Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery".

Second period - In Wordsworth's life the second period was the period of senses, when the young poet drank in the beauty of nature with the passion of a lover:

"The sounding cataract.

Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,

The mountain and the deep gloomy word,

Their colours and forms, were then to me

An appetite, a feeling and a love

That had no need of a remoter charm

By thought supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye".

Daring this period, "nature was loved with an unreflecting passion all qether untouched by intellectual interests or associations- the kind of interest that found such full expression in the poetry of keats."

Third Period - This stage of "dizzy joys" and "aching raptures" came to an end with his experience of human sorrow and suffering in France. He had kept watch over "human mortality "and in hi eyes nature now took on a "sober colouring". He heard "the still, sad music of humanity," and his love of nature became linked with the love of man. He found strength and force and beauty in the character of humble people. He saw into the depths of human souls: souls that appear to have no depth at all to careless eyes.

Forth Period - The froth stage was the final stage of Wordsworth's career. It was the period of the soul, when the poets love of nature became reflective, mystical and spiritual. He felt in nature " a presence" that disturbed him with" the joy of elevated thoughts,"

"a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of men."

Wordsworth now felt that there is one soul immanent through the universe, but it objectifies it self into various forms and phenomena perceived by the senses. This was the greatest period of Wordsworth's poetic life. His poetic powers gradually declined after 1808 and his later poetry became didactic and even prosaic.

3. Wordsworth's poetry - Wordsworth was a 'worshipper of nature', and the suspicion arise that a taste for his verse may have less to do with the appreciation of poetry as such than with a sentimental interest in his characteristic subject-matter and a fellow - feeling for his attitude towards it. There is, moreover, a general understanding that Wordsworth has, in some sense, a moral lesson to teach us; and most of us, like Keats, are uneasy about pọetry that has a palpable design upon us." Tennyson had very high opinion about Wordsworth. Wordsworth's earliest verses were written at school and that they were "a tame imitation of pope's versification" . At the university he composed some poetry, which appeared as "An evening walk" (1795) and "Descriptive sketches" eye for nature.

We find not only that a self conscious attitude towards nature is very much one of Wordsworth's preoccupations, but that there is a readiness to moralize about to draw moral conclusions from- this attitude, and to press them upon the reader. Didacticism did not, of course, enter poetry with Wordsworth or leave it With nim, but in his verse there seems sometimes to be a disturbing willingness to achieve the moral purpose at the expense of the poetry it self. Complaints can be made of strained simplicity, banality, or rhetoric; and even when these positive vices are absent, there is often felt to be a deficieney of concreteness conveyed by the play of imagery of kind associated with, say Shakespeare, Donne, or Keats.

The climate of opinion in which, during the last generation or so, renewed importance has been attached to the element of 'wit' in poetry has perhaps, been especially unfavorable to the appreciation of Wordsworth. But misgivings about his verse are of much longer standing then that keats's remark, quoted above, was thrown out in reference to Wordsworth himself. Jeffrey's famous tirade and shelley's satirical parody in peterbell the third are only the most extreme expressions of an attitude that was common Hazlitt, a sympathetic critic, summarized the general opinion of Wordsworth's poems in these terms in 1825;

"The vulgar do not read them; the learned...... do not understand them, the great despise, the fashionable ...... Ridicule them".(Vide The Pelican guide to English literature, Denguin books Itd, England 1957, p-153)

The themes he adopted in his poetrv and his manner of expressing them were not, of course, fortuitous. The Lyrical Ballads which he and Coleridge published in 1798, and which embodied his first major achievements in poetry, were the product of a deliberate program, set out in later editions the famous preface:

"The principal object ... proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout as far as was 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... Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings, .. are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and ... because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature."(Vied - D.J Enright and E D Chickera: in sritical text worthworth- preface to lyrical ballads, Oxford university press, new Delhi.)

The preference for humble and rustic life followed naturally from the conception, associated with Rousseau's name , of the 'noble savage', witn its implication state implication that men are better when closer to their natural uncorrupted by the artificialities of civilization. The rustic idyll was an accepted theme for painting and architecture; and the taste for natural scenery advocated by writers like Uvedale Price and Gilpin had, the time Lyrical Ballads was published, already established the vogue of the Lake District among English tourists. In the field of poetry itself, Akenside was (as Professor Nichol Smith has pointed out) writing of natural scenery in terms scarcely distinguishable from Wordsworth'S before Wordsworth was born, and readers of Burns were familiar enough with the in poetry of the language of humble and rustic' men. His introduction of autobiography into poetry as a central theme was much more of a new departure than most of the points on which he laid stress on the Preface. The Prelude, written between 1799 and 1805, was explicitly and consistently autobiographical on a scale quite unfamiliar to readers of English poetry, and Wordsworth himself remarked that a man should talk so much about himself; But the importance to Wordsworth of contemporary trends in taste was not that he was able, by securing their orientation to poetry, to serve them. It was rather that they provided a climate off ideas in which experiences Which were of a particular significance and value to him could form material of the creative process. But in Wordsworth's case it was something more than this; it was his characteristic subiect- matter. So that much of his best verse, even outside The Prelude, constitutes a kind of diary; and when his verse is least effective, it will often be found that he has, in some way, with drawn to a distance from his experience, that the immediacy of the personal record is absent.

