Studies in Poetry and Drama

Unit One Section 1: The Victorian Period (1833 to 1901)

Political Developments and Reforms

The Victorian Period can historically be referred to as the age of Reform and Re-Awakening. The period is either dated from 1832 -1901 or from 1837 to 1901. The former actually begins with the passage of the first Reform Bill in 1832 till the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. The latter begins in 1837 (the year of accession of Queen Victoria to the English throne) till the death of the Queen in 1901. However, some history scholars such as W.J. Long and literary writers such M.H. Abraham fix the period between 1850 to 1900. The Victorian Period also came to be known as the Age of Compromise and the Age of Peace and Prosperity. No matter the historical differences in dating the Victorian Period, what is significant is the fact that the period is between the middle of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.

In fact, the Victorian Period refers to a specific time in the history of England beginning June, 1837 and ending in January, 1901. The period was characterized by flagrant display of flamboyance and excesses by the anstocracy. Secondly, it was also a period of the British Empire created through conquest and expansion of the Empire overseas. This was intended to bring fame, power and prosperity which Great Britain attained anyway. Growth and increase in the socio-economic development equally brought in their wake squalor and poverty.

Queen Victoria ascended the throne at the time when Great Britain as a United Kingdom was already a constitutional Monarchy which gave few political powers to the King or Queen. The Monarch (King or Queen) was only a ceremonial head of state with parliament, a political power. Alexandria Victoria (Queen Victoria) was actually the granddaughter of King George 3 and a niece to King William 4 who was a younger brother to King George 4 of the Regency. Period. The duchess of Kent who was Victoria's mother, served as her regent until she turned eighteen when she could become queen.

The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the late eighteenth century attained its highest point of development during Queen Victoria's reign. The new scientific and industrial developments precipitated the expansion of the British Empire. Commerce and trade increase greatly and resulted into social and economic revolution. The Industrial Revolution also brought about the rise of a new class of factory and mill owners and its attendant class division. The factory and mill owners became rich overnight whilst the workers and labourers became dissatisfied and miserable. That situation sparked off exploitation of the poor class.

The Victoria Period was also marked by freedom from wars and internal strife. The Age was characterized by tranquility and it promoted peace and harmony. People rather cherished their traditions than longing for war and internal revolution. As a scientific age, it brought a challenge to the old values of life as well as the Christian way of life which called for redemption and salvation. This created skepticism. As an Age of Compromise religion became a central social issue.

Rules regarding religion and church were observed strictly. The authority of the church increased steadily. English society became divided on scientific and religious matters.

This was because science had challenged the old order of hiring vis-a-vis Christian values which assured people of redemption and salvation. Thus, there was the need for compromise between religion and science.

Chartism began in 1819 when a crowd of unemployed weavers and their families agitated for change in their unfavorable conditions. They gathered at St. Peter's Fields near Manchester and listened to one orator known as Leigh Hunt. He condemned the cause of their misfortunes leading to a call for his arrest by the police. Eleven people were killed under those disturbing circumstances and more than four hundred (400) were injured.

The emergence of a whole new class of wealthy people in Manchester caused disaffection among the common people. Life expectancy was low for agriculture labourers, child labourers were over-stressed, new housing established was appalling and moreover, Manchester town sprawled under difficult circumstances. Social amenities were few and quite poor.

In some cases, there was no water supply. Sewerage was poor as refuse was thrown into unproved streets. Accommodation was insufficient as many families had neither furniture nor beds as they crowded and shared the same chamber.

The 1832 Reform Act extended the right to vote for most middle-class men. However, the working classes still had no voice in parliament. People became disillusioned and agitated for change. Therefore, in 1839, the London Working Men's Association drew up the Charter which attracted support from Manchester, Birmingham and Wales. One Thomas Attwood presented the charter to the House of Commons and demanded the right to vote for all men.

The Charter called for the abolition of property qualification which entitled people to sit in the House of Commons. The M.P's and the House refused to receive the petition. It was rejected again three years later. Cost of living increased and the situation was aggravated by price hikes, unemployment for thousands of weavers in Manchester alone. Moreover, the disastrous Irish potato blight caused thousands to emigrate to north-western England.

Unfortunately too in 1848, a wave of revolt broke out not only in England but all over Europe especially in Austro-Hungarian Empire to Paris. The Chartists who were represented in parliament by Feargus O'Connor of Nottingham presented the Charter for the third time. He received massive support from a crowd of unemployed people, militant students and Chartist sympathizers. As wild promises of nationalization and redistribution of land intimidated property-owners, a revolution in London was imminent. The army of special constables was put on alert as Louis Philippe, the King of France was deposed by the second Republic in Paris. The Duke of Wellington was put in charge of London's defense. Amidst the confusion which ensued, Feargus O'Connor was warned by the Commissioner of Police of plans to defend London against any act of threats and aggression. The Charter was presented the third and last time and it was rejected.

The situation triggered rioting and strikes but troops were dispatched to put down any unrest. As a result, the plans of the leadership of the Chartists fell through and Chartism collapsed. The Middle Class isolated the Chartists and this caused their downfall. In their place, Trade Unions emerged and tried to bring about change. At the same time, successful harvests caused price of bread to drop. The Anti-Corn Law League influenced the importation of cheaper corn from abroad during bad harvests in England. The English disturbances had a serious impact in Europe. Moreover, Karl Marx and freed-rick Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and cited the deplorable situations of Manchester factories in order to encourage German working-class to stand up for their rights.

Archaic Electoral System: the Seventeenth Century English Kings were vanquished by parliament yet there was still no democratic dispensation in England. There was an archaic electoral system whereby some of the new industrial cities were unpresented in parliament. However, “rotten boroughs”, (that is communities which had become depopulated) elected the nominee of the local squire though the 1832 Reform Bill extended the right to vote to all men owning property worth ten pounds or more in annual rent. The lower middle were permitted to vote but not the working classes. It was only when the second Reform Bill was passed in 1867 that they could exercise their franchise.

Political Awareness from the Working Classes: The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 brought a radical change in British society. The Corn Laws protected English agriculture by imposing taxes on imported corn. This deprived the market of cheap food and subsequently weakened the industrial labor force. The act of repealing by the British government actually made them to acknowledge that Britain was no longer basically an agricultural country but an industrial one.

That move indicated that the government had supported the middle class against the landed classes. The Industrial Revolution had created the mining and metal working classes which resulted into the emergence of an aristocratic working class. This provided natural leadership especially in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It was through this that trade union movement sprang up. Thus the trade union congress was formed in 1868 bent on achieving national unification.

It was under such circumstances that the Conservative and Liberal politicians saw the need to canvass for support from the working-class. Thus, Disraeli gave the urban workers the right to vote and sit in parliament in 1867. The liberal too gave the same right to the agricultural workers in 1884. In 1870, universal primary education was established by Forster's Act. Ultimately, unskilled workers also achieved success by establishing trade union organization, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. By 1900, the working classes had formed a strong force leading to the establishment of their Labour Party.

It is important to stress that the 1884 Law and the 1885 Redistribution Act tripled the electorates again with most of the agricultural labourers being enfranchised. Thus, voting was becoming a right rather than a privilege to property owners. However, women were not granted these rights until the Act of 1918 which empowered all men over 21 and women over 30 to vote. However, in 1928, the Equal Franchise Act eliminated the discrimination embedded in it.

Reform affected many areas. Women were allowed to attend universities. Laws were passed by parliament to reduce work day for women and children.

Such laws also encouraged the establishment of free grammar schools, the legalization of trade unions. Parliament voted to provide public sanitation and to regulate factories and housing.

Those British who supported imperialism backed their arguments with several examples. Colonies would provide raw materials and markets for British industry. They could also offer homes for British settlers. Many Victorians also perceived Western civilization to be superior to all other cultures.

Section 2: The Industrial Revolution and its Social and Economic Impart:

The Victorian Period was affected greatly by the Industrial Revolution. This had serious social consequences on the English people. First, many were unemployed as they lost their jobs as a result of changes from manual labor to machinery. Secondly, there was a regular movement of people from the countryside to the cities to look for work with the attendant problems of insecurity and poverty as people lived in slums. Moreover, there was no social security to protect people whenever they retired. Large industries which sprang up in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool as well as the southern part of London caused air and environmental pollution. This period was marked by the steady growth of industrialization, increase in poverty, discrimination between the rich and the poor and the urge for social reform. Despite the rapid changes the conservatives wanted to maintain the status quo.

During the Victorian era, workhouses had appalling conditions and it was believed that this was going to inspire people to go out and look after themselves. The people ate poor meals and were often humiliated. They lived in mass dormitories and separated men and women, even husbands and wives.

Additionally, they endured poor health as beds were infected with fleas and contracted other communicable diseases such as cholera. The ordinary people endured these acts of humiliation in silence. Abuse of human rights was common. Discipline was harsh as many people were maltreated by owners of these dormitories. Masters of the various institutes admitted people and dismissed them at will. Inmates worked so hard to pay for their accommodation.

Science and technology facilitated the production of commodities. New inventions were made such as modern photography, gas lighting and street lights. Gas heated homes to enhance comfort at home for the upper and middle class members. The Sewerage system of London was built and water was delivered to people too in their homes through taps for the upper and middle classes only. In 1854, the London Underground was built and this facilitated travel by train. Electrical lights were equally introduced in 1882. Darwin developed a theory about human history and evolution and eventually published {The Origins of Species} in 1859. This caused a lot of controversy as that contradicted the creation of the world by God Almighty. Arguments and counter arguments were raised.

British Imperialism emerged forcefully. During the Victorian Era, the British Empire grew in size and influence to become the greatest Empire on earth. This popularized a saying “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. This portrayed that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous colonies Britain controlled areas in every continent in the world and developed British pride and arrogance as well as racial superiority. This enabled them to spread English culture and language widely. By 1921, the Empire controlled the population of a quarter of the world's population (458 million).

Literary and artistic movement emerged strongly during the Regency and Victorian period. This was a reaction against the negative consequences of the Industrial Revolution. People tried to recover the glory and beauty of the English and classical past before the Industrial Revolution. Romantic writing and art were the order of the day. Romanticist writers and artists often lived austere lives and broke many of the social rules and regulations. As they wrote satirical pieces, they used satire characterized by a combination of irony and sarcasm. Gothic literature addressed elements of horror and romans and examined super natural elements, ghosts, haunted houses, and castles darkness, and decay, doubles, madness, and secrets hereditary curses.

There were three broad groups of political and economic theories Victorians developed to account for the changed conditions of the industrial age. The first one was the Laissez-Faire theory which contends that government should avoid meddling in the affairs of business. The Theory derived from French literally means “let it be”. The Theory contends that it will bring about prosperity when industry is allowed full freedom to use the most efficient techniques to attain prosperity.

The second theory was the Reformist Liberalism. The Theory posits that rapid change brings along its attendant problems that laissez-faire cannot solve. Therefore, the believers of this Theory argued that government intervention and regulation were necessary to protect the rights of the weak against the strong.

Finally, socialism agitated for a workable policy that would end private ownership of major industries and substitute public ownership. Supporters of socialism called for whole sale government reforms to promote equality and to help the poor in society.

Philosophers of the Victorian Era often disagreed on the crucial issues of their times. However, they were confident about humanity's ability to improve on its own problems. There was no doubt that the Industrial Revolution had stirred conflicting views and feelings among Victorian thinkers. First, they acknowledged and admired the materials benefits industrialization had brought.

