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Running Head : POETRY ANALYSIS : WORDSWORTH AND DICKINSON

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Title of Subject : Poetry Analysis : Wordsworth and Dickinson

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William Wordsworth is considered one of the instigators of English Romanticism . The publication of his Lyrical Ballads , co-authored by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey , is considered the landmark occasion which ushered in the Romantic era in literature . Wordsworth came to literature with a particular philosophy of what poetry should be , and he explained this philosophy in detail in his extended Preface to the second edition of

Lyrical Ballads published in 1802 . In it he expressed the belief that true poetry is only a spontaneous overflow of the emotions (Wordsworth 1989 ,

. 164 . It was really a violent reaction against the neoclassical strain which has infused literature in the 18th century , and which emphasized the measured and rational approach . Wordsworth and his co-Romanticists meant to break the shackles that rationalism had come to impose on poetry , and more generally on the European mind . They meant to usher in a sense of spontaneity and feeling . Wordsworth set himself the aim that his poetry would be understood by the common reader , and that it should not require high learning in to enjoy . I wandered lonely as a cloud ' is one of the best examples of Wordsworth 's poetry written in this vein . Such a poem can be said to have a two fold audience . On the one hand there is the common man , whose affinity to nature is what the poem draws on for inspiration . But Wordsworth is also making a statement to the learned wits , which the elaborate Prelude to the Lyrical Ballads attests to . It is a carefully crafted poem , and therefore cannot be called spontaneous even though it hints at the spontaneous imagination of the poet

The poem gives us a glimpse of the sublime , as it impresses on the poet 's mind on seeing a vista full of daffodils . It is that fleeting and overwhelming vision that is the entire subject matter of the poem . It is a vision that can only be found in the heart of nature , away from the bustle of society . For this reason almost all the images in the poem are borrowed from nature , and the poet describes himself as wandering like a cloud ' in his sojourn through nature . Suddenly he comes upon a lake whose opposite bank is carpeted with and endless array of daffodils . It was as if they were [t]ossing their heads in sprightly dance , and the breeze swept through them in waves . Such waves they were that even the golden reflection-bearing waves in the lake were not their match . It was as if the daffodils were spreading their joy and beauty all around them , and in such jocund company ' the poet could not help but be touched with the same spirit . So strong was this impression of beauty on the poet 's mind that it never fades for him . Afterwards , in pensive solitary moments , it comes...