One way in which this withdrawal commonly occurs stems from his desire to generalize his experience, to draw the moral from it, to ensure that the reader has not missed the point. Wordsworth made no secret of his desire to instruct. Every great poet is a teacher: I wish either to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing', he wrote to Sir George Beaumont; and to Lady Beaumont: There is scarcely one of my poems which does not aim to direct the attention to some moral sentiment, or to sonme general principle, or law of thought, or of our intellectual constitution. Each of them, he wrote of his poems in Lyrical Ballads, has purpose.

The words that follow this assertion, though, indicate that he has his own conception of how the purpose should be communicated:

"Not thatl always begin to write with a distinct purpose formally conceived: but habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such object as strongly excite those feelings Will be found to carry along with them a purpose".(Vied - D.J Enright and E D Chickera: in sritical text worthworth- preface to lyrical ballads, Oxford university press, new Delhi.)

The purpose is not, it appears, something to be stated in general terms: it is to be carried along by descriptions of objects which strongly excite the poet's feelings. Now, although Wordsworth is here giving a fair account of his own vest practice, it often turns out, on examination of particular poems, to be less than the whole story. The poem Influence of Natural Objects may serve as an illustration. Written in 1799, this was eventually printed as part of The Friend.

The full title of the poem is Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth, and the initial apostrophe, down to a grandeur in the beatings of the heart', is a rhetorical elaboration of this title. It is a statement, an assertion, that the spirit of the universe achieves certain things (purification of thought and feeling, etc.) Some of it we are likely to find obscure: what is the Eternity of thought' and what is the discipline referred to, for example? We may guess or be told, but we ought not to have to ask. We are prompted to ask by controversial presentation (the mean and vulgar works of Man) and by the provocative pulpit tone (soul', everlasting purifying, sanctifying', etc) but there is no argument or demonstration here that will convince if we are not already convinced. We are still waiting for the evidence to be produced.

With the words 'In November days,' however, the autobiographical account begins, the oratorical tone is abandoned, and the movement of the verse immediately becomes more subtle and flexible. The effect of the words from this point onwards is at one and the same time to describe the scene as it appeared to Wordsworth as a boy, and to create, in the reader's mind the effect as It that it had on the boy's mind: not that is the effect as it was having on him without his being aware of it. This overall result is achieve by re-creating for the reader, step by step the boy's experiences and hence enabling him to share them; so that it is hot simply the boy, but the reader, who feels the influence of natural objects.

Some of his poems in "Lyrical Ballads" such as "The thorn" and "The Idiot Boy" are condemned as being trivial and childish in style a few such as "Simon Lee" and "Expostulation and Reply" are more adequate piece 'Tintern Abbey' is one of the triumphs of his genius Wordsworth composed some of his finest poems which appeared in 1800 together with his some of his contributions to the Lyrical Ballads among the noteworthy of the new works in this collection were "Michael", "The Old Cumberland Beggar"," She dwelt Among the untrodden ways",  "Strange Fits of Passion and Nutting".

Although some of them such as "Michael" and "The Old Cumberland Beggar", are uneven in quality. The new poems show Wordsworth less preoccupied with his theories of poetic dietion and the lyrics are sticking in their moving restraint and delicacy of touch. The prelude (1805) is the record of his development as a poet. Here he describes his experiences with a fullness, closeness, and laborious anxiety, It was intended to form part or a vast philosophical work called "The Recluse" which was never completed. It does contain some good pictures and tales of country life. It is impossible here to list even the very great poems in these volumes, but in every poetic form that he used, with the possible exception of the narrative, Wordsworth is here seen at the height of his powers. To mention but a few of the lyric vein, The Solitary Reaper", "The Green Linnet", "I wandered lonely as a cloud"; in the philosophical, "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality", "Resolution and Independence", "Ode to Duty"; and the sonnets dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.

After the publication of "The Exclusion" Wordsworth's poetical power was clearly on the wane, but his productivity was unimpaired. His later volumes include. The white Doe of Ralston 1815, The Waggoner (1918), Peter ell (1819) Yarrow Revisited (1835), and The Borderers (1842), a drama. The progress of the works marks the decline in an increasing degree. These are flashes of the old spirit, such as we see in his lines upon the death of "the Ettrick Shepherd"; but the fire and stately intonation become rarer, and mere garrulity becomes move and move apparent.

