Wordsworth: Poems

by William Wordsworth

In the long history of English literature William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is the writer who achieved the most dramatic transformation of the literary scene almost single-handed, creating out of his personal communion with nature a new poetic which had a profound moral and spiritual influence on the entire nineteenth century and reverberates still today. Over the decades while the young democrat who greeted the French Revolution with enthusiasm evolved into the Romantic sage of Haydon’s portrait on Helvellyn, the transforming power of the imagination remained at the heart of his poetry, and if he glimpsed the eternal he never lost his reverence for the ordinary, and his sympathy for the sufferings of the marginalised and oppressed.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, Fiction, British Literature, English Literature, Romanticism

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1802

About the author

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

Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years, which the poet revised and expanded a number of times. The work was posthumously titled and published, prior to which, it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm probably doing Samuel Taylor Coleridge an injustice, but I can't help it: his great friend William Wordsworth resonates so much more with me. Both are epigones of early British Romanticism (although the idiosyncratic William Blake is unfairly overlooked). But Wordsworth's poetry is much more complex, and he also underwent a much more interesting evolution. He's not just concerned with nature; the social aspect is also fully present in his work, and his struggle with the revolutionary times he lived through makes him more versatile and human. Of course, I know the elder Wordsworth was the man of rustic conservatism, but that too has its charm. I had more difficulty with the long, dense poems from his later period, which contrast with the surprising freshness of his earlier work. Oh well, both undoubtedly have their merits.

Just a sample of a typical Wordsworth poem (fragment of Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey):

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me 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 man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

The entry for Wordsworth in my copy of The New Lifetime Reading Plan is easily the funniest in the book. Clifton Fadiman was obviously not fond of this verdant poet: “Wordsworth, who never understood how to cut things short, persisted to his eightieth year. Of these years only the first half were, from posterity’s viewpoint, worth living.” According to Fadiman, the large majority of Wordsworth’s writings is intolerable balderdash; only a sliver is worthwhile.

I was bemused and a bit baffled when I first read Fadiman’s entry—why all this abuse for the hoary poet?—but now I understand it. Wordsworth was enamored of himself. In his poetry, he seems constantly elated with his own inventions, as if every line he spins out excites him like watching a child's first steps. In small doses, this is endearing; but after a while it wears thin. I just wanted him to talk about something else, to switch topics, to change the mood. But like Proust or like Kafka, Wordsworth serves all his dishes seasoned with the same spice; unless you are game for a feast of the Wordsworthian flavor, you will starve.

To be fair, this selection may not have presented the poet at his best. From what I hear, The Prelude contains most of Wordsworth’s finest material, and only a section of that poem is included here. What is included is a smattering of pleasant verses, sometimes stirring, sometimes sentimental, sometimes fetching, sometimes treacly, and almost none of it memorable. I was not cut, surprised, or roused, but followed along on a train of syllables, like a pleasant boat ride down a brook, loafing and listening to the leaves whistling overhead. The pretty landscape drifted by, green trees and shrubs and baby-blue flowers, all of it uniformly pretty, and yet none of it making a strong impression.

Well let me stop criticizing. I still consider myself enough of a tin-eared blockhead to strongly suspect the faults are with myself rather than with Wordsworth. In any case, I cannot say I disliked this collection. Far from it, I found these poems generally pleasant reading. But if Wordsworth is worth his reputation, he shouldn’t be merely enjoyable, but breathtaking. I suppose I’ll just have to shut up and read The Prelude. Eventually

[Zoeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a lot more to William Wordsworth than just that lovely, often-quoted poem about daffodils that we must have read at some time or the other at school. This pretty little compact edition (little since, even at a two hundred and fifty pages, I cannot help feeling that there are still many poems to discover) is a neat and nifty way to explore his many facets as one of the leading poets of his time and even after that. While it is indeed true that Mother Nature was his greatest and most enduring muse, what surprised me genuinely was also Wordsworth's keen interest in human nature as well. This pocket-sized edition, edited by Peter Washington, does a good job of including his choicest sonnets, memorial poems and even narrative and dramatic verses, thus encapsulating the essence and themes of his poetry quite succinctly.