However, they deployed the brutality of factory life and the slums it created in towns and cities. The Victorians also struggled with religious and philosophical beliefs and their implications with modern life. The Theory of Evolution proposed by Darwin (1809 to 1882) caused a lot of controversy. Darwin argued that a process of"natural selection" explained how different forms of life evolved from previous forms.

Darwin's account contradicted the biblical accounts that were held indisputably. The Theory generated so much controversy that it was regarded as a direct challenge to biblical truth and traditional religious faith. Some other people struggled to accept and endorse both scientific and religious insights.

Section 3: The Age of Enlightenment

There was rapid intellectual transformation from the second half of the seventeenth century till the end of the eighteenth century for Western Christianity. These intellectual transformations covered religion and science, society and politics, morals and manners, gender and race, economy and markets, education and childhood, crime and punishment. This reassessment marked the disenchantment of the world and the beginning of the modern age. A contemporary of that time, Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) stated that “Our age is in special degree, the age of criticism. This implied that everything ought to submit to criticism. The intellectual movement associated with this important ideological and cultural transformation in the history of Western civilization is commonly called the Age of Enlightenment.

Instead of accepting traditional religious world views at face value or just adoptions the values of established authority, Enlightenment thinkers stimulated the faculties of the mind and emphasized the power of reason and eventually brought about the abolition of customarily accepted moral and religious absolutes. As the physical world ceased to be the theatre in which the drama of creation was constantly re-directed by divine interventions, so too the variety of human experience seemed more and more the outcome of natural and historical processes rather than the work of hard. Religious to the background in the world of politics, ethics, history and nature itself.

The Age of Enlightenment saw the replacement of religion by reason as the main agent for providing objective truths about the world in which human life is established. Thus, the supremacy and the significance of divine revelation were ridiculed and attached. As Crugg (1990, p 13. cited in Zakai (2006, p. 81). The Cambridge Campanian to Jonathan Edwards edited by Stephen J. Stein) put it.

“The role of reason was magnified that of revelation was depressed. The scriptures were subjected to intensive and often to unsympathetic scrutiny. Miracles were challenged.

Prophecy was reassessed. Christian thought face a treat which might have stripped of all its uniqueness and authority”. Religion and morality were subjected to critical examination.

Divinely instituted order were looked down upon. Instead, intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment argued that it was better to trust in human power and ability for the authority of reason than relying on the traditional authority of scripture. Europe in the eighteenth century was richer and more populous than ever before. The steady economic achievements and growth seemed to emphasize that it was only the new scientific methods of development which could resolve most of the human problems not only in the physical world but also in the realms of theology, history, politics and social problems.

In England, the political theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Lode were in the spirit of resolving problems through rationalism (reasoning). These ideas influenced the dramatic conflicts which unfolded in Britain between the 1640s and 1680s. Hobbes pointed out in his book Leviathan written in 1651 that men were motivated mainly by the desire for power and by fear of other men, and therefore needed an all-powerful sovereign to rule over them. In his view, Hobbes argued that the English Civil War the execution of King Charles in 1649 was overwhelming evidence that men were ultimate selfish and competitive. Hobbes also believed that human behavior could be predicated by exact, scientific laws. He attempted to twist political events into a science in which men (regarded as competing material bodies) could be predicted with methodical accuracy and thus regulated.

Much later than Hobbes, John Locke developed an entirely different nation of the basic nature of human kind which he regarded as innately good. In his Two Treatises of Government written in 1690, Locke posited a political theory based on people's natural rights: life, liberty and the ownership of property. He emphasized that the responsibility of the state was to protect these rights. Government was a contract between ruler and subjects as rulers were granted power in order to assure their subjects' welfare. Locke's ideas influenced Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

In the early eighteenth century, this early critical enquiry into the nature of man and society influenced a group of French thinkers who became known as the “Philosophes”. They admired the advanced economic developments in England with its unique form of representative government. In this way, Montesquieu (1689 to 1755) stayed in England from (1729 to 1731) and later on wrote {The Spirit of the Laws} in which he developed the nation that human, natural and divine laws guide all things, including forms of government which can be discovered by empirical investigation.

Another Philosophe, Francois Marie Arouet ( better known as Voltaire (1694 to 1778) visited England in 1726 where he came into contact with the ideas of Locke and Newton. Voltaire regarded England as a model of religious and philosophical freedom. In his

“Philosophical Letters Concerning the English Nation” in 1733, he praised the customs and institutions of English life. Voltaire's work was regarded as satirical as it was seen as a direct attack on French traditional values and government. He was condemned and was forced into exits. Voltaire was the French Monarchy as an “intellectual tyranny” and therefore fled to Switzerland and returned to Paris as a hero in 1778 at the end of his life.

Rousseau (1712 to 1778) and Diderot (1713 to 1784) continued with the tradition of the Philosophes. Rousseau was an outspoken critic of the French social and political order. In his work, {The Social Contract} written in 1762, Rousseau condemned the existing forms of government in favour of a community based on the choice of all its citizens and their democratic participation in every major decision. On the other hand, Diderot's"Encyclopedia" attached the irrationality of contemporary society and political institution. It was banned but it continued to survive until the last volume was issued in 1772. The ideas of both thinkers were significant after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.

It is important to state that the Enlightenment was a cosmopolitan movement and it was restricted to England and French. It spread to Germany, Spain, Italy and the intellectuals of those tenitories equally campaigned against outmoded ideas and political and religious values which were regarded with skepticism. Colonial America was greatly influenced by Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790). He and Thomas Jefferson contributed greatly to the {Declaration of Independence} .

For all the critical thinkers of the eighteenth century, there was one basic question that they asked: “How does one make mankind happy, rational and free? “The obvious answer lay in what they regarded as a panacea: by discovering the underlying laws which would organize all knowledge into a clear rational system, enabling individuals to become enlightened and enable the societies in which they have to progress. The people of the eighteenth century strongly believed that the key to the future that is, the kind of paradise they needed in the physical would and not hereafter as the theologians asserted. The Age of Enlightenment posed serious implications for traditional Christian thought. It signified an entirely new attitude towards history, stressing human autonomy and freedom in determining its course and progress.

In place of the religious vision of history as the drama of human salvation and redemption, historical thought in the Age of Enlightenment development the concept of progress or the notion of a natural human advance based on the belief that utopian visions regarding human freedom and happiness could be fulfilled within history.

“Historian Humana gradually replaced salvation history in the European mind. This involved not only the detachment of grace from time, redemption from history and divine agency from temporal events but ultimately the rejection of the Christian historical worldview”. During the Age of Enlightenment, emphasis on human, beings as fundamentally, rational, morally and benevolently inclined, posed a serious danger to the Christian doctrine of original sin.

Section 4: Victorian Literature

There is no doubt that political, scientific, religious and moral ideas of the Victorian Age helped to shape the kind of literature which emerged within the period. The literature shaped and defined the Victorians themselves. As education spread, literacy too increased and had a significant impact on the written word. The literature of the Victorian Age (1837 to 1901) named after Queen Victoria ushered in a new period after the romantic revival.

The literature of this era was a fusion of pure romance and typical realism. The Age produced notable and famous poets and prose writers. Thus, the Age was remarkable for the excellence of its prose.

Scientific developments had a great impact on the literature of the Age. There were four general characteristics which marked this era.

First, Victorian Literature exposed and delineated the realities of daily life emphasizing its practical problems and people's interests. The literature at this time became a tool for human development and progress. The Industrial Revolution brought in its wake attendant socio-economic problems leading to reform movements such as those connected with emancipation, child labour, women's nights and evolution.

Secondly, the didactic nature of Victorian literature seemed to reiterate the point that the literary arts had an underlining purpose. So it deviated from the popular view of “art for art's sake”. Rather, it reasserted its moral purpose. Browning Carlyle, Ruskin and Tennyson projected significant moral lessons.

Furthermore, the Victorian Age also experienced doubts and pessimism as a result of the Industrial Revolution and its impact. The influence of science is therefore reflected deeply in Victorian Literature. The whole Age seems to be caught in the conceptual web that Man found himself in relation to the universe where the idea of evolution had disturbed the cultural and Christian/ religious beliefs of the people.

Finally, through the Victorian Age was characterized by materialistic tendencies and pragmatic approach to problems in society, most of the writers of Victorian Literature projected an idealistic kind of life. The ideal values that writers cherished at that time included truth, justice, love, brotherhood and fairness. It would be recalled that the Romantic Movement still continued to influence writers of the Victorian Age. However, new styles of uniting were introduced. A new generation of writers emerging from the time of rapid technology change began to examine the social effects of that change.

Therefore, they introduced the heroes/heroes of the literature of the new generation as ordinary people who face practical problems in their daily life. For the Victorian writers, life would be presented as it is, rather than as it might be. Therefore, this new literary movement was known as Realism because it sought to portray human life realistically as it is actually lived. Realism focused on more down-to-earth prosaic events especially suited to prose. The shift in the style of writing helped to make the Victorian Age the great age of the British novel.

By focusing on ordinary people, realist literature reflected the nineteenth century trend to democracy and appealed strongly to a growing middle class audience. Realist writing often dealt with family relationships, religion and morality, social change and social reform; all of these were of interest to middle-class readers. New ideas in science also had a great influence on Victorian literature. Another movement which emerged out of Realism was Naturalism. It sought to apply the techniques of scientific observation to writing about life in the industrial age.

Naturalists gave comprehensive details about the sour smells of poverty, the harsh conditions of factory life often with the ultimate aim promoting social reform. In fact, Naturalists contradicted the views Romantic writers held about Nature. They did not believe that Nature was land and benevolent to people. Moreover, to the Naturalists, the idea that Nature reflected directly human feelings was false-fact is a “pathetic fallacy.” Instead Naturalist writers portray.

However, it must be pointed out that some Victorian writers blended ideas of Romanticism Realism and Naturalism. Others sought to revive Romanticism as the radical force it once had been. Two Victorian literary movements deserve special mention here. One group consisted of painters and poets known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood formed in 1850. This group ignored the ugliness of industrial life by portraying Nature with the fidelity found Medieval Italian art before the renaissance painter Raphael (1483 to 1520). The leading member of this group was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 to 1882) who was an excellent painter and poet. The second group was known as The Aesthetic Movement which emerged towards the end of the Victorian Age. Aesthetics like Oscar Wilde turned away from the ordinary world and sought to create “art for the sake of art” that is works of art which the sole reason for being created was their perfection and beauty.

Quite apart from these, successful Victorian poets included Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 to 1892) who was influenced greatly by earlier romantic poets especially Walter Scott. Also, Robert Browning wrote a corpus of poem comparable to Tennyson's but he did not gain any recognition like Tennyson. For instance, critics have lauded Browning's effective use of the dramatic monologue, that is a long speech by an imaginary character to expose pretense and reveal a character's inner self. Another poet of greatness was Emily Bronte (1818 to 1848). She used the romantic style and often described characters and settings from the imaginative world of her own childhood. Late Victorian naturalism found its strongest voice in Thomas Hardy (1840 to 1928). His poetry like his prose focuses on workers and farmers overwhelmed by the forces of Nature and society. Rudyard Kipling (1865 to 1936) also wrote fiction and children's stories and poetry and gained great population in the 1890's for creating action packed narrative poems such as"Gunga Din" in 1892. He employs dialect of the working-class soldiers in realist poems such as" Tommy (1892) one final Victorian poet was Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 to 1889). He was a catholic priest and wrote deeply religious verse influenced by the earlier Romantic poets and the philosopher Duns Scotus. His innovation was a rhythmic pattern called spring rhythm that abandoned traditional metric feet.