4. Wordsworth's poetic diction - Wordsworth expounded his theory of poetry and poetic diction in the preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads1800 the essence of his poetic creed lies in his conception of the origin of nature and purpose of poetry .Wordsworth says: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings : it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

According to the poet, poetry is spontaneous and cannot be made to order, it cannot be made to flow through artificially laid pipes. Secondly, poetry is born not in the mind, but in the heart overflowing with feelings. The emotion deep and powerful ,is the fundamental condition of poetry . He further says that "poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility". It implies that the poet does not discharge his emotion at ones; he allows it to sink into his mind along with the obiect or incident that had excited it, and there it remains till its unessential or accidental ingredients are eliminated, and what remains is its essential or ideal truth. Later the poet recalls the object or the incident, the emotion, purified and idealized, revives with it. The excitement of his original experience is gone and he lives in his imagination through the whole experience again in a calm and tranquil manner. Wordsworth himself explains the process of poetic creation:

"the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually produced and does itself actually disappears and emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on: but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any positions what so ever, which are voluntarily described , the mind will upon the hole, be in a state of enjoyment."

The aim of poetry is ultimately to do good to the world by extending the domain of sensibility for the delight, honour and benefit of human nature.

Poetry, according to Wordsworth, "is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science. It is the poet's office to do good to the world by extending the range of human sensibility Wordsworth writes: "The poet is a man speaking to man, a man it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility , more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a move comprehensive soul than are supposed to be common among making... the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time"

Regarding the subject matter of poetry and the mode of expression Wordsworth writes: the principal object then proposed in these poem was to chose incidents and situations from common life, or to relate or described them throughout in a selection of the language really used by men, and at the same time to throw over them a certain colouring in an unusual aspect", and he goes on to say theat" humble and rustic life was generally chosen because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language."

In this declaration the following points call for comment:

(i) In search of themes Wordsworth goes straight to common life.

(ii) Secondly, in the treatment of such themes, he sets out to employ the language "really used by men'"; but it should be a selection of such language. He avoids "the gaudiness and inane phraseology of eighteenth century poets.

(iii) Thirdly, it should have a certain colouring of imagination.

(iv) Lastly, Wordsworth emphatically declares: "There neither is nor can be any essential distinction between the language of prose and metrical composition".

Wordsworth's theory of poetry and poetic diction represents his aim to bring the language of poetry to naturalness and simplicity. When he declared that his chosen theme was no other than the very heart of man, that the language of poetry should be the language really used by men, even peasants, he stood out as the champion and interpreter of new democratic faith.

Wordsworth followed his own theory in some of his poems like Lucy Gray, Susan, The Leech Gatherer, Michael etc. But in some of his poems like Tintem Abbey and Ode on the Intimations of Immortality he is stately. Herbert Reade rightly remarks: "as the theory of poetic diction, I don't think that any subsequent criticisms, including that of Coleridge, have succeeded in refuting it. There are a score of poems and these are among his best poems like Lucy Gray, The Solitary Reaper and Michael, Which triumphantly indicate it. But it is equally true that there are as many poems which contradict the theory as an all inclusive generalization. The mistake is to imagine that any theory of poetry, which descends to accidentals of diction and metre can be universal in its scope".

5. A comprehensive study of Wordsworth and coleridge - Wordsworth and Coleridge were also part of a larger group called the Lake Poets. Nature and redefinitions of nature are at the heart of the Romantic revival, and nature itself is, perhaps, nowhere more beautiful than in the region of England known as the lake country. According to his autobiographical poem, The Prelude, William was allowed to run wild in nature, which became for him a kind of mother. Throughout his poetry, we see a pantheistic refrain: God inheres in the natural world around us. God is in nature. He tells us in The Prelude that there was much loneliness in his childhood. Wordsworth's early circumstances rendered him extraordinarily introverted, and solitude was a vital element in his psychological makeup. Another of his most famous poems, "Daffodils," opens with the line "I wandered lonely as a Cloud". Loneliness and creativity are at the heart of Wordsworth's poetry, and loneliness, for him, is a creative state.

In 1795, he had met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose muse was both more philosophical and wilder than Wordsworth's: opium and Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher fed that imagination. First published in 1798. Lyrical Ballads may be the most influential book of poetry in English literature.

Coleridge was also living in the Lake District at this time, close by Wordsworth. Wordsworth's famous one-line definition of poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility." Coleridge supplied the "spontaneous" power, while Wordsworth offered the "tranquility," the reflection. A perfect example of Coleridge's spontaneity is found in "Kubla Khan," the short poem he began (but never finished) under the influence of a narcotic dream. Among Coleridge's utopian projects was his failed pantisocratic" Among community, based on free love and philosophical ideas. Coleridge, in contrast, left in his chaotic wake a collection of fragments, short works, and prolegomena. Like Wordsworth, he compiled an autobiography- prose, in his case - Biographia Literaria, the biography of a literary sensibility. The work fuses Coleridge's towering intellect, extraordinary powers of eriticism, and feeling for poetry. His greatest complete poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was composed during his collaborative years with Wordsworth.

