Yet another
AP English Essay. This one relates this poem to Wordsworth's
Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Once again, please do not steal this as I would most certainly not want to be involved in
academic collusion.
“Lines” in Relation to “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”
In his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” Wordsworth attempts to rationalize the methods and beliefs behind his, at the time, unconventional poetry. Specifically, he attempts to thwart his rivals’ attacks against the low objects of his poetry and its lack of “poetic diction.” In his poem “Lines” we are able to see Wordsworth’s unconventional ideals and methods in action and judge them for ourselves. While we may not necessarily agree with the end result or the methods behind this poem, “Lines” unquestionable fulfills the requirements outlined in the “Preface.”
In the “Preface,” Wordsworth writes, “that each of has a worthy purpose.” In the first stanza of “Lines”, Wordsworth beautifully describes the scene before him. He could have ended the poem there and left deriving the purpose of the poem as an exercise for the reader. Instead, he goes on—in the second, third and fourth stanzas—to, as the “Preface” declares, “illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement” The first stanza excites the feelings described in the second stanza that lead Wordsworth to conclude, in the final stanza, that “Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her.” Thus, it can be seen that the first stanza is supposed to excite the same feelings that Wordsworth was experiencing while the final two stanzas go on to associate these feelings with Wordsworth’s ideas and beliefs. Wordsworth also writes in the “Preface” that “The principal object...in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life...and...make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them...the primary laws of our nature.” He does precisely this in the fourth stanza of “Lines” writing that the scene had made him feel “A Presence that disturbs me with 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.”
and that he is, “...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.” In these lines, Wordsworth takes the simple scene of “pastoral farms” and through it traces the “anchor” of his “soul” and “moral being,” unquestionably fulfilling the requirement set forth in the “Preface.”
From the start of the “Preface,” Wordsworth declares that a primary goal of this poetry was to use “the real language of men” declaring this to be a “plainer, more emphatic language.” Wordsworth does, however, purify this language “from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust.” This defining influence can be seen throughout “Lines.” The poem is written in iambic blank verse—the closest meter to standard prose—and is completely devoid of harsh words. However, one aspect of the common speech that Wordsworth fails to fulfill is conveying his “ideas and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.” Indeed, as a result of the of the spontaneity inherent in the work, “Lines” contains a number of passages that elaborate for several lines. Wordsworth also writes in the “Preface” that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...produced by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.” This belief can be seen throughout the final stanza of “Lines” as Wordsworth speaks of his “dear, dear Sister.” Even though he is endowed with “organic sensibility” and has, most probably, “thought long and deeply” on the subject, he still writes spontaneously. He writes in exclamation marks, he writes in a string of ‘nor’s, he writes with little plan, he writes quite simply of his love and hopes for his beloved sister, thanking her for reminding him of what “ once was.”
Aside from its concern with “low” objects, Wordsworth’s critics’ primary problem with his poetry was its lack of what he calls “poetic diction.” In his attempt “to bring language near to the language of men” and because he felt that “the pleasure which proposed...to impart is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry” Wordsworth completely shunned this “poetic diction.” This important stylistic decision can be seen throughout “Lines,” but it is especially apparent in the first stanza. If the line endings are removed, this stanza can be read as a metrically composed piece of prose. A similar experiment can be attempted on all the stanzas and, in the end, each one appears to be a generally sensible piece of prose. This fulfills Wordsworth’s assertion in the “Preface” that “there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.” The other major difference between Wordsworth and his contemporaries was that he “utterly rejected as an ordinary device to elevate style, and raise it above prose.” He did this in his continuing attempt “to adopt the very language of men” feeling that personification was only “a figure of speech occasionally prompted by passion”. Wordsworth’s sole use of personification in “Lines” hardly qualifies as such, from his perspective at least. In the final stanza he personifies nature by writing “for she can so inform/The mind that is within us, so impress/With quietness and beauty, and so feed/With lofty thoughts”. However, this does not even qualify as personification because, in Wordsworth’s mind, nature is literally providing all of these qualities; for Wordsworth, nature is not an inanimate object but a living organism. Wordsworth also claims, in the “Preface,” that throughout his compositions he “at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my subject” hopefully resulting in “little falsehood of description.” He fulfills this requirement in “Lines” by noting that “These beautous forms/...have not been to me/As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye”. Indeed, Wordsworth was literally walking a few miles from Tintern Abbey when he composed this poem. He had also been there five years ago and so has a factual basis for his comparative observations.
While perhaps not a perfect example of the beliefs Wordsworth asserts in the “Preface,” “Lines” does fulfill all of the primary assertions and many of the secondary ones. It is written entirely in the “language of ordinary men” and is structured so that the first part “excites” feelings similar to what Wordsworth was experiencing while the remaining stanzas “associate” this excited state with Wordsworth’s various ideas. Personally, I can not help but wholeheartedly agree with Wordsworth’s analysis on the nature of poetry. By writing about common things, Wordsworth is able to delve into the true nature of nature itself. By writing in the language of the common man, Wordsworth is able to weave a beautiful, melodious tapestry, sans the encumbrances of “poetic diction.” As elucidated in the “Preface” and demonstrated in “Lines,” Wordsworth’s new poetry is unquestionably worthy of its present position in the annals of literature: pure genius.
We'll see what I get on this one...