Victorian Drama did not receive much attention as compared to poetry. However towards the end of the nineteenth century, serious drama so like that of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero's The second Mrs. Tanqueray and the satirical ones like Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being emerged significantly.

Victorian Fiction was highly significant in relation to the novel. Therefore, the novel became one of the most essential forms literature. The Middle Class were avid readers and they loved novels especially those which reflected main social issues of the day.

Serial publication of stories was done in weekly and monthly magazines and such stories were published chapter by chapter. Romanticism greatly influenced early Victorian novels especially those written by three sisters, and the lesser known. Emily's classic, “Wuthering Heights” narrates a poetic tale of Catherine Earnshaw whose passions were doomed and of Heathcliff, one of English fictions outstanding Byronic heroes. Charlotte's Jane Eyre (1847) recounts the adventures of a governess who falls in love with her mysterious employers, Mr. Rochester. Both novels contain elements of the new realizing as in the vivid portrayal of Jane Eyre's harsh childhood. The realistic elements of Jane Eyre probably can be traced to the influence of Charles Dickens (1812 to 1870) who surpassed all other Victorian novelists in popularity. By his style of writing Dickens never forget his impoverished childhood. He filled his novels with captivating but poignant details of the grim effects of the industrial Revolution in England. Dickens criticized social problems realistically and advocated social reform. He used human and comic caricatures effectively to satirize industrial England.

Apart from fiction there was also non-fictional prose. Other types of prose which were available apart from the novel included a stream of histories, biographies, essays and criticizing. The greatest of the historians was and Thomas Babington Macaulay,. Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Life of Charlotte Bronte which gave basic information about the Bronte family

In conclusion, it is important to state that all the great Victorian thinkers produced influential prose works. All in all, the Victorian Age produced a diverse body of literature which was entertaining, scholarly, humorous and profound. Therefore, Victorian Literature has a social relevance to readers in the twentieth century. Victorian writers were brilliant storytellers, and we read their works not only for literary appreciation and historical understanding but also for pure reading pleasure.

Section 5: The Emergence of Romanticism

The coming of the French Revolution in 14 ^{th} July, 1789 was caused by the writings of the Philosophers of the eighteenth century. The same reasons could be applied to the American Revolution which eventually led to the independence of America on July 4, 1776. There was no doubt that these two great historical events the writers of the Romantic Age as they felt strongly about them and reacted to them accordingly. These writers expressed both excitement and repulsion as they contemplated what had happened in Europe and America. They also noted with concern, the dramatic changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution and longed for the simplicity and purity of the past.

Discontent and desperation engulfed the French and British societies at the same time. Those who had supported the French Revolution were disappointed by the turn of events as the Revolution degenerated into a Reign of Terror characterised by betrayals and killings. The guillotine became a deadly weapon.

There was a state of disillusionment and bitter disappointment therefore most of the writers turned their attention to literary endeavours. This created a Romantic style that offered a new perspective on the world. In fact their perspective focused on Nature and the common people.

Reaction against New - Classicism and Rationalism

New – classicism is a long and fruitful period in the history of British Literature and culture. Its main features were intended to mould intellectual trends and artistic events in the Restoration in order to dominate fully the nature of the country in the eighteenth century. In fact, Neo-Classicism could be seen as a kind of extension of the Benaissance period and its attendant traditions.

Neo-Classical writers revered antiquity and tried to model its achievement on classical examples and follow classical standards set by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Therefore, the first Neo-Classical Period was known as the Augustan Age. The was an analogy of the Golden Age of Roman literacy, Famous writers during the time of Emperor Augustus of Ancient Roman were Virgil, Ovid and Horace. European intellectuals initiated their style of writing and in this way exposed the traditions of the Romans and incorporated them into their works of art.

The second characteristic of Neo-Classicism is intellectual curiosity. There was a strong urge in the early part of the eighteenth century to acquire and spread knowledge leading to what was known as The Enlightenment. The general search for sound knowledge immediately influenced literature. Literature was then used as a means of education and became mostly didactic and moral.

People emphasised more on the worldly and phenomena and concrete things rather than spiritual and heavenly things. Tom Locke reiterated these facts and stated that direct experience was the source of all knowledge.

One of the trends of the Neo-Classical Age was Rationalism. The period of the early eighteenth century were mainly interested in human beings and in the observation of human activities. People at that time thought that Man's greatness lay primarily in being rational. Rationalism therefore emphasised reason and experiment.

Imagination was controlled enclosed in probability and verisimilitude Neo-Classical literature as a whole, was rational and mimetic. This imposed a heavy burden on the writers to strive for clarity of thought and elegance of styles in order to be better understood and enjoyed. They sought new ways to captivate the interest of their readers.

Alexander Pope's Essay on Man” stated the “whatever is, is right” and this summarises best the rationalistic complacence which characterised the epoch.

It is now important at this stage of our course to stress that towards the end of the eighteenth century, an artistic movement known as Romanticism developed as a reaction against the dominant ideas and standards of Rationalism. Unlike the Rationalists who stressed logic and reason, the Romantics emphasised emotions and imagination. It is equally important to stress that in democracy, an interest in mystery and the supernatural, a belief in excess and spontaneity, a concern for common people and a love for nature.

Just as the French revolutionaries has at first discarded the castors and procedures which had traditionally governed French society, the romantic writers abandoned many of the dominant attitudes and principles of eighteenth century literature. It is important, dear reader to emphasise that the Romantic writers' interest in the trials and idealism of common people and their desire for radical change developed out of the democratic idealising that characterised the early part of the French Revolution. The Romantic writers were also touched by the effects of the industrial revolution and responded to them accordingly through their writings. These and other characteristics of Romantic literature represent a distinct departure from the concerns associated with eighteenth century classism and rationalism.

The following ideas show the contrast between Neo-classical ideas and the ideas of Romanticism. On the part of their sources of inspiration, one can see that Neo-classicism and rationalism. Emphasized scientific observation of the outer world based on logic. On the other hand Romanticism emphasized examination of inner feelings, emotions and imagination.

Attitudes and interests of Neo-classicist and Rationalists were pragmatic in nature as their interests were geared towards science and technology. They were concerned about general universal experiences.

Also they believed in following standards and traditions. They equally felt optimistic about the present and emphasized moderation and self-restraint. Moreover, they greatly cherished elegance and refinement.

The interests and attitudes of the Romantics differed as they were idealistic and very much interested in the mysterious and super natural and equally sought to develop new forms of expressions. The Romantics paid glowing tribute to the past and tended towards excess and spontaneity. They also appreciated folk traditions.

Neo-classical writers and Rationalists also had social concerns as they valued stability and harmony and favored a social hierarchy. The classical writers portrayed that they were interested in maintaining the aristocracy. Additionally, they posited that nature should be controlled by humans.

On the part of the Romantics, they desired radical change and favored democracy in connection with their social concerns. They devoted their works in exposing much about common people. They were concerned with the individual. The Romantics felt that nature should be untamed and left intact in order to protect its original pristine nature.

Dating the Romantic Age in Britain

The year 1798 is significant to the commencement of Romanticism. It is therefore customary to set the beginning of Britain's Romantic age in 1798. That was the year in which William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the lyrical ballads. This outlined the Romantic principles that would dominate British literature for several decades. However the ideas of Romanticism arose in Europe well before the turn of the century. Even in Britain Thomas Gray, Robert Burns and William Blake portrayed elements of Romanticism before lyrical Ballads was published.

It is also important to stress that the two young poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge outlined certain poetic principles based on their frustration on the subject matter and style of poetry being produced in England by the classical writers.

In the “Preface” of the 1800 edition written by Wordsworth, he justifies the critical principles of the Romantic Movement. In fact Wordsworth's essay has become one of the most famous pieces of literary criticism in English. The primary purpose in the essay was to reform poetry by deposing an artificial literary tradition (Neo-classicism) and substituting it with a new poetics related closely to the ordinary speech of the common man that is normal contemporary speech patterns.

He attached both the subject matter and the poetic diction of the preceding eighteenth century. The “Preface” covers a wide range of ideas about the nature of poetry and the poetic process. Pertinent among these were the expressive theory (that is the poetic process) the Mimetic theory, (that is the subject matter of poetry), the objective theory (that refers to the language of poetry) and the affective theory (the effects of poetry).

Before Wordsworth's time the poetic process emphasized the Mimetic function (how well a poem imitated the real world). After Wordsworth the central aspect of the poetic process became the expressive function (what went on in the poet's mind and not what was imitated). However, Wordsworth stressed that the excellence of poetry does not lie in the action and situation but in the poet's intensely subjective feeling towards his experience. Wordsworth states that the poet does not simply imitate the world but throws over incidents and situations from ordinary life, what he terms as a certain coloring of imagination. This imagination becomes part of the human mind that creates poetry.

Wordsworth states that there are three main stages in the process of writing a poem and each focuses on the expressive approach, that is, what goes on in the mind of the poet. The first stage deals with the poet's encounter with a commonplace incident which arouses powerful feelings in his mind. For example Wordworth's The Romantic writers were also touched by the effects of the industrial revolution and responded to them accordingly through their writings.

These and other characteristics of Romantic literature represent a distinct departure from the concerns associated with eighteenth century classism and rationalism. The following ideas show the contrast between Neo-classical ideas and the ideas of Romanticism. On the part of their sources of inspiration, one can see that Neo-classicism and rationalism. Emphasized scientific observation of the outer world based on logic. On the other hand Romanticism emphasized examination of inner feelings, emotions and imagination.

Attitudes and interests were pragmatic in nature as their interests were geared towards science and technology. They were concerned about general universal experiences.

Also they believed in following standards and traditions. They equally felt optimistic about the present and emphasized moderation and self-restraint. Moreover, they greatly cherished elegance and refinement.

The interests and attitudes of the Romantics differed as they were idealistic and very much interested in the mysterious and super natural and equally sought to develop new forms of expressions. The Romantics paid glowing tribute to the past and tended towards excess and spontaneity. They also appreciated folk traditions.

Neo-classical writers and Rationalists also had social concerns as they valued stability and harmony and favored a social hierarchy. The classical writers portrayed that they were interested in maintaining the aristocracy. Additionally, they posited that nature should be controlled by humans.

On the part of the Romantics, they desired radical change and favored democracy in connection with their social concerns. They devoted their works in exposing much about common people. They were concerned with the individual. The Romantics felt that nature should be untamed and left intact in order to protect its original pristine nature.

Dating the Romantic age in Britain

The year 1798 is significant to the commencement of Romanticism. It is therefore customary to set the beginning of Britain's Romantic age in 1798. That was the year in which William words worth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the lyrical Ballads. This outlined the Romantic principles that would dominate British literature for several decades. However the ideas of Romanticism arose in Europe well before the turn of the century. Even on Britain Thomas Gray, Robert Burns and William Blake portrayed elements of Romanticism before lyrical Ballads was published.

It is also important to stress that the two young poets, words worth and Coleridge outlined certain poetic principles based on their frustration on the subject matter and style of poetry being produced in England by the classical writers.