At its best, Wordsworth's poetry is of stunning purity and power. One example comes from the "Lucy" poems, included in later reprints of Lyrical Ballads. Breathtakingly simple and with only eight lines, the poem nonetheless conveys compelling emotion. Coleridge's agenda was different. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the first work in Lyrical Ballads, he compacts into short-lined, four-line stanzas an amazingly pregnant and mystical narrative of the condition of man in an incomprehensible natural universe. A religious order exists in this universe, but it is an order that is enigmatic, although, mysteriously, meanings may be sensed. In writing this poem, Coleridge drew on theology, gothic fiction and an extraordinary range of reading in theology, philosophy, and travel. His descriptions of the arctic regions are almost photographic. The narrative of The Rime is simple. The Rinme of the Ancient Mariner indicates the new directions that poetry would take over the next two centuries. A revolution had taken place and, arguably, is still taking place in English literature as a result of Lyrical Ballads.

The words, 'essential difference' in Wordsworth's statement need examination in this connection. 'Essential' may be taken as an adjective form 'essence'. If so we have to examine the different senses in which the word 'essence' is used. 'Essence', according to Coleridge may be used in two different sense. In the first place it may mean 'the principle of individuation, the inmost principle of the possibility of anything, as that particular thing.It is equlivelent to the idea of a thing whenever we use the word "idea" with philosophic precision. Existence, on the other hand, is distinguished from essence by the superinduction of reality. Thus we speak of the essence and essential properties of a circle; but we do not therefore assert that anything, which really exist, is mathematically circular. But , there is also a secondary sense of the word "essence" in which it signifies the point or ground of contradiction between two modifications of the same substances or subject. Thus we say that the style of architecture of Westminster Abbey is essentially different form that of St. Paul, even though both had been built with blocks cut into the same form and from the same quarry. It is only this latter sense of the term "Essence" that is must have been denied by Wordsworth that the language of poetry (that is the formal construction, or architecture, of the words and phrases) is essentially different from that of prose. In support of his view Wordworth further states, "that not only the language of a large portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good prose, but likewise that some of the most interesting parts of the best poems will be found to be strictly the language of prose, when prose is well written. The truth of this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost all the poetical writings, even of Milton himself" - To illustrate his view Words worth quotes a sonnet by gray and observes that "the language of these lines does in no respect differ from that of prose."

Coleridge differs from Wordsworth's view on the ground that things identical must be convertible if there is no essential difference between the language of prose and that of metrical composition, then the language of prose must always be suitable for poetry and vice versa. "For the question is not", says Coleridge, "whether there may not occur in prose whether there are not beautiful lines and sentences of frequent occurrence in good poems, which would be equally becoming as well as beautiful in good prose, for neither the one nor the other has ever been either denied or doubted by any one. The true question must be, whether. there are not modes of expression, a construction, and an order of sentences, which are in their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but would be disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and vice versa whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be an arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection of (what are called), figures of speech both as to their kind, their frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that in both cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will and ought to exist.

6. The impact of French revolution on Wordsworth - An important event of the closing years of the eighteenth century, which stirred all Europe, and the English Romantics in particular, is the French Revolution. 'The Prelude' tells us much about Wordsworth's reaction to the French Revolution. Wordsworth was the first of the great Romantics to be influenced profoundly by the Revolution, which had a far reaching impact on his life and poetry. But its ideals - Liberty, Equality and Fraternity - were not new to him. The societies, which he had been familiar with, in his youth were essentially democratic. Even at Cambridge he found a strong democratic spirit.

Poet's first visit to France - 

"The Revolution, in its earlier phases, involved no revolution in Wordsworth's mental life". During his third summer vacations, Wordsworth visited France with his friend, Robert Jones. They landed in Calais on July 13, 1790, the eve of first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and of, "that great federal day", when the King was to swear allegiance to the new Constitution; as he mentions in The Prelude'. All this was, no doubt, very exhilarating. Yet Wordsworth was less affected by such experiences than might have been expected. He himself writes:

"Heard, and saw, and felt,

Was touched, but with no intimate concern".

Nature and the wonders of the "'ever-living universe", interested him far more than political excitement and the awakened hopes of man.

Poet's second visit to France - 

Wordsworth visited France for a second time in November 1791. This time he stayed there for more than a year. Although he stayed there for learning French, yet the influence his growing interest in the French Revolution exerted on him cannot be ruled out. While going to Orleans he passed through Paris, where he stayed for a few days. He listened to the debates in the National Assembly. He also made a visit to the ruins of Bastille. Yet as he himself confesses, there was something rather artificial and unreal about his emotion. He was not deeply and really stirred. The great principles of Fraternity, Equality and Liberty were in his very blood and what was happening seemed to him very much a matter of course.

7. Wordsworth's nurturing value of Nature with reference to his poems - "Tin tern Abbey" is a poem of re-visitation, both to the central themes of the Advertisement, and to nature itself. Wordsworth returns to the abbey after a five-year absence, having changed so much that "I cannot paint/ What then I was", having then had no knowledge of the sublime, and no "feeling" towards nature. To emphasize the reminiscent quality of the poem, he uses the word "again" repeatedly.

