Wordsworth made his debut as. In that same year he entered St. During a summer vacation in Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also travelled in Switzerland.
On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had a illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem Vaudracour and Julia, but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.
In he met Coleridge. About he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in , and published posthumously in under the title The Prelude.
Wordsworth spent the winter of with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic Lucy poems. His poems written during middle and late years have not gained similar critical approval. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. At the turn of the 18th and the 19th centuries, romanticism came to be the new trend in English literature.
William Wordsworth, the representative poet of Romanticism, whose poems took on greater significance, brought a totally new and fresh stream of air to the European literary field.
Wordsworth, the glittering star, is always shinning in English literature. His whole life had a close connection with nature—the permanent subject sung highly by human being. He held a firm faith that nature could enlighten the kindheartedness and universal brotherhood of human being, and only existing in harmony with nature where man could get true happiness.
All of them revealed the poets genuine love towards the nature, the fervent enthusiasm of pursuing the truth of life. Born in Cockermouth, just on the northern fringe of the English Lake district, he spent his childhood there. As a child, he often wandered among the fields and woods. At the age of 8, he was fed by one of his relatives who gave him simple food and shelter, but freedom of enjoying the nature.
The Natural scenes and sounds gave his imagination wings and made him getting to know the cottagers, shepherds, and solitary wanders that then entered his dreams and even his later poems.
At the age of 14, Wordsworth was sent to school at Hawkshead in the beautiful lake district in northwestern England. There, the unroofed school of nature attracted him more than the classroom, and he learned more eagerly from flowers, hills and stars than from his books.
It was a necessity. The great love for nature early cherished by the child was later expressed in his poetry. Birds sang sweetly on the trees and groups of primrose blossom.
The periwinkle climbed here and there coming into wreaths form. In this poem, Wordsworth was deeply impressed by the charming and fresh scenes in early spring.
Wordsworth is a master hand in depicting natural things. Quiet, beautiful, sweet, pleasure and so on are the most commonly seen words in his poems. In fact, the differences in content only serve to highlight Romanticism as a poetic style applicable to all genres of verse. So says R. His childhood follows along a similar theme of communion with nature. Then at the age of seventeen, after the deaths of his parents in and , Wordsworth was separated from his five siblings and sent away to school at St.
There his life was simple and unencumbered. Vacations were spent in walking tours around England and on the continent with friends. His deep appreciation of nature developed into a more sublime, spiritual communion. He revisited France where he came into brief contact with a Frenchwoman, Annette Vallon, by whom he had a child. Because of this influence, he developed strong republican sympathies and became absorbed in the revolution out of genuine concern and sympathy for the French people.
In he returned to England where the excitement of the revolution quickly descended into disillusionment with the beginning of the Reign of Terror in September Those who praise his actions claim that Wordsworth showed himself to be a morally sound individual, who, sympathetic to the plight of a people, was moved into action.
As Graham Hough, Professor of English at Cambridge University states,It is customary to reproach Wordsworth for abandoning it the revolution , which is absurd; even Romantic poets must be permitted to grow up. What we can legitimately regret is that he abandoned so much with it, so many of the ideals that should have been immune to historical disappointment. Then in the winter of , he fled England to avoid military conscription and went with his sister, Dorothy, to Germany.
The Reclusive YearsThe years and were busy ones for Wordsworth. Before the wedding, Wordsworth revisited France for a settling of affairs between him and Annette. While in France he spent some time with his illegitimate daughter, Caroline. However following this, Wordsworth and his wife installed themselves at their new home from which he seldom vacated.
This was all too much for Wordsworth to bear and his later work shows his defeatist attitude and the lack of hope with which he became imbibed. Romanticism, as succinctly defined by wikipedia. Before the advent of Romanticism, emphasis in poetry was placed on the order and balance of reasoned thoughts.
Poets had to adhere to strict rules of form and diction and the higher the level of elevation of language, the greater the substance of the poetry created. Furthermore, the subject matter of the poem was also a matter of tacit understanding amongst most poets. For poems depicted Kings, Queens and Gods and described major historical, social and political events. The elements of Romanticism that will be focused on in this paper have already been outlined. While his reverence for nature and his thoughts on language remained unchanged during his poetic lifetime, the thoughts and feelings expressed in his poetry were all linked, as previously indicated, to his personal development.
Thus differences in subject matter will be fully noted and their historical importance explained. Nature in the Lyrical BalladsWilliam Wordsworth is singularly remembered by most as the pre-eminent poet of nature. Critics have debated for decades over how to classify the influence that nature has had on him and his poetry. While I personally agree with the critics, there is another side to the story.
For Wordsworth was, in earnest, more of a mystic than a pantheist in that he believed in a higher spiritual experience that man could enjoy. However this was never the case, though he definitely associated both Nature and the Child with the divine. Romanticism was concerned with nature in this regard. This is in fact just what Wordsworth prescribes. He describes nature as an actual being, an influence- a parent, teacher, guardian, comforter and guide.
He later expresses that when in the city or when stressed or sad, he would conjure up the image of the wide natural vista of the landscape and become immediately calm again. Such is the effect of the river; of nature! This idea was regarded as avant-garde at its conception but has since been recognized by many to hold considerable philosophical weight.
Moreover the ability of nature to sooth the poet is seen almost reflected in his thoughts as he must first look to nature for support and comfort before he can address his daughter. The divinity of nature is seen in the opening lines of the poem.
In these lines nature is compared with explicitly religious ideas to introduce the idea of nature as a link between man and God- the truly divine. This whole poem reflects the quietness of the atmosphere in the lofty description of nature and the gentle address to his daughter.
Solitude, pain of heart, distress and poverty. The night before there was a storm and now nature is calm and gay whilst the speaker is undergoing an inner storm of doubt and worry. His ideas on continuity have already been recounted and thus the extent of the pain he felt because of his disunity can be fully understood. For in his later years, Wordsworth was unable to recapture the beautiful spiritual experience of which he describes in Tintern Abbey.
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