In the “Preface” of the 1800 edition written by Wordsworth, he justifies the critical principles of the Romantic Movement. In fact Wordsworth's essay has become one of the most famous pieces of literary criticism in English. The primary purpose in the essay was to reform poetry by deposing an artificial literary tradition (Neo-classicism) and substituting it with a new poetics related closely to the ordinary speech of the common man that is normal contemporary speech patterns.

He attached both the subject matter and the poetic diction of the preceding eighteenth century. The “Preface” covers a wide range of ideas about the nature of poetry and the poetic process. Pertinent among these were the expressive theory (that is the poetic process) the Mimetic theory, (that is the subject matter of poetry), the objective theory (that refers to the language of poetry) and the affective theory (the effects of poetry).

Before Wordsworth's time the poetic process emphasized the Mimetic function (how well a poem imitated the real world). After Wordsworth the central aspect of the poetic process became the expressive function (what went on in the poet's mind and not what was imitated). However, Wordsworth stressed that the excellence of poetry does not lie in the action and situation but in the pot's intensely subjective feeling towards his experience. Wordsworth states that the poet does not simply imitate the world but throws over incidents and situations from ordinary life, what he terms as a certain coloring of imagination. This imagination becomes part of the human mind that creates poetry.

Wordsworth states that there are three main stages in the process of writing a poem and each focuses on the expressive approach that is what goes on in the mind of the poet. The first stage deals with a commonplace incident which arouses powerful feelings in his mind. For example Wordworth's encounter with the decrepit old man at a lonely place where the old man was gathering leeches (see “Resolution, and independence”).

His encounter with the defunct “intern Abbey” and the “Daffodils” which were in their thousands and were dancing in a sprightly fashions. The motion of the wind and the sea breeze influenced the kinesthetic nature of the daffodils (the beautiful, yellowish flowers that he saw). Later on, when he is far away from the incident, he can still see the situation in his mind's eye. This is where the poet looks back calmly on the feelings aroused by the incident. The mind becomes so agitated that, the poet calls back the original feelings he had experienced before, thus, when the poet experiences these three sequences: powerful feelings, tranquil assessment and a recreation of the powerful feelings in his mind the poet is ready to write. It is in this way that words worth definition of poetry underlines his poetic philosophy.

He defines poetry comprehensively as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of creation, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood, successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this, it is carried on” (Tarvin, p.253).

From the above said so far, dear reader, you will notice that the three stages required for a poet to unite worthy poetry are emotions (feelings), contemplation of an incident and a nostalgic recollection of the powerful feelings experienced in a peculiar encounter. It is in this way that the Expressive Theory of poetry is significant to the Romantic poet.

Let us now turn our attention to the subject matter of poetry which explains the basic characteristics of the Mimetic Theory. According to Wordsworth, most writers before his time ridiculed common characters and rustic settings. However, the emphasis that a poet is a man speaking to men. The poet differs from other men not in kind but only in degree. Thus, the poet's passion and thoughts and feelings are the general passions and thoughts and feelings of all other men. Therefore, the subject matter of his poems tends to be humble and rustic life.

Wordsworth questions why the poet chooses the ordinary people to unite about them instead of the aristocracy or the middle class. The answer lies in the fact that the intimate ties between country dwellers and nature is very strong and inseparable. In that condition (i.e. the rural settings) the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. This explains why in Wordsworth's poems, the humblest of people are exalted to the highest dignity and worth.

Over the centuries beginning from classical times up to the seventeenth thereabout, dear reader, you might have noticed that the language of poetry has been a great subject of debate. Aristotle, Longinus, Horace, Dante, Sidney, Dryden, Pope and Johnson had all advocated that a serious poet should use a lofty style. They contended that the language of literature (whether poetry or drama) should be peculiar and different from the language used in the real world. Wordsworth opposes this view and this way, makes an objective analysis of the language of poetry. He disagrees that a poet must use a peculiar language.

On the contrary, he asserts that a poet must descend from this supposed height and express himself as other men express themselves.

Wordsworth did not approve the kind of poetic division that was used in his time. Poetic division is usually defined as words and phrases which have established themselves as appropriate to poetry because they are not used in speech. For instance, Samuel Johnson described “poetical diction as those happy combinations of words which distinguish poetry from prose. In fact, Wordworth pointed out that his purpose in his poems, was to imitate as far as possible, the very language of men. His desire was to bring his language near to the language of men. Thus, Wordsworth emphasises that his poems, use the language of common rural men since such a language which arises out of a repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent and a far more philosophical than that which is frequently substituted by poets who think that they are bringing honour upon themselves and their work of art and in this way separate themselves from the sympathies of men.

Wordsworth calls for the careful selection of the language really used by men, the kind of language spoken by men. He felt that poems should contain metaphors and figures of speech and should be written in regular metre even though these are seldom used in real life. The poetry diction that Wordsworth objects to in his time include ponderous words and phrases, personifications and abstractions, inversions and other elaborate rhetorical patterns, stereotyped allusions and elegant words and inflated figures of speech.

Dear reader, so far we have been trying to explain Wordsworth's philosophy on the use of language in poetry. Now, let us turn our attention to the effects of poetry, what is normally known as the Affective Theory. Wordsworth states categorically that the purpose of poetry is to give immediate pleasures and enduring truth. The object of poetry is truth and not individual and local, but by general. This must be manifested through the expression of emotions. In this way the communication between the poet and the reader takes place in an atmosphere of emotions, not of ideas and not even the higher plane of platonic ideals. Despite criticisms of Wordsworth's critical ideas, his argument revealed what he thought about the language of Romantic poets. Coleridge criticised Wordsworth's major idea that the common man spoke a truer, more poetic language.

He debunked that claim and argued that for one to be a good poet, one needed good education. The peasants Wordsworth spoke about did not speak the language normally spoken by well-educated men but rather from a spirit of independence. Moreover, the critics claim that Wordsworth was merely replacing one poetic dictions with another which becomes a repetition of stock words. In fact, poetic clichés become even more prevalent in later Romantic poets.

The Second Generation of Romantic Poets

Dear learner, we have just finished discussing the underlining principles of the RomanticMovement initiated by Wordsworth and Coleridge through the publication of the Lyrical Ballads. They blazed the way for the new generation of British Romantic poets who came to be known as the “Second Generation” of poets. These poets included Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe, Shelly and John Keats. These poets proved even to be more rebellious than Wordsworth and Cloridge against the British Conservatism of the time. All the three poets died outside Britain and there is evidence to prove that they were disillusioned.

It is significant to note that George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 to 1824) was part of the British aristocracy and a member of the House of Lords. Initially, he was criticised heavily but Byron persevered and achieved Success when he published “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” in 1812. Byron's radical politics and scandalous love affairs caused him to go on exile in 1816 never to return. He died of fever while fighting with Greek revolutionaries in their struggle to win independence from Turkey. Byron wrote scornfully about Wordsworth and Coleridge when they abandoned their democratic ideals. However, much of his work reflects their Romantic style. Byron's words of art were long, narrative poems which dwelt on brooding passionate, rebellious figures. Such Byronic heroes and heroines were common features in the literature of the Romantic Age.

Byron's friend was also an aristocrat and politically radical and was even more radical than Byron. In one of his poems,"Song of the Men of England" Shelly urged England's lower classes to rebel. His lyric poem,"To a Skylark" demonstrates his romantic fervour in such intensely personal and emotional verses.

Unlike Byron and Shelly, Keats was not an aristocrat. However, John Keats (1795 to 1821) was a master of lyrical poetry. Initially, he trained to be a medical doctor which he later abandoned for poetry. He employed a lot of creativity in producing many of his greatest poems during the first nine months of 1819. Among the greatest of his poems were “The Fall of Hyperion” and “Odeto a Grecian Urn”. He died of tuberculosis in Italy and he requested that his epitaph should read “Here lies one whose name was writ in water”

British prose in the Romantic Age

Poetry was the most dominant literary form during the period of Romanticism. However, prose words equally featured in the form of essay and novels. Drama was relegated to the background. “The London Magazine” is a periodical, which appeared from 1820 to 1829, attracted three great essayists of the era. These were, William Hazlitt (1778 to 1830) and Thomas De Quincy (1785 to 1859).

Three main types of Romantic novels became prominent during the Romantic Age: these were the Gothic, the novel manners and the historical romance.

All of them were mere elaborations on earlier forms. Gothic novels depicted brave heroes, and heroines, threatening scoundrels, vast eerie castles and ghosts. The Romantic excitement with mystery and the supernatural made such novels quite popular at that time.

Shelley's wife, many Wollstonecraft shelley wrote a successful piece of work entitled Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Jane Austen was famous for the novel of manners. Such novels carried on the tradition of earlier writers and focused on satirizing British customs. Jane Austen (1775 to 1817) wrote Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813). She portrayed characters which reflected the classical sensibility of the eighteenth century than the Romantic notions of the new age.

Historical romances were imaginative works of art which centered on a real person or historical event. These were written earlier on before the Romantic Age. However, they gained prominence during the Romantic Age through the work of Sir Walter Scott (1771 to 1832). Scott wrote about his Scottish society and depicted knights and acts of chivalry. Dear reader, the close of Britain's Romantic Age is usually dated 1832, the year when the first Reform Bill was passed. However, Romanticism remained a strong influence on many writers from following generations.

The Emergence of Realism

The Romantic Movement continued to influence writers of the Victorian Age. However new styles of writing came into vogue. Romanticism began as a radical departure from literary practice and later became a mainstream culture though it was becoming old-fashioned. A new generation of writers who emerged at the time of advanced scientific technology began to examine the social effects of that change.

The focus of this new generation's literature was the ordinary people who encountered problems associated with day-to-day life. Therefore life was going to be presented. It was rather than as it might be Dear reader, this new literary movement came to be associated with Realism because it sought to portray human life realistically as it was without sugar-coating it.

Romanticism was closely associated with poetic language and was therefore basically poetic. Realism, on the other hand focused on more down-to-earth or prosaic events especially those suited to prose, the shift in style helped to make the Victorian Age the great age of the British novel. By focusing on ordinary people, realist literature reflected the nineteenth century trend to democracy and appealed to a growing middle class audience. Realist writing often dealt with family relationships, religion and morality, social change and social reform. Such topics were of special interest to middle-class readers.

Victorian literature was also influenced by new ideas in science and led to an off-shoot of Realism known as Naturalism. Naturalism applied techniques of scientific observation and depicted human life that was closely associated with the industrial age. Stylistically, naturalists packed their novels with details portraying the sour smells of poverty, the harsh sounds of factory life with the aim of promoting social reform. Naturalist writers directly contradicted the romantic view of nature as kindly and benevolent.

The idea that nature reflected human feelings was false in the view of the Naturalists—some kind of “Pathetic Fallacy”. Instead, Naturalists portrayed nature as harsh and indifferent to human suffering; it often caused. However, it is important to emphasize that the new generation of writers abandoned Romanticism altogether. Some writers blended Romanticism with Realism and Naturalism. Two Victorian literary movements deserve special mention at this stage of our discussion. The first was a group of painters and poets known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They imitated the final Italian art of mediaeval times before the Renaissance painter,. The leading member of this group was who excelled as a painter and as a poet. second group known as the Aesthetic movement produced such notable writers as Oscar Wilde (1854 to 1900) who emphasized that art must be created for the sake of art.