The poem has its roots in history accompanied by his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth did indeed revisit the abbey on the date stipulated after half a decade's absence. His previous visit had been on a solitary walking tour as a twenty-three-year-old in August 1793. His life had since taken a considerable turn: he had split with his French lover and their illegitimate daughter, while on a broader note Anglo-French tensions had escalated to such an extent that Britain would declare war later that year. The Wye, on the other hand, had remained much the same, according the poet opportunity for contrast. A large portion of the poem explores the impact of preterition, contrasting the obviousness of it in the visitor with its seamlessness in the visited. Although written in 1798, the poem is in large part a recollection of Wordsworth's visit of 1793. It also harks back in the inmagination to a time when the abbey was not in ruins, and dwells occasionally on the present and the future as well. The speaker admits to having reminisced about the place many times in the past five years. Notably, the abbey itself is nowhere described.

Wordsworth claimed to have composed the poem entirely in his head, beginning it upon leaving Tintern and crossing the way, and not jotting so much as a line until he reached Bristol, by which time it had just reached mental completion. In all, it took him four to five days' rambling about with his sister. Although Lyrical Ballads was by then already in publication, he was so pleased with this offering that he had it inserted at the eleventh hour, as the concluding poem. It is unknown whether this placement was intentional, but scholars generally agree that it is apt, for the poem represents the climax of Wordsworth's first great period of creative output and prefigures much of the distinctively Wordsworthian verse that followed. Although never overt, the poem is riddled with religion, most or it pantheistic. Wordsworth styles himself as a "worshipper of Nature" with a "far deeper zeal of holier love" seeming to hold that mental images of nature can engender a mystical intuition of the divine.

The poem is written in tightly-structured blank verse and comprises verse paragraphs rather than stanzas. It is unrhymed and mostly in iambic pentameter. Categorising the poem is difficult, as it contains elements of all of the ode, the dramatic monologue and the conversation poem. In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth noted:

I have not ventured to call this Poem an Ode but it was written with a hope that in the transitions, and the impassioned music of the versification would be found the principle requisites of that species of composition.

At its beginning, it may well be dubbed an Eighteenth-Century "landscape - poem", but it is commonly agreed that the best designation would be the conversation poem.

Wordsworth says that the gifts given him by the abbey have in so doing accorded him yet another, still more sublime: it has relieved him of a giant burden his doubts about God, religion and the meaning of life.

After contemplating the few changes in scenery since last he visited, Wordsworth is overcome with "a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns". He is met with the divine as "a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of thought, and rolls through all things".These are perhaps the most telling lines in Wordsworth's connection of the "sublime" with "divine creativity", the result of allowing nature to become "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being"

In the final stanza, Wordsworth addresses his sister, who did not accompany him on his original visit to the abbey, and perceives in the delight she shows at the resplendence and serenity of their environs a poignant echo of his former self.

The poem Lucy Gray is one of love and mystery. Some people have expressed views that an incestral plot is the underlying theme, that then meaning that Lucy is Wordsworth's sister. The story is one of despair, a child lone, "No mate, no comrade Lucy knew," who goes into the wilderness to abide by her father's command and is never seen again. Although Wordsworth wrote in the ending, " Yet some... She is a living child", we need to look at whether it is his imagination or if he is speaking the truth. We need to look into ourselves to see if we choose to believe that Lucy will be found again, and what Lucy in fact really is; in reality, and to Wordsworth.

8. Wordsworth philosophy of Nature with reference to his poem - William Wordsworth's Philosophy of Nature has been a unique one. William Wordsworth has respect or more great reverence for nature. This is evident in both of the poems Ode : Intimations of Immortality and lines composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey in that , his philosophy on God , immortality and innocence are elucidated in his contact with nature . For Wordsworth , nature had a spirit , a soul of its own, and to know is so is to experience nature with all the five senses. In both his poems there are many references to seeing, hearing and feeling his surroundings. He speaks of mountains , the woods, the rivers and streams ,and the fields. Wordsworth realised, in each of us , there is a natural affinity for a certain setting for nature . To elaborate , a fisherman would be most comfortable in a setting where he can be beside the sea ,which is beside the shore . His affinity towards nature is oriented to the sea. In the same way, a shepherd would like to be near meadows and fields and near lush rolling hills Wordsworth 's affinity would be to mountains, woods, rivers, streams , and fields .He knew the sprit , the soul and the feel of these places for he was able to experience these places in the fullness of youth. Both of these poems by Wordsworth are poems of recollection and in these recollections, Wordsworth came across something that was truly immortal: Nature and its soul. Though change, death and destruction might be normal occurrences that come to nature , there is rebirth and continuity to life. As in death and destruction , human endeavors are also mortal and temporary when compared to nature and its spirit. Nonetheless ,though these things are only mortal , or temporary , they are still as much a part of it as much as water droplets individually make up a river Wordsworth also speaks of his memory of childhood or innocence retraced in communing with nature in his adult years saying nature has the power to unearth those memories for a grown man to reflect upon In Ode, he celebrates the gift of childhood memory or of innocence sharing the same insights in Tintern Abbey.