Of course, it goes without saying though that a major part of this collection is devoted entirely to Mother Nature herself. The first segment of the book contains some of Wordsworth's most famous and iconic poems, including the charming one about those flowers swaying and dancing in the breeze gently, and they also contain his longer, more mesmerising autobiographical verses about his everlasting fascination with his muse and how it continued to inspire and influence him even from his years as a child and a schoolboy and thus shaped his future enthusiasm to write about it at length and poetically. These range from short, lively pieces to longer, occasionally rambling pieces that are memoirs in disguise and yet, they all convey superbly and with feeling his affinity with nature and its mysterious and mystical workings.

This segment is followed immediately by his memorial poems, dedicated both to mere mortals as well as the gifts of Nature endowed to England and the pristine and picturesque countryside of his country. There is a wistful feeling of regret and melancholy in these verses and this further continues into his sonnets, which are alternately romantic and elegiac, introspective and even contemplative. One of them, perhaps one of his most well-known, is titled "London, 1802" which turns out to be nothing on the titular city at all; rather, it is a bitter lament of how his country is shedding its innate goodness and innocence and is embracing evil and avarice and in the same, he wishes that Milton was alive to chronicle and critique this changing condition, thus turning into a passionate ode to the deceased poet himself.

The last segment of this collection, most interestingly, contains some of his narrative and dramatic poems, again variable in length and these reveal a most unexpected dimension to Wordsworth's works. Again, the pastoral countryside is set as a backdrop to the simple, even unspectacular stories that are chronicled in these verses particularly in his most effective epic poems "Michael" and "A Ruined House", both which convey a rural, unhurried way of life affected by the tumult of passing years and changing fortunes and the indelible influence of Mother Nature herself in the proceedings. Not all of these verses, however, are sad or melancholy. The book concludes, on a smiling note, with the droll "The Idiot Boy" which reveals, uncannily, Wordsworth's gift for wit and wordplay in how each of the stanzas reminds one of a limerick.

They are not always successful, these attempts by this Poet of Mother Nature, to chronicle human nature but they are made interesting by the universality of their themes - nature is constantly a stirring force lurking as a background to the smallest incidents and there is something infinitely pleasing about seeing these humdrum stories and tales unfolding in leisurely grace, reminding a present-day reader about a time when time could flow unhurriedly and when people were sincerely passionate about the simplest and most affecting things in the world. Reading these poems today in a time fraught with tension and anxiety, with disappointment and mediocrity is like experiencing the pleasure of a simple life without pretensions and material pleasures once again and that alone is the reason why we should all turn to Wordsworth and other poets and storytellers like him.

[Whiskey Tango · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like several other romantic poets, William Wordsworth is a paradox. In much of his best poetry, his aim was to celebrate the changeless things in nature and man. Yet he writes with a strange boldness and originality that are bracing or unsettling depending upon how willing we are to accept a new kind of poetry.

I see the Wordsworth's stock has fallen among sophisticated readers. If he no longer startles us, that is partly because so many later poets have made his strategies familiar, especially his habit of philosophizing from natural emblems. Wordsworth embarked on his most creative period by trying to chasten and chastize 18C poetry, using a language of limpid, plate-glass purity freed from mannered artifice. Yet his own manner was so distinctive that he is among the most parodied poets.

Wordsworth was born in Northwest England, the scenic Lake District he was to make famous. His mother died when he was 8 and his father died when he was 13, confirming what I believe is the profound effect on the sensitivity and imagination of children who are made vulnerable by the death of a parent. In his lifetime (1770-1850), despite the fact that he had not published, Wordsworth was considered, along with Byron, one of the two pivotal figures of English romanticism, Wordsworth once defied the imagination, which he considered the highest faculty of the creative mind, as something which "produces impressive effects out of simple elements."