Romanticism greatly influenced early Victorian novelists such as the Bronte sisters. Emily's classic Withering recounts the tale of the doomed passions of Catherine Earnshaw and of Heathcliff. The novel was one of English fiction's outstanding Byronic heroes. Charlotte's famous, also recounts the adventures of a governess who falls in love with her mysterious employer, Mr. Rochester. Both novels contain elements of the new Realism which had emerged after Romanticism. Dear reader, it is also important to state that the realistic elements of Jane Eyre probably owe much to Charles Dickens was the most popular Victorian novelist. He treated social problems realistically and was outspoken and advocated for social reforms. He blended his writings with humor and created many comic caricatures in which a particular human vice is exaggerated. Dickens also showed a sentimental side and created happy endings for many of his heroes and heroines. Other Victorian novelists such as George Meredith and Mary Ann Evans (pen name is George Eliot) produced carefully analysis of characters through the psycho analytical approach. George Eliot discussed moral issues and personal relationships in such novels as Adam Bede (1859) and Silas Marner (1861). As the century drew to an end, British novelist leaned more to Naturalism.

Thomas Hardy was the most notable of the late Victorian Naturalists. His pessimistic novels often portray rural characters who have been disappointed in life and love.

From the above discussion so far, dear Reader, Realism was a powerful literary movement and had a lot of opportunities to expose socio-economic realities of the Industrial Revolution. In the broadest sense, Realism denotes fidelity to actuality in its representation in literature. It is a term loosely synonymous with verisimilitude. By way of summary, it refers to a movement which arose in the nineteenth century partially in reaction against Romanticism which was centred in the novel and dominant in France, Latin America from around the mid-nineteenth century to the close of the decade when it was replaced by Naturalism in its latter sense, Realism defines a literary method of philosophical and political attitude and a particular kind of subject. Realism refers to the relevance to real life as opposed to Romance by which are indicated escapism, wishful thinking and unrealism. Realism can be considered as the ultimate middle class art and finds its subjects in bourgeois life and manners.

The rise of Realism also saw the protest against falsehood and sentimentality which realists saw in romantic fiction. The realists felt that the central issues of life tended to be ethical. According to the realists, fiction should concern itself with such issues and represent them accurately as to affect men and women in actual situations. The realists valued the individual highly unlike the Neo-classical writers. Characterization was central to their art works.

A highly fantastic and super facially in lifelike fable like Gulliver's Travels is classified as realistic because it has to do with actual problems and values of life.

Unit Two

Dear learner, you are warmly welcome to this Unit of our study. It is hoped that you are now acquainted with the Victorian Literature. This unit is directly linked to the Victorian era because William Wordsworth was a poetic genius of the Victorian era. As you may already know, the Romantic Movement was pioneered by William Wordsworth from the latter half of the 18th century into the 19th century Victorian era. Extending from about 1789 until 1837, the Romantic age stressed emotion over reason, and the poetic philosophy of the period was a correspondence to the objective of the French Revolution (1789 to 1799) targeted at destroying an older tradition that had come to seem artificial, and to assert the liberty, spirit, and heartfelt unity of the human race. The primacy of the individual, and his separation from the artificial atmosphere occasioned by industrial revolution into a natural environment for a natural life became characteristic of the literature of the time.

Against this background, we study Wordsworth in this unit. As usual, there are six sections to this unit, and in them we shall steadily go into the life and literary career of the English poet William Wordsworth.

Objectives:

By the end of this unit, you will

Know William Wordsworth's profile as a poetic genius

• Appreciate at least two of his poems

Section One

Wordsworth's Profile

Wordsworth was a revolutionary poet who sought to create poetry that was personal, imaginative, and spiritual in nature, and as hinted earlier in the unit introduction, William Wordsworth through the popularity of his work, contributed to the Romantic period tremendously. Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a great deal of his time playing outdoors, in what he would later remember as a pure communion with nature. Many of his important works are preoccupied with the lost glory of the past—both the lost dreams of childhood and the historical past.

Objectives

By the end this section, you will be able to

• Know Wordsworth's profile along his poetic career.

William Wordsworth's profile as a poetic genius

William Wordsworth was born on 7 ^{th} April, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland in England. It is part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. He was educated at Saint John's College, University of Cambridge. After receiving his degree in 1791 he went to France, where he became an enthusiastic convert to the ideals of the French Revolution (1789 to 1799). Although he was perturbed by the outbreak of hostilities between France and Great Britain in 1793, he still remained sympathetic to the French cause. During his school vacation periods he frequently visited natural settings noted for their scenic beauty. For instance, in the summer of 1790 he took a walking tour through France and Switzerland, admiring nature. Thus, as a young scholar, he developed a keen love for nature. While in France, he fell in love with Annette Vallon of Orleans, with whom he produced a girl (Caroline). However, Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson in 1802 with whom also he had children.

Literary Career

During his learning career, Wordsworth studied Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser, who were great poets of the 16th and 17th centuries. He made his debut (first public appearance) as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. Thereon, his enthusiasm in studying the great literary scholars and their style equipped him with the 18th century formal style of English verse. He published An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches in 1793 after this style. Between 1795 and 97, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers, a verse tragedy set during the reign of King Henry 3 of England, when Englishmen in the North Country came into conflict with Scottish rovers. But the work could not be performed in the then Covent Garden Theatre until 1842 when it was published after substantial scrutiny.

William had met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an enthusiastic admirer of his early poetic efforts, and in 1797 he moved to Alfoxden, Somersetshire, near Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. The move marked the beginning of a close and enduring friendship between the poets. In the ensuing period they collaborated on a book of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798. This work is generally considered to mark the beginning of the Romantic Movement in English poetry. We hope you remember your lesson on the Romantic Movement in unit one.

Between 1798 and 99, in the company of his sister and Coleridge in Germany, Wordsworth wrote several of his finest lyrical verses, the “Lucy” poems, in Goslar-Germany, where he also began The Prelude. This introspective account of his own development was completed in 1805. Financial difficulties had dogged his footsteps through these years and, as such these poems could not be published until after his death in 1850. Although lately published, The Prelude is ranked as Wordsworth's greatest work.

Wordsworth's Autobiographical Works

Returning to England, William and his sister settled in 1799 at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, Westmorland, the loveliest spot in the English Lake District. The poet Robert Southey as well as Coleridge lived nearby, and the three men became known as the Lake Poets. By 1804 he began expanding this autobiographical work which is generally referred to as the first version of The Prelude. In 1807 Poems in Two Volumes was published. In this volume was the poem “She Was a Phantom of Delight” which celebrated his newly married wife—Mary Hutchinson. The work contains much of Wordsworth's finest verse, notably “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” the autobiographical narrative “Resolution and Independence,” and many of his well-known sonnets. During this period most of his poems centered on themes of endurance, separation, grief and death. Also famous in this collection is the philosophical poem: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”. Until this time Wordsworth was known only for Lyrical Ballads, and he hoped that this new collection would cement his reputation.

Wordsworth's Old Age

As he advanced in age, Wordsworth's poetic vision and inspiration became dull. However, the tide of critical opinion turned in his favor after 1820, and he lived to see his work universally praised. In 1842 he was awarded a government pension, and in the following year became a poet laureate. Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, April 23, 1850, and was buried in the Grasmere churchyard in England.

Section Two

Wordsworth's Poetic Philosophy

William Wordsworth's ideas about poetry can be traced to his 1798 Lyrical Ballads, which he co-authored with his scholastic friend—Taylor Coleridge. In this collection, which contains most of his poems, Wordsworth composed lyrical poems, notable among them includes “Tintern Abbey” along with Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. This work presented a revolt against the artificial classicism (characteristic of the classical) of contemporary English verse. But scholarly criticism on this collection led to his second publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1801. This publication included a Preface which establishes Wordsworth's poetic philosophy.

Objectives

By the end of this section you should be able to

Explain Wordsworth's romantic philosophy of poetry

Wordsworth's Poetic Philosophy

Let us consider the background against which Wordsworth champions the romantic philosophy which is the basis of his poetics. The classical style of the English verse was championed by the 18th century neoclassical scholars. The restoration of Charles 2 about 1660 had ushered in a literature characterized by reason, moderation, good taste, deft management, and simplicity.

Their appreciation of the literature of the time of the Roman emperor Augustus led to a widespread acceptance of the new English literature and encouraged grandeur of tone in the poetry of the period, the later phase of which is often referred to as Augustan. The prevailing characteristic of the literature of the Renaissance had been its reliance on poetic inspiration or what today might be called imagination. This may be seen in the inspired conceptions of William Godwin, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Edmund Spenser, and John Donne. But from this conventional rational, and formal subject matter that had typified neoclassicism the Romantic pioneers broke away.

Deeply troubled by the rationalism he found in the works of classical thinkers, and coupled with the chaos and bloodshed of the reign of terror in Paris, France, where he had met Annette Vallon, Wordsworth veered into philosophy, having a softer, more emotional understanding of the world.

His increasing sense of anguish by the mid-1790s forced him to formulate his own understanding of the world and of the human mind in more concrete terms. The theory he produced, and the poetics he invented to embody it, caused a revolution in English literature.

Developed throughout his life, Wordsworth's understanding of the human mind appears simple. He believed that, upon being born, human beings move from a perfect, idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains, best perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature dies.

Still, the memory of childhood can offer an important solace, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access to the lost purities of the past. And the maturing mind develops the capability to understand nature in human terms, and to see in it metaphors for human life, which compensate for the loss of the direct connection. It is this idea that is loudly expressed in the Ode: "Intimations of Immortality".

Wordsworth's ideology subsequently became the basis of the Romantic literary theory. According to this theory, poetry originated in “emotion recollected in a state of tranquility”; the poet then surrendered to the emotion, so that the tranquility dissolved, and the emotion remained in the poem. This express emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the pleasure of beauty over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changed the course of English poetry, replacing the elaborate classical forms of Alexander Pope and John Dryden with a new Romantic sensibility.

Rejecting the contemporary emphasis on form and rationalism that drained poetic writing of strong emotion, he maintained that the scenes and events of everyday life and the speech of ordinary people were the raw material of which poetry could and should be made. Thus he sees the elements of a new type of verse to be the one based on the real language of men—different from the poetic diction of the 18th century verse. He therefore produced poetry that graphically illustrated his principles. In his Preface to the Lyrical, Wordsworth defended his unconventional theory of poetry. His premise was that the source of poetic truth is the direct experience of the senses. He asserted that poetry originates from “emotion recollected in tranquility.” He then presented his famous definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. It is an affective material, a kind of magnetic power resonating from the human soul, and appealing to the soul through its senses.

Thus, we are saying in the final analysis that Wordsworth was a champion of emotive poetry. He conceived of poetry as an expression of natural feeling which is spontaneous and therefore unadulterated. According to the theory that poetry resulted from the “spontaneous overflow” of emotions, Wordsworth and Coleridge made it their task to write in the simple language of common people, telling concrete stories of their lives—in natural settings.

In the Lyrical Ballads therefore, Wordsworth argues that good poetry must convey the emotions of the speaker. It is probably the reason for the title “Lyrical” in Lyrical Ballads, for lyrical means—expressing strong emotions. The publication of Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark moment for English poetry; it was unlike anything that had come before, and paved the way for everything that has come after. Wordsworth's most important legacy therefore is his lovely, timeless poems, and his launching of the Romantic era, opening the gates for later writers such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron in England, as well as Emerson and Thoreau in America.