The essential difference between Wordsworth's "Two-Part Prelude" and his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" lies in his relation to the experiences of his childhood, which continue to have great significance to him as an adult in both poems. In both, he writes of a "visionary" power throughout infancy and childhood. However, the differing experiences Wordsworth chooses to account for as influential, and the way in which these experiences continue to influence him imply that his understanding of the psychological relationship between his childhood experiences and his present adult state of mind has changed.

Prior to his many accounts of childhood experiences which follow, Wordsworth claims, in the "Two-Part Prelude," the mind of man to be "fashioned and built up/ Even as a strain of music." This is the first hint of the way in which Wordsworth understands, in this poem, the function of childhood experiences as part of the development of his poetic mind. Experiences in the "Two-Part Prelude" are "impressed", or "implanted" upon his mind, not to remain stagnant, but to eventually "impregnate and to elevate the mind." This is not to say the "Ode" does not speak of childhood experiences as either remembered or influential - it does. I am merely suggesting that this relationship, as described in the "Ode", is not one where Wordsworth's past experiences "build up" his mind to its present mental state. Yes, the experiences are influential, but only as memories, and do not play the active role in the forming of the mind they do in the "Two-Part Prelude."

It also seems that, as many critics have noted in the past, the "Ode" does not explain how the vision of the child, which seemingly stems from an immortal soul, is lost or cast away. Yet this is irrelevant to the present purpose, which needs only to cite how Wordsworth understands his present relationship to what he has lost.

For this statement to carry any weight, it must first be shown that there was a time when Wordsworth understood this relationship of visionary experience to present experience and, more importantly, creative and poetic powers differently than in the "Ode"., The "Two-Part Prelude" provides such a context. As stated earlier, Wordsworth continually refers to experiences "impressing" his mind with images and feelings. But we are not to think this is the end of these experiences' influence and power. Wordsworth admits that at the time of an experience's impression upon his mind, that is, at the time of the experience itself he may not have had, or most likely did not have, an understanding of its significance. It is clear in several passages that these impressions not only remain in Wordsworth's memory, but continue to actively spark his creative powers and his desire to know, feel, and understand Nature. He praises the fleeting visionary experiences not for their "kinship" to a "purer mind", but for their influence on the soul, who, remembering such experiences retains also a sense of sublimity". The visionary experience is here an active power, almost goading the growing faculties of the soul to continue striving to reach a position not yet attained.

Speaking more directly of his "creative sensibility", Wordsworth reinforces his understanding of the still active nature of his childhood experiences. He notes how spring and autumn, the snow in winter and the shade in summer, his "dreams" and "waking thoughts" supplied the substance of experience. Both his experiences in Nature and his dreams and thoughts nurse his love for Nature. But this nurtured love is only on part of the creative process. Wordsworth describes his "unsubdued" soul, active in the world, communes with the external things of nature. He describes an "auxiliar light" coming from his mind, which has been "built up" and continually influenced by experiences of childhood and Nature, that bestows "new splendour" on the setting sun.

In his treatment of the same subject in the "Ode", Wordsworth speaks not of a retained and active visionary sense, but of a vision and glory that is lost. He is feeling detached from Nature and his childhood vision in way he does not in the "Two-Part Prelude." The source of these feelings is his present understanding of how he now relates to Nature and how he is affected by the lost "visionary gleam" of childhood. Every stanza echoes the sentiment that he has lost the vision of childhood. This is the first matter of change in the understanding Wordsworth has of these events presented in the two poems. Whereas his visionary experiences of the "Two-Part Prelude" remain with him a direct influence on his thoughts and actively provoke creative power, in the "Ode" the power of such experiences are surely lost.

Yet in losing this power Wordsworth has not conceded to losing all relation to it; he undoubtedly still remembers the experiences. This is perhaps best exhibited in the opening lines of stanza:

O joy ! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That nature remembers

What was so fugitive !

Though he no longer has the visionary power, it still lives with him in that he remembers it. This sentiment of retaining a relationship to the power through memory and thought is echoed throughout the poem. In the "Two-Part Prelude", Wordsworth "had received" so much from "Nature and her overflowing soul" that all his thoughts were "steeped in feeling". The "Ode", however, features scenes. where Wordsworth communes with Nature only in thought. In stanza 10 he proposes to "join in thought" those that "pipe" and "play", those who in their "hearts" feel the "gladness of the May !". Rather than resent the loss of childhood vision, he writes that people should find their inspiration in what remains behind, and again mentions thoughts, here "the soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering", as an alternative to feeling what was once felt in childhood.

