William Wordsworth: a great poet

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William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet. He was born on April 7, 1770, in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District.

His sister Dorothy Wordsworth was a poet and diarist. She was born in 1771, and he remained close to her throughout his life.

Wordsworth started his writing career in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. He often spent his holidays traveling on foot to visit places known for their beautiful landscapes.

In 1793, he published his first poems in two collections titled An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1795, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They worked together and played an important role in the beginning of the Romantic Age in English literature.

In 1798, they published a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads. This book is considered an important work in Romantic literary theory. In the preface to this book, Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity." He revised and re-edited Lyrical Ballads in 1800, 1802, and 1805.

Between 1795 and 1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers, which is a verse tragedy.

Some of his most famous works include:

  • Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, which includes "The Thorn" and "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."
  • Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems, which includes the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads," "Three Years She Grew," "Lucy Gray," "The Solitary Reaper," and "Michael."
  • Poems, in Two Volumes, which includes "Resolution and Independence," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also known as "Daffodils"), "My Heart Leaps Up," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "Ode to Duty," "The Solitary Reaper," and "The World Is Too Much with Us."
  • "French Revolution".
  • The Excursion .
  • Laodamia.

Wordsworth was a Romantic poet of the nineteenth century. He belonged to the first generation of Romantic poets, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey.

When Wordsworth and Coleridge worked together on Lyrical Ballads, they decided to write about nature in different ways. Wordsworth made supernatural elements seem natural, while Coleridge made natural elements seem supernatural. This difference can be seen in Wordsworth's poems Tintern Abbey and Ode: Intimations of Immortality and in Coleridge's poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.

Romantic poetry was a reaction against the strict rules followed by eighteenth-century classical writers. Instead of using the heroic couplet, Romantic poets used other poetic forms such as the lyric, ode, and ballad.

Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper and Daffodils are lyrical poems that contain different variations of meter. Another important feature of Romantic poetry is the description of nature and the people who live close to it. Wordsworth's poems The Solitary Reaper and I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils) are good examples of this theme.

Wordsworth used simple language in his poetry, which makes it easy for readers to connect with his emotions. He wrote from deep personal experiences. His poems flow naturally and do not seem forced. His emotions, words, and images come spontaneously.

Wordsworth often wrote poems about experiences that had stayed with him over time. He saw the solitary reaper and the daffodils in 1802 but wrote poems about them a few years later. Instead of describing every detail, he used his imagination to create a lasting impression of the reaper's song and the beauty of the daffodils. Both poems are highly personal because they reflect his own thoughts and feelings.

Wordsworth believed that nature had a divine presence. This idea made him a mystical poet, similar to Rabindranath Tagore.

He focused more on the spiritual nature of human beings rather than on social or political issues. He was a philosophical poet who relied on intuition and imagination rather than reason and intellect.


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