In summary, Wordsworth argues in the Lyrical Ballads, that

- Poetry should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered “poetic”.

- Poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory.

- The first principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling—for all human sympathy, he claims, is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man.”

Section Three Characteristics of Pastoral Poetry

Dear learner, now that you have insight into 'romantic expression', from Wordsworth's poetic profile, you are sufficiently equipped to understand and enjoy Pastoral poetry. This is the poetry that expresses rustic life. That is to say country lifestyle or countryside life. Country or countryside is a farmed and underdeveloped area, as distinct from cities, towns and other built-up areas.

That is the setting of a pastoral poem. In this setting typical characters are farmers and shepherds, living humbly with their household.

Objectives:

By the end of this section, you will be able to

• Explain how pastoral poetry began

- Describe the characteristics of pastoral poetry

The Origin and Characteristics of Pastoral Poetry

Pastoral poetry originated with classical poets. It stemmed from the folk songs and ceremonies that honoured the pastoral gods. As hinted in the introduction above, pastoral is an idealized image of rural life and nature.

These songs range from love lyrics to lengthy dramatic works and elaborate elegies. But both the songs and the dramatic forms, known as eclogues, were composed in verse, according to a specific literary convention.

The earliest pastoral poetry is the Idylls, by Alexandrine Theocritus in the third century B.C. Theocritus listened to Sicilian folk songs and adapted them to literary presentation. He did not wish to become a shepherd himself, but considered the merits of their folk songs and tried to contrast them with city life where he found himself. For him they were simply good acquaintances for a city man who was interested in the foibles of country people, who felt the charm of some of their activities, and who liked to spend a day humming among the hills.

Theocritus therefore composed eclogues (dialogic communication between shepherds) and used it as a means by which, in contrasting simple shepherds in rustic surroundings with the urban society of a corrupt court or city, he could express a moral or philosophical viewpoint. This form of pastoral became popular with Italian Renaissance humanists like Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio. In England also, Edmund Spenser composed The Shepheardes Calendar in 12 pastoral eclogues and this formed a model for posterity.

The pastoral spirit then overflowed into other forms of English literature like drama. For example, in the comedy As You Like It (1600), English playwright William Shakespeare used the pastoral conventions. Others like Andrew Marvell, Lodge, Greene, Thomas Campion, and Robert Herrick among others used it in lyrical songs and madrigals (English songs performed with many accompanied voices, typical of the 16 superscript th and 17 superscript th centuries).

The pastoral poem faded after the European Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but its themes persist in poems that romanticize rural life or reappraise or re-examine the natural world.

From the foregoing, the following deductions can be made about Pastoral poetry:

- It is a very ancient genre of poetry

- It deals with the loves and lives of shepherds and shepherdesses, and other such country folk. These folk live far from towns, and spend their lives singing, sometimes mourning the loss of a sheep or a fellow shepherd or a love affair that has gone wrong.

- The setting is normally rural—away from the city. The countryside is idealized, as writers of the genre are usually city people.

- It is simple and the poetic expression uses a set of conventions. These conventions have varied little over the centuries.

- Sometimes, it is used symbolically. Often the shepherd is a poet; his songs become his poetry.

- A typical theme is the corruption of city life, and, through this theme, political statements are sometimes made. There is also the motif of nature personified. In other words, the personification of nature is another notable message expressed in the pastoral.

“Michael, a Pastoral” — I

Welcome, student, to section four of our studies of Romantic Poetry. In this section and the next, we shall be exploring Wordsworth's poem titled: "Michael, a Pastoral". As we saw in the previous section, pastoral poetry deals with the rustic life of shepherds. In considering the history of pastoral, Wordsworth also went back to Theocritus. However, Wordsworth's presentation of the pastoral differs slightly from Theocritus as each of the poets considered the pastoral from their diverse theoretical viewpoints. Moreover, while Theocritus presented Sicilian shepherds, Wordsworth presented English shepherds.

Objectives:

By the end of this section you be able to

• Read and understand Wordsworth's “Michael, a pastoral”

• Identify the element of rustic life in “Michael, a pastoral”

General introduction to Wordsworth's pastoral poetry

A brief review of Wordsworth's poetic temper (spirit/tone) will be a useful exposition to help understand his “Michael, a pastoral”. One of the frequently repeated themes of Wordsworth's poetry is the importance of nature to an individual's intellectual and spiritual development. A love of nature can lead to a love of humankind. A good relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both the spiritual and the social worlds. To Wordsworth, God was everywhere manifest in the harmony of nature, and he felt deeply the kinship between nature and the soul of humankind in these poems. People become selfish and immoral when they distance themselves from nature by living in cities. Humanity's innate empathy and nobility of spirit becomes corrupted by artificial social conventions as well as by the squalor of city life.

In contrast, people who spend a lot of time in nature, such as labourers, shepherds, and farmers, retain the purity and nobility of their souls. All manifestations of the natural world—from the highest mountain to the simplest flower, elicit noble, elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these manifestations. It is therefore not surprising that Wordsworth's “Michael a pastoral”, will deal with countryside themes.

Read the poem below:

475 Three years, or little more, did Isabel

476 Survive her Husband: at her death the estate

477 Was sold, and went into a stranger's hand.

478 The Cottage which was named The Evening Star

479 Is gone--the ploughshare has been through the ground

480 On which it stood; great changes have been wrought

481 In all the neighbourhood:--yet the oak is left

482 That grew beside their door; and the remains

483 Of the unfinished Sheep-fold may be seen

484 Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Ghyll.

Synopsis of the narrative

The poem tells the story of an aging shepherd, Michael, and his only child Luke. Michael lost half his land when he used it as a surety for a nephew who had met with financial misfortune. At the age of 18, Luke was sent by Michael to stay with a merchant in order to learn a trade and acquire sufficient wealth so that he (Michael) can pay and regain the land that was lost. Michael is very much heart-broken to send Luke away. In order to guarantee Luke's return to the country after the city labour, Michael makes his son lay the first stone of a sheepfold.

However, Luke is corrupted in the city and is forced to flee the country and Michael must live out his life without his son. He returns sometimes to the sheepfold but no longer had the heart to complete it.

Analysis:

“Michael A Pastoral” is a long poem in blank verse (in measures of five feet per stanza, where each feet is made up of unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). This kind of meter is known as Iambic Pentameter. The poem has 484 lines divided into eighteen stanzas. The 'Michael' of the title is the poem's protagonist. “A Pastoral” is the subtitle, which immediately prepares our mind to perceive the “low and rustic life” as the ideal pastoral.

The poem is written in the third person. The poet himself assumes the role of narrator, guiding us to a tragic scene. There, he relates the tale of Michael with intense love and pure passions.

The poem begins with a two-stanza prelude. The poet, almost like a tour guide, introduces to the us a hidden valley in pastoral mountains and advises us to struggle courageously in order to reach it. There, through “a straggling heap of unhewn stones,” the poet thinks “On man, the heart of man, and human life”. He decides to dignify the aged Michael for the delight of men with natural hearts and for the sake of youthful poets.

Through the narrative, Wordsworth tells us about the shepherd's unfortunate story of loss and heart ache, hoping to emit some sort of heart felt reaction from us.

Starting with the main character, Michael, “An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb” we experience a man who almost embodies Wordsworth's poetic ideas. Described as “prompt and watchful more than ordinary men”, Wordsworth wishes to project insightfulness through Michael, who represents a sort of wise man within the story. Wordsworth presents picturesque description of his characters in this poem, just like all other poems. The love of nature and the surroundings is also shown to us by Michael. The narrator tells us how much Michael loved the land by stating that the sight of his land “were to him a pleasurable feeling of blind love, the pleasure which there is in love itself”.

When Michael receives word that he must relinquish his land because of his nephew's misfortune, “The shepherd had been bound in surety for his brother's son, “a man of an industrious life, and ample means; but unforeseen misfortunes”, (211 to 213) he is terribly saddened and proceeds to think of what can be done to save the land he loves. “It seemed the Shepherd's sole resource to sell at once a portion of his patrimonial fields. Such was his first resolve; he thought again, and his heart failed him” here, Michael struggles with the thought of having to lose the land he so dearly loves. Michael turns to Isabel, his wife, and tells her that he thinks Luke, their son can earn the money they need to keep their land from being sold. “He quickly will repair this loss, and then he may return to us. If here he stay, what can be done? Where everyone is poor, what can be gained?”.

As indicated earlier, Wordsworth tries to paint vivid picture of his characters. In this poem, the narrator describes Isabel as, “A comely matron, old though younger than himself (Michael) full twenty years. She was a woman of a stirring life, whose heart was in her house”. Through this description, we can picture the woman as common person, and a character. In saying she was a woman of stirring life and son on, we get a sense of what her disposition is like, making it easier for us to imagine her.

This illustrates Wordsworth's quality of using vivid description in his poetry. Isabelle brings hope to Michael by reminding him of local young man who went to seek out his fortune by working for a man in the city. “The lad went up to London, found a master there, who, out of many, chose the trusty boy to go and overlook his merchandise beyond the seas; where he grew wondrous rich”. Being the concerned mother, later Isabelle confronts Luke, telling him “Thou must not go: We have no other child but thee to lose, None to remember—do not go away, For if thou leave thy Father he will die”.

The good son Luke reassures his mother, “The Youth made answer with a jocund voice, and Isabel, when she had told her fears, recovered heart”. Afterwards, they continue to be merry for the time being. The fate of their land rests in the hands of their determined son Luke, who receives a letter related to future work, “The expected letter from their kinsman came, with kind assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy. In this case, both he and his parents are overjoyed. Before Luke's departure, Michael has a heart to heart with him, telling Luke, “Day by day passed on, and still I loved thee with increasing love”. This point is an emotional scene where we cannot help but feel connected to both father and son. It is one thing Wordsworth wishes to achieve—the connection between the reader and his poetry.

Michael also reveals to Luke why it is so important for him to keep the land within the family, and how it would ease his soul to know it had stayed with him. Michael says to his son, “It looks as if it never could endure another Master”. Father and son, embrace each other one last time, knowing that this may be the last they see of one another. At this, Michael lays the first stone for the Sheep Fold. This becomes their sacred bond in which Michael tells Luke that if he should ever find himself in trouble, he should remember this moment, and get his priorities in order. The old man says, “Luke, when thou art gone away, should evil men be thy companions, think of me, my Son, and of this moment”.

Luke has begun his work, and writes home. His letters are cherished by his parents, and Isabelle describes them as, “The prettiest letters that were ever seen”. But soon, Luke's progress starts to diminish. He runs away in shame of his failure. “…Ignominy and shame fell on him, so that he was driven at last to seek a hiding place beyond the seas”. It seems as though Luke has forgotten all about his covenant with his Father. Michael on the other hand, still tends to it, unaware of his son's failure. “With confident and cheerful thoughts; and now sometimes when he could find a leisure hour he to that valley took his way, and there wrought at the Sheepfold”. Unfortunately, Michael dies before he can ever finish the Sheepfold. Isabelle dies only three years later than him and their estate is sold to a stranger: “Three years, or little more, did Isabel Survive her Husband: at her death the estate Was sold, and went into a stranger's hand”.

Luke was Michael and Isabelle's sole hope in keeping their property,"Well, Isabel! This scheme these two days, has been meat and drink to me". This plan was everything to Michael, and his blind trust was in his son. With such a great start in his career, we never expect that he will eventually fail and cause his parent's land to be sold to a stranger. Luke is and represents the unfinished part of the Sheep Fold, a broken bond. Had he had succeeded, he would have been able to keep the estate in his name finishing the rest of the Sheep Fold, and never breaking the covenant he made with his father, Michael.