There seem to be two instances where the language of the poem might be contradictory to the idea that Wordsworth communes with Nature and childhood experiences only in thought or memory. In the fourth stanza, Wordsworth is speaking of the "blessed Creatures" and the joy he sees in them, and says of the experience: "I feel - I feel it all" But "feel" is in the context of his realizing hé no longer can feel Nature or see Nature how he once did. In the previous stanza while hearing the birds' "joyous song" and seeing the "young lambs bound", to him alone there came a "thought of grief". He alone, of all the "blessed Creatures" he sees, is not sharing in the joy they feel. He is somehow distant from it all, for he has lost the visionary gleam. Futhermore, the fact that he was able to experience grief is evidence of his ability to reflect and remember that he once felt as the creatures.

The second seeming contradiction is in stanza 9 claim of the "obstinate questionings" of youth being "truths that wake, to perish never". The language here implies that these "obstinate questionings" have been, to borrow his own language, "implanted" upon his mind and, if these experiences never perish, will continue to play an active role in the development or processes of his mind. But if we take a closer look at what the "obstinate questionings" mean to Wordsworth now, the possibility of their being active in the way childhood experiences in the "Two-Part" are active seems to disappear.

Wordsworth presents psychological relationship in the "Ode" to his childhood experiences. Wordsworth seems to be speaking of a time in his childhood when he questioned the reality of the world around him, as though he were a creature of a different origin thrown into the trappings of this world and then realizing he is of a different nature. The idea of knowledge of the immortality of the soul as comforting to one who has lost visionary power resurfaces in the final stanza of "intimations of immortality".

Noting the shift of these two poems is not a suggestion that the poet is inconsistent with his beliefs and understandings, - it does, however, bring to light a change that has taken place in his understanding. The "Two- Part Prelude" features an understanding of a special vision of the world and relationship to Nature in childhood. Furthermore it features and understanding of these experiences having a permanent and active role in the development of his mind. Wordsworth no longer understands his childhood experiences to have such a role in the "Ode". Indeed, one could argue it is his new understanding of having lost all visionary power that leads to the creation of the "Ode". Most important here is his revealing in the "Ode" a new understanding, perhaps one far more sophisticated. In the "Ode" Wordsworth has both recognized the loss of his childhood vision and reconciled this loss through the knowledge that he once felt "intimations of immortality".

9. Conclusion - From a consideration of the language of poetry Wordsworth is led to a consideration of the poetic art itself. But here, too, he is not quite clear in his assertions. it begin with, he defines good poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings ',in which case there is no difference between it and the song of Shelley's skylark that also pours his full heart;

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

But if it is only this. How is it that it comes to be clothed in a selection of language really used by men with metre superadded thereto, for no sudden rush of emotions can leave a poet any leisure for these? Wordsworth makes no attempt to explain the anomaly but modifies the statement later in the preface in this way: 'I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling; it takes its origin from emotioon recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindered to that which was before the subject of contemplation is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on.' It will be noticed here that though the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' and 'emotion recollected in tranquility are the very opposite of each other- the one coming on a sudden, the other deliberately recalled to memory - wordsworth makes no difference between the two and endeacours to explain the one by the other. Did he mean the same thing by the two? If he did, as appears from this elucidation of the first statèment by the second, his meaning in the first seems to have been that poetry is the final product of the unforced overflow of powerful feelings. For it is only by some such interpretation that these two opposed statements can be reconciled. That his second statement is the more considered one and explains his meaning more truly is plain enough for his own great poenms were composed in the way therein set forth. A moving sight-say the solitary reaper or the daffodils-was seen during a walk, stored in the memory and recalled in moments of calm contemplation to be bodied forth into a poem. In this process the emotion originally aroused by the sight was re created in contemplation sa nearly as possible till it overpowered the mind completely, driving contemplation thence. So this is how poetry originates in emotion recollected in tranquility and is therefore, ultimately, the product of the original free flow of that emotion. Had no emotion been aroused of itself in the beginging there would have been no recollection of it in tranquility and so no expression of it in poetry. The first stage in the poetic process is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings', the next their recollection in tranquility and the last their expression in poetry. That by spontaneity in poetry Wordsworth did not imply a complete rejection of workmanship, Or artlessness, is borne out by his own practice. For he ever composed his poems with the greatest care not,trusting his first expression which he often found detestable. It is frequently true of second words as of second thoughts, he wrote to Gillies, 'that they are best.' Not is the principle of spontaneity in poetic composition advocated anywhere else in the preface except in that solitary phrase. Here too, therefore words worth is not so revolutionary in his concept as he appears.

He also considered the function of poetry. It is not sheer self-expression as its 'spontaneous overflow' might suggest it stands or fills by its effect on the reader. For the poet is a man speaking to men apart from them his song is a mere voice in the wilderness. His overall object is, no doubt, pleasure but it is pleasure in which the moral gain far out weighs the aesthetic. The latter chiefly arises from the poet's way of saying things and from his use of metre or rhyme which, with their pleasurable recurrence, make even pathetic situations and sentiments painless. The moral consists partly in the refinement of feelings which true poetry effects, partly in the knowledge of 'man, Nature, and Human life' which it conveys, and partly in its emphasis on whatever makes life richer and fuller: 'Truth, Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope'- and melancholy Fear subdued by faith.