After spending time in the Alps and upon seeing London which he found a phantasmagoria and, the antithesis of the stable grandeur and dignity of his native hills. Wordsworth spent his life as a bachelor after fathering a child with a Frenchwoman whom he never married and from whom he was separated during the French Revolution. Wordsworth and his beloved sister Dorothy moved in together and she helped restore his mental health and remained with him to old age.

The friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge became one of the most fruitful in literary history. They conceived together both a new poetic style and a whole new rationale of what poetry should do. If was to be an agency not of mere diversion but of the profound truth in an imaginative union that would enlighten and help heal a spiritual ailing world. Wordsworth treated everyday subjects the medium would be an honest language really spoken by men, cleansed of unfunctional conventionality. Oddly, one of the things that obscure the purpose in many of Wordsworth poems is the very simplicity of the language; one of the hardest things in reading his works is to concentrate on the behavior of words that seem not to be doing anything special at all.

The typical movement of Wordsworth's major works is an oscillation between observation of the external scene and introspective analysis of feelings, between experiences and ideas they generate, between the remembered past and present circumstances, between a personal confession ("I") and universal truths ("we"). We need to keep this back-and-forth movement in mind when we call Wordsworth a nature poet. Though it is everywhere in his work, nature rarely appears simply for its own sake. Rather nature is a mythic emblem-of a mysterious, perhaps divine presence, of a dynamic of steady order in the universe, and especially of the meaningful development and spiritual experience of individual persons.

Moreover, nature can cut two ways. It is beauty, but it is also fear; Wordsworth is a poet of joy but also of the deepest anxiety. Wordsworth's subject is not ultimately nature but the psyche. Wordsworth substitutes imagination for religion for nature is Wordsworth's epic, the providential force leading him by dark ways to heroism which is the development of imaginative-truly human- power.

[Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gifted this beautiful edition of Wordsworth's poem for my birthday many months ago. I've been savoring it, reading several poems per week and revelling in the lovely language.

Not only is the poetry phenomenal, the pleasure of holding this small hardcover book in your hands and using the golden ribbon marker to hold your place makes it a double delight.

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm torn - I really liked most of the short poems and one or two of the long ones but a big part of this collection consists of the loooong poems that I didn't enjoy as much. So 3 stars will have to do.

[Megan Gibbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful collection of poetry read as part of required reading for university course .

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wordsworth’s Everyman’s Poetry collection is like sipping ginger tea in the morning when everyone is asleep still. While his words are quietly invigorating they are thoroughly warming from the inside out. Each poem lingers like steam curling from a cup, soft and unhurried. There’s clarity to his lines that is fragrant with meaning, leaving behind a tender warmth that stays long after the last page is closed.

[celine · Rating 3 out of 5]

By our own spirits we are deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

[Acontecimal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read from the collection "The Romantic Poets".

[Bumbles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wordsworth has some good poems but overall he bores me.

[Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking to purchase one volume of Wordsworth's poems this is the one to get!

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased several volumes of these of Everyman's Library Pocket Poets. There is a wide selection of excellent poets; it's hard to take umbrage with the choice of authors. They are a great size in hand, and the paper, covers, and dust jackets are beautiful. The production value is high, and there is a convenient ribbon sewed in. All and all, this is the sort of book that Elizabeth might pull off the shelf in Mr. Darcy's library and spend an afternoon perusing in a sunny reading chair.

Those are the good points. The problem with these books, all of them, is they just don't fit the bill, any bill. Without a brief biography of the poet, it's hard to put the work in context. Without a bit of editorializing on why the (admittedly necessarily heavily curated, given the size) choices were made as to what was included, what was truncated, the selection of poems, and the intentions behind chopping up particular poems, it's just not possible to dive deep into the works. At first glance, given their brevity, these should be introductory works. But without the elements I've described, they're a poor introduction. And they don't seem to serve any other purpose. Big fans looking for a bit of joy looking at already familiar materials might find something here. But back to Mr. Darcy's library, these are made to take up a few shelves altogether, and given what is missing from these, those shelves are lacking.