Summary

“Michael” is the story or a picture of the domestic affections of a shepherd, 'Michael' and his household. They are small independent proprietors of land bequeathed to them by Michael's forefathers. Hence the affection he with his household attaches to it is very strong. The shepherd's attachment to this property is captured in the words: “It looks as if it never could endure another Master”. These shepherds apply themselves, soul and body to hard labour on daily basis as the tract of land serves as a kind of permanent rallying point for their domestic feelings.

Luke, the son of the shepherd is another source of solace, joy and hope for the shepherd and his wife Isabel. The narrator captures these fond feelings in the word: “... that a child, more than all other gifts that earth can offer to declining man, brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts...”. The uncompleted sheepfold represents the broken bond between the shepherd and his son, Luke, who alone is the basis of their continuous possession of the property. Luke is also the lifeline between the shepherd and his wife, as the latter puts it: “Thou must not go: We have no other child but thee to lose, none to remember—do not go away, for if thou leave thy Father he will die”.

The tragedy of the shepherds therefore lies in losing what gives them life and joy. In this case of Michael, both Luke and the tract of land are lost, and this shatters the domestic affections that held them together. The pair thus die in sorrow one after the other leaving the half sheepfold in the solitary valley.

Thus, in this poem, Wordsworth deals with the success and failure, hopes and despair of the rural people and for this he uses pastoral setting. Various emotions such as sorrow, disappointment and love are experienced through the reading. It is these emotions in the character's relationships, which form the background of the themes of parental affection and the love of property. He has indeed captured the deep feeling of such men 'who do not wear fine clothes'.

Much like a proverb, the poem's end produces many lessons, like obedience, faithfulness, corruption, hardwork, love etcetera The poet is very simple, spontaneous and detailed in the presentation of characters.

Section 5

Analyses of Wordsworth's poem:

“Michael, a Pastoral” — II

Introduction

In his quest to find fresh material for his poetry, Wordsworth was led to an extended study of former poets. He did not treat a love affair and did not retain the contest of shepherds about love, about town and country, or about skill in music. By departing from these themes, he could the better deal with the pastoral in accordance with his general theories of poetry. With respect to pastoral, he determined two items of special interest to him. First, the form had been associated with the treatment of both nature and the life of simple folk. Artificial things are utterly downplayed in the poem—"Michael, a pastoral" while nature is foregrounded with earnestness (intensity and feeling).

At the same time, Wordsworth made no effort to produce a sensational effect. As he wrote in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1800: "the feeling...developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to feeling".

In the previous unit, we saw how Wordsworth treated simple shepherds: as folks with deep feelings or strong attachments to what they have. In this section we shall look at how nature is personified and affects human feelings.

Objectives:

By the end of this section, you will be able to

• Analyze the theme of nature in Wordsworth's “Michael, a pastoral” Nature in Wordsworth's “Michae--a pastoral”

Nature means a lot to William Wordsworth, and plays a vital part in his life. We see nature in almost every one of his poems. Some poems are directly related to nature, others indirectly.

He puts nature into the background, which can obviously be seen in his narrative poems. Nature, though put in the background, still carries an equal weight in conveying the meaning and passions of the story. For instance, the pictorial images of nature can generate in us powerful feelings under the guidance of the story plot line, and this is what we see in “Michael, a pastoral”.

Before the central story line is really touched on, Wordsworth already starts to pave the way for some awaited effects by seemingly aimlessly creating a simple atmosphere of the rural nature.

We see at the beginning a designed detour—an introduction to the geographical location where the story is to happen later.

If from the public way you turn your steps

Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Gill.

You will suppose that with an upright path

Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent

The pastoral Mountains front you, face to face.

But, courage! for beside that boisterous Brook

The mountains have all open'd out themselves.

And made a hidden valley of their own.

The first natural scene that catches the eye is “the tumultuous brook of Green-head Gill”. The trip up there is by no means easy—“Your feet must struggle.” It is a kind of hiking embarked upon in a congenial environment of rocks, mountains, valleys, brooks,... away from the 'public way' (artificial environment). The general atmosphere is casual and relaxing. Notice how the natural elements are depicted: 'boisterous brook, pastoral mountains, hidden valley, tumultuous brook'. “Pastoral” originally relates one to a feeling of easiness and an association of the carefree good old days, yet the narrator suddenly pulls us out of this comfortable association when he says “courage” to indicate the high and steepness of the hill.

Then we are bestowed with a right to access an open view of the seldom visited valley—the “hidden” valley. Coming along with the “hidden valley” is a “hidden story”. Nature in this tone seems to be active and making some loud silence, while it remains lonely and unaffected by human activities.

This is because the brook is noisy, in the words 'tumultuous' and 'boisterous' and “made a hidden valley of their own”. This gives the impression of the natural life lived by the shepherds abiding therein.

Furthermore, the narrator adds details after the geographical overture. The natural scene presents a solitary look, following the notion of “hidden” mentioned initially, when “No habitation there is seen”; but “they who journey thither find themselves alone”; “It is in truth an utter solitude”; except “a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites / That overhead are sailing in the sky”. Since there is no habitation, we are naturally led to doubts as to what will go on, in this “utter solitude”.

Then he shows another scene of nature, but seemingly in a somewhat preserved way. This reluctance arouses curiosity in us, when he says “Nor should I have made mention of this Dell / But for one object which you might pass by / Might see and notice not.” In fact, through the layers of suspicion built up, our attention is already directed to what may be originally passed by without notice—unworthy stones on the roadside. Then we hear the same natural scene echo again, but something different is added: “Beside the brook / There is a straggling heap of unhewn stones!”.

We see the naturalness of the stones by the word “unhewn”, reminding us of its origin from nature. Then the narrator makes us finally have a contact with the focused nature scene—“to that place a story appertains”. At this juncture, we begin to feel a sense of unusualness with the place and probably the life to be presented there. The natural setting is clearly imprinted on our minds. It is the story of shepherds living in a natural environment alone.

Then again, before the story line begins, the narrator shows a bit about the geological by telling about his own childhood. He describes himself as a boy “having felt the power / Of Nature, by the gentle agency / Of natural objects led me on to feel / For passions that were not my own”. Here, Wordsworth's philosophy of poetry is hinted: man's jocund company with nature during childhood is only recollected in tranquility. The natural scene brings fond memories of his childhood days when he used to enjoy nature's jolly company. He can now express poetry filled with genuine feelings.

By so doing, he indirectly hints at his sensitiveness and familiarity to the power of nature, thus making us feel the sincerity and truthfulness of the story he is to relate. As compassionate and sympathetic nature is, only those “with natural hearts” like himself (the narrator) can appreciate it. The carnal propensities are insensitive to nature and what she offers, and the story, as “homely and rude” as it is can only be enjoyed by those with the heart of poets, his “second self” who can think and feel deep. At the adult age, one now understands the natural feeling: can therefore “think / At random and imperfectly indeed / On man; the heart of man and human life” only when he/she draws closer to nature, like the shepherds who dwell in natural settings. In respect of autobiography is this pastoral novel.

Wordsworth discerned what others felt by noticing the effect of nature upon his own feelings when he was young. His sympathy had come through the agency of nature. To him, it had helped to mold him at an impressionable age as it afforded an example of the strange relation between man and nature; that is to say, man's association with nature brings out his inmost feelings. Consequently it revealed the possible depth of feeling that a person in humble station might possess; and this is linked to his philosophy of life.

Thus, in this introductory stanza, the narrator presents his own natural inclinations against the background of the story of the shepherds living in 'valleys' and 'mountains' of Green-head Ghyll. Even as the story starts, we are again drawn to the natural setting once again: “the Forestside in Grasmere Vale”, another dimension of the setting of the story. This geographical landscape prepares our mind for the thrilling story. The question to ask then is—what is the old man's (Michael) attitude towards nature?

This will inform Wordsworth's own attitude and ideas about nature. Let's see this through the life of the old shepherd:

So lived he till his eightieth year was past.

And grossly that man errs, who should suppose

That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,

Were things indifferent to the Shepherd's thoughts.

Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breethd

The common air; hills, which with vigorous step

He had so often climbed;..... laid

Strong hold on his affections, were to him

A pleasurable feeling of blind love.

The pleasure which there is in life itself.

The natural environment that disposed natural elements such as rocks, streams, green valleys, fieds, hills, produce pleasurable feelings of 'blind love' akin to the joy that life gives. They had laid 'Strong hold on his affections'. It is from those places where one finds the 'common air' that also produce cheerful spirits, and vigorous steps. This may further produce additional effect of health. No wonder then that Michael is described as--“stout of heart, strong of limb, of an unusual strength, keen, intense, frugal, prompt, and watchful”.

Michael is a diligent man of nature, who understands well every detail of nature, having even the ability of learning “the meaning of all winds, / Of blasts of every tone.” In the narrator's description, nature is right beside as we also journey along the hill top experiencing the winds with Michael, when the latter “heard the South Make subterraneous music”. Subterraneous music refers to the unseen sound made by nature, the invisible sign of nature prior to her visible appearance in the form of a storm/wind or rain. This happens when it is about to rain and a thunderlike sound is made from distant heavens. He compares it to the sound made by bagpipe—wind instrument.

Then nature appears, in the form of a storm, which “summon'd him / Up to the mountains: he had been alone / Amid the heart of many thousand mists / That came to him and left him on the heights”. Michael listens to the winds—the voice of nature. This suggestion makes us identify Wordsworth's nature with God. God is silent, yet He speaks through different means, so does nature. Nature, through this analogy, is deified and personified as living, and compassionate as God.

The industriousness of Michael and his household (Luke and Isabel) is linked to the sun, the business of the sun as nature's agent:

“Isabel,” said he.

“I have been toiling more than seventy years,”

And in the open sunshine of God's love

Have we all lived; yet, if these fields of ours

Should pass into a stranger's hand, I think

That I could not lie quiet in my grave.

Our lot is a hard lot; the sun himself

Has scarcely been more diligent than I Nature in the above lines demonstrates God's love for humanity: “…the open sunshine of God's love”. The fields, “these fields of ours” are special endowment of nature where the shepherds work themselves out on daily basis. As they daily labour on the field, their understanding of God's love deepens. The sunshine is no longer pictured as merely a natural phenomenon, but a demonstration of God's love, and this love is constant. The sun shines daily, and this more reveals God's love daily.

The sun labours always to bestow God's unflinching love, and as the shepherds benefit from this labour of the sun, they become like God in nature. For this reason Michael says: “…the sun himself Has scarcely been more diligent than I”. The personification of the sun in these lines underscores the idea of nature's daily labour to benefit man. But Michael has grown to be more 'diligent' than the sun. By this comparison, it is understood that the more man comes close to nature, the more he becomes of its likeness.

A similar analogy is given in the description of the shepherd's wife's industriousness. This is when the narrator mentions the image of two spinning wheels: “two wheels she had / Of antique form, this large for spinning wool, / That small for flax, and if one wheel had rest, / It was because the other was at work”. The ceaseless working of the two wheels are comparable to the shifts of the sun and the moon; though the sun and the moon take turns resting, the person behind the wheels never does rest. It has a foreshadowing effect when later Michael compares his diligence to that of the sun.