As the poet is possessed ofa greater power to feel and to express his feelings than other men, he has a ready access to the reader's heart; and as his feelings are saner, purer, and more permanent than can be aroused by the same objects in other men, the reader is induced to feel the poet's way in the same situation and even in others. He emerges saner and purer than before.

Next, poetry is the pursuit of truth - of man's knowledge of himself and the world around him. Science is engaged in the same pursuit, too, but while the truths it discovers benefit us only materially, the truths of poetry cleave to us as a  part of our existence', for they concern man's relation to man, on the one hand, and his relation to the external world of Nature, on the other, both illustrated in 'incidents and situations from common life',as in the lines written in early spring where wild man harms man, the world of Nature, where everything is happy, caters for his hourly delight. It is an instance of unpleasant truth, no doubt, but in the context of its 'overbalance of pleasure' in Nature, its sum total is pleasure. While the pursuit of science pleases the scientist there is nothing in its truths that can equally please the common man. They must remain the pleasure of the few who know science. Nor, being purely the product of the 'meddling intellect', are they 'felt in the blood and felt along the heart' , as the truths of poetry are. Poetry (therefore) is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science'.

Finally, poetry is a great force for good. Wordsworth's own object in writing poetry was' to console the afflicated; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier' to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous. From this he drew the general conclusion that 'every great poet is a teacher' I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing. This is also what plato, with whom wordsworth has much in common, wanted poetry to be but as the latter everywhere insists on pleasure as being a necessary condition of poetic teaching he may be said to follow Horace more than Plato. But so far as teaching alone I concerned wordsworth, in a famous passage concerning his own poems, seem to echo the very sentiments of Plato: 'they will cooperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and wIll in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier. In the preface these benign tendencies are defined as 'relationshiop and love' which is the great funcition of poetry to promote. But they are to be induced through a purgation of feelings rather than through a mere appeal to the intellect or good sense. This is what distinguishes wordsworth's concept of teaching from that of his neo-classical predecessors.

The value of his criticism - Whether in his attack on poetic diction or in his judgement of poetry by its appeal to the emotions, wordsworth opposed the neo- classical practice of judging a work of art by the application of tests based on ancient models. These tests could at the most judge the external qualities of the work - its structure, diction, metre, and the like. A work might be flawless in all these and yet fail 'to please always and please all'. It may please the critic intent on looking for the se niceties in it, but what about the reader whose only test of its merit is the extent to which it moves him? Wordsworth applied himself to this great question- the ultimate test of literary excellence diction nor in a particular mode of writing. It lay rather in the healthy pleasure it afforded to the reader, and this may arise as much from the use of common language as from the customary language of poetry, and as much from the writer's individual mode of writing as from that laid down by newclassicism. What

Wordsworth says in this connection of the style of his lyrical Ballads applies equally to his general poetic practice: I am well aware that others who pursue a different track may interest him likewise; I don't not interfere with their claim, I only with to prefer a different claim of my own. This is actually all that he meant in the preface and all that romanticism means too. It is an application of the common principle of live and let live' in the sphere of letters.

Wordsworth also saw that neo-classicism made no provision for originality of genius and seldom judged it on its merits. It stood all for the beaten track. So consciously or unconsciously it often proved a dindrance to writers who followed their own path. From the attacks made on his own works therefore the conclusion was forced upon him "that every author, as far as he is great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed; so has it been, so will it continue to be. For what he has in commonwith his predecessors (i.e. with the older school) his path has already been smoothed by them , "but for what is peculiarly his own, he wil be called upon to clear and often to shape his own road: he will be in the condition of Hannibal among the 'Alps'. This too, his preface sought to do : to wean the reader away from the old mode of writing and to accustom him to his own. This, in spite of opposition, he succeeded in doing. His critical writings therefore mark the end of the old school and the beginning of a new or rather the revival of an older one - the Romantic school of the Elizabethans.

Reference

1. Samuel S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed by J. Shaw Croff (Oxford, 1907)

2. W. Wordsworth The Prelude or Growth of A Poet's Mind; Vol: II Page no 255-60 edited by Earnest d. Selincourt (Oxford, 1928)

3. Dorothy Wordsworth, In Christopher Wordsworth Memoirs of Willam Wordsworth edited by Henry Reed Boston-1851.

4. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth written by Earnest D. Selian Court New York, Macmilan Comp. 1941.

5. On the question of the actual date of composition of Wordsworth poetical works (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940-45)

6. History of English Literature by Edward Albert Revided by J. A Stone 5th edition oxford university prees.

7. English critical texts by D.J Enright and E De Chickera, Oxford University press 1962.

8. An introduction to English Criticism by B Prasad, Macmillan India ltd.

9. Wikipedia.

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