I always start with five stars - minus one for the lack of information on the poet, one more for the choppy, seemingly ad hoc contents. I recommend these books to people who are already fans; others should look for other versions.

[Christine Kenney]

Not for me. My thoughts too often wandered to how editors go about editing poems. Some of this was OK--

Small Celandine: he seems to have worked out the unusual plant defense strategy using turgor pressure that I just came across in How Plants Work (Chalker-Scott)... so maybe lounging around in fields all day is more industrious than I thought.

Solitary Reaper: Black Rednecks and White Liberals (Sowell) claims there was a Scottish "cultural cringe" contemporary with Wordsworth. With the intelligentsia shedding their Scottish culture in order to pass for British and avail themselves of enlightenment advances. It is curious a Brit would admire and respect their folk songs... Though I would say there are better constructed, more moving Irish folk songs (and DK Murphys Irish punk covers) out there on the topics Wordsworth tries to tackle in the longer story poems in the final section... So maybe he should have worked a little harder to capture what she was singing about and just translated that?

Resolution and Independence: I don't know why this was my favorite, there's something amusing and thought-provoking about an elderly dude supporting himself catching leaches.

Idiot Boy: How cancelled Willy would be if he tried to publish something like this now? But lots of legitimate questions raised about the tough choices that come with triage and, like Cumberland Beggar poem, the role various social niches function in the larger society... Are they a drag or are they an asset?

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I did not have to read all of them, so therefore my rating is a reflection on what I had to read for class.

I guess it wasn't as bad as his Lyrical Ballads, or I was in a better mood today than when I read the aforementioned book, but Wordsworth still didn't win me over in the end. I'm glad that's the last of his stuff.

At least, I hope I never have to read anymore Wordsworth in the future. That'd be nice.

[Rudolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of poems from one of the true masters of the romantic period, and all of it fit neatly in my pocket. It's refreshing to listen to the structured rhythmic styles for a change with a focus on the natural setting and childhood of the poet himself (though his roses were remembered with rose lenses.)

[Hannah Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with Wordsworth's poems as a hopelessly romantic English major in undergrad. Coming back to his work and taking the time to read through each poem slowly has been a beautiful, nostalgic adventure. Wordsworth never fails to remind me that I should just go outside and take in all the beauty our world has to offer.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
I love Wordsworth generally but I wasn’t wild about the selection of poems in this particular anthology. So far when it comes to the Everyman Pocket poetry books, the ones on a specific author don’t seem to be as good as the ones on a particular theme.

[David Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating is low purely because wordsworth is hard. As I read more poetry, and gain more ability to read it, I'm sure the rating will rise. Or perhaps, I just don't think wordsworth is that great. I want the eyes to see

In the meantime, I'll continue reading Byron and Frost.

[Thomas Voiles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read

[Rachel Earling-Hopson (Misse Mouse) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I collect all these Everone library books. Literature and poetry. Woods worth reminds me of the melancholy. I am getting More and i cherish more.

[Richard Cross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is the strumming of an earnest Romantic.

[Max Kromholc · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I don’t dig Wordsworth.

[a reader for a lifetime... · Rating 2 out of 5]

His words were really worthy...wrote..lived..and still a living classic

[Olli Lukkari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poems by the famous poet Wordsworth, some to liking, may of them, but not as much as the poems by many other poets.

[Diana Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice selection of Wordsworth poetry, very enjoyable

[Carter Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would have liked some more love poems, but his nature stuff is fire!

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a book meant for speed reading, though I admit some poems I skimmed rather than lingered. Some seemed familiar. Wordsworth would not rank in my top ten list of favorite poets, though I have yet to develop that list.

Some favorite lines: I wandered lonely as a cloud. The Child is father of the man. The world is too much with us, late and soon. One morning, raw it was and wet. Up! up! my friend and quit your books.

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the poems focusing on nature and self-reflection, but the other ones I wasn't a fan of. "The Prelude" and "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" were my favorites out of the collection. In the latter poem, I enjoyed how he talks about treasuring memories of nature when life seems colorless.