But this is contrastively ironical. Man may be like nature in industry, but would soon grow weary or give up the ghost while nature abides. Nature is more permanent than man in administering service. This analogy is extended in the lines below:

Large space beneath, as duly as the light

Of day grew dim the Housewife hung a lamp,

An aged utensil, which had performed

Service beyond all others of its kind.

Early at evening did it burn--and late.

This light was famous in its neighbourhood.

And was a public symbol of the life

That thrifty Pair had lived. For, as it chanced,

Their cottage on a plot of rising ground

Stood single, with large prospect, north and south,

High into Easedale, up to Dunmail-Raise,

And westward to the village near the lake;

And from this constant light, so regular

And so far seen, the House itself, by all

Who dwelt within the limits of the vale,

Both old and young, was named The Evening Star.

.

Notice the characteristics of the house—constant light, so regular, far seen, an aged utensil, famous, public symbol of life, stood single, seen from north, south, and westward, Early at evening did it burn--and late, was named 'The Evening Star'. Michael's house is a symbol of industry, frugality, and the virtues of the rural. It is like the stars emitting light in the night against the background of darkness. The Evening Star is not of nature and at most is only a mere manifestation of human labour, whereas a real star is of nature, immortal and permanent, at least in human conception. By naming the house Evening Star shows the family's industry, it has its irony—it is only temporal, and might suffer from any outside changes easily.

Compared to nature; man is temporal and short-lived. Meanwhile, the characters of the house herein described fittingly apply to the moon or evening star, constantly providing light in the evening and night. Thus Michael and his household symbolically represent nature, sun and moon/star proving service day and night.

Then nature in the form of The Clipping Tree is mentioned to locate Michael's Evening Star: "Beneath that large old Oak... / Stood, and from its enormous breadth of shade...was call'd / The Clipping Tree, a name which yet it bears." The large old oak, though named by humans, is part of nature and symbolizes the immortal. The shift of the tense from the past into the present--"bears"--indicates that something may have changed, but the old tree remains.

Then comes the description of the inner conflict: Michael is painstakingly considering the possibility of selling part of his land: “Such was his first resolve.” Yet his attachment to his property soon overwhelms him--“his heart fail'd him...if these fields of ours / Should pass into a Stranger's hand... I could not lie quiet in my grave”. Michael's worry is revealed. In his complaint, he is still thinking of some “remedies and of a cheerful hope,” trying hard not to lose any land. Finally, he comes up with a seemingly good idea: “Our Luke shall leave us... the land / Shall not go from us.” In letting Luke leave to pay off the debt, the land “shall be free...as is the wind / That passes over it.” The word “free” is trickily used here. Its superficial meaning is that it totally belongs to Michael. Yet on a deeper level, “free” connotes also the freeing of any bondage.

When so defined, we see an irony: Since the land is free, it should not be possessed by even humans. Who can really claim to own the land, or nature? We see that Michael has a natural inclination towards nature; his soul cannot sleep in the grave if the parcel of land he owes falls to another person; and in a bid to safeguard the land against this eventuality, his son Luke must rather leave them. This constant appearance of the land is to consolidate Michael's feeling of love for naturally endowed property.

The main plot line almost comes to an end when at this time nature silently but abruptly shows up and the sense of irony starts to permeate. The resonant echo of nature bounces back as it seems to silently show itself: “Near the tumultuous brook of Green-head Gill, / In that deep Valley,...” A foreshadowing spot, with its same locale and wording, catches our attention, yet the different actions following it make us feel extremely uncertain. A contrary scene to nature is mentioned—a sheepfold: “Michael had design'd / To build a Sheep-fold, …he had gathered up / A heap of stones, which close to the brook side / Lay thrown together, ready for the work.” The familiarity of the reappearance of this heap of stones is another foreshadowing spot that makes us feel even more uneasy. We see the image of the bond between Moses and God (in the Holy Bible) showing up as Michael also symbolically asks Luke to lay a corner stone for the never finished sheepfold. Before their “contract” is signed, Wordsworth prepares a touching scene of Michael's monologue over his paternal-maternal love.

From the mouth of Michael comes loving kindness; from the mouth of Luke returns sobs caused by the touching words of the father. The sobs are to create another irony as comparing to his later betrayal, also indirectly hinting at man's betrayal to God.

Now, Michael's description of industry continues, most of all emphasizing the idea of family tie and devotion. In this description, he mentions again his property—land. It stands for the retaining of a family, yet here the irony of the overly attachment to worldly gains can be felt as Michael says:

“I toil'd and toil'd; God bless'd me in my work,”

And 'till these three weeks past the land was free.

--It looks as if it never could endure

Another Master. Heaven forgive me, Luke.

If I judge ill for thee, but it seems good

That thou should'st go".

The reasonable logic is that the result of labor should bring about the possession of land, yet the irony here presented is that it finally turns out to be not so. An interesting use of the word "free" is another irony. The land may go into Michael's hands, and then it is "free." Another interpretation is that the land is of nature and accordingly should be free from the possession of even any human beings. The old man's over-indulgence of his property is detected as mixed with irony, "It looks as if it never could endure / Another Master". It seems Michael conceals his real intention of greed, which Wordsworth may indirectly want to reveal to us. When he said "it never could endure / Another master," it is he that really cannot give up on the material.

A foreshadow is slightly hinted at when Michael begs Luke to forgive him if this decision for him turns out to be evil. When contrasting the later development of the story, this pleading links to Luke's later evil, thus creating a contrast and irony. Nature is mentioned again to serve as a symbol for a contrast between man's capriciousness and nature's remaining unchanged and true:

... the Old Man paus'd, ...

pointing to the Stones near which they stood.

Thus, after a short silence, he resum'd:

“This was a work for us, and now, my Son,” It is a work for me. But, lay one Stone.

The stone comes from and stands for nature. Yet here it is used as a kind of symbol of the contract between father and son. The contract is in fact broken as the work intending to be done by both—“for us”—can only be left to Michael himself—“for me.” This also foreshadows the departure of father and son, for good.

The same nature scenes then appear again and nature is ready to “speak,” as Michael says to Luke: “Up to the heights, and in among the storms, / Will I without thee go again, and do / All works which I was wont to do alone”. The meaning these same nature scenes convey varies with different contexts. Up to this far, the tragic result is still unknown, therefore the nature scenes only bespeak a returning back to the normal on the part of the old man Michael—the resuming of industry, in the hope of a better tomorrow. By showing the paternal love to try to bind Luke to Michael, the narrator puts love under a strict trial.

Wordsworth then gives a detailed, loving and touching scene. Old Michael speaks:

Luke, thou hast been bound to me

Only by links of love.

... Lay now the corner-stone,...

...should evil men

Be thy companions, let this Sheep-fold be

Thy anchor and thy shield; amid all fear

And all temptation, let it be to thee

An emblem of the life thy Fathers liv'd, ...

When thou return'st, thou in this place wilt see

A work which is not here, a covenant 'Twill be between us…

Michael wants to lessen the uncertainty by having a covenant with Luke, but the bond of their covenant is much too loose, as it is maintained only through fragile love. If successful in preventing Luke from going astray, this proves the power of this bond. Yet, once love fails, a counter effect is produced. The covenant is made through the testimony of nature—a stone—to want to keep love working in the young mind, which is something risky and Michael is not really sure about.

Even so, he still expresses his love to Luke and hopes for the best: “--but whatever fate / Befall thee, I shall love thee to the last, / And bear thy memory with me to the grave”. That is a bet Michael wishes to win, even though he also sees some possibility of failure. He tries to build a sheepfold not only to enclose his sheep, but symbolically also wanting to keep Luke away from any temptation. Luke is a symbolic sheep that is tend to go astray any moment.

He wants to keep Luke under the protection of nature (sheepfold is laid up using stones—a symbol of nature), and wishes him to use nature as a tool in fighting against any possible temptations lying ahead. The initial success seems to justify Michael's decision in sending Luke away, so he is pacified and therefore peacefully “went about his daily work / With confident and cheerful thoughts". With hopes, he finds it meaningful to keep on —“He to that valley took his way, and there / Wrought at the Sheep-fold."

The narrator now steps further back, serving only as a narrator of the narrator, and only relates what he has heard, making the whole narrative sound objective: “I have convers'd with more than one who well / Remember the Old Man, and what he was / Years after he had heard this heavy news”. The objective presentation of the hard facts by nature without making any complaining comment makes the whole story a much sadder one. Wordsworth turns the focus to the wordless natural scenes again to let it silently bear the unbearable heaviness of beings, and also let it finally magnify all these mixed feelings in the reader. The natural elements that showed up at the very beginning of the story appears again, wrapping up the story, but already contains in it completely different notes:

Among the rocks

He went, and still look'd up upon the sun.

And listen'd to the wind; and as before

Perform'd all kinds of labour for his Sheep,

And for the land his small inheritance.

Now nature takes on the notes of irony, sadness, solitude and loneliness after it magnifies and pours these into us when we read the whole story. Michael anticipates Luke's return; he still "look's up upon the sun", but "all hope is a good hope." Sadness permeates into the afterthought of the story and our mind.

Among the same rocks, old Michael does the same work; everything still goes on as it was, even the murmuring water. Yet they are not the same in our mind because the story's mood changes at this juncture. The covenant is broken, love traded with sadness and misery.

The broken love may still store for Michael some strength to endure the loss; but it is far too heavy to bear all the meaning of his life. The whole happy mood the natural man possesses and experiences in his daily life changes completely. We can feel the sadness, and capriciousness of human conditions through these natural scenes.

Even the dell feels like desolate, empty and hopeless with its "hollowness"—"to that hollow Dell from time to time / Did he repair, to build the Fold of which / His flock had need." As we turn to Michael again, he suddenly feels him a meaningless living creature acting mechanically but hopelessly; "he thither went," to the planned site for his sheepfold, yet "never lifted up a single stone". No motivation lies behind to goad him on.

Nature presents itself time and again, each time adding sadder notes than before. When at last, “by the Sheep-fold, sometimes was he seen / Sitting alone.” The sheepfold remains the same, but the mood of Michael and us the readers change. The loneliness is strongly felt with no one accompanying him, but “his faithful Dog, / Then old, beside him, lying at his feet”. The unfinished work of the sheepfold testifies to the much sadness the old man has to bear, and too much for him to bear. Then, Isabel, the industrious wife, dies not long after Michael's death. At the end, what Michael does his best to prevent sadly and inevitably happens. The land that cannot "bear to suffer in another person's hand," goes "into a Stranger's hand". The light boasting its equal brightness to that from the stars up in the heaven disappears, forever—"The Cottage which was named The Evening Star / Is gone". What remains is a solitary ploughshare standing in the same position to sadly mark the once bright but now faded glory of an industrious family. It also signifies the abandoned ruins after human changes: "the ploughshare has been through the ground / On which it stood". The unwillingness to change on the part of Michael finally proves only to be a shattered dream ending in irony and bitterness when finally "great changes have been wrought / In all the neighbourhood". What is left now is only bare nature, showing up for the last time, with some human work left unfinished, and deserted: "the Oak is left / That grew beside their Door; and the remains / Of the unfinished Sheep-fold may be seen / Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Gill."

The poem ends in the “boisterous” sounds of the brook. It is the sounds of nature wanting to tell and tell too much, though silently, metaphorically and symbolically. From the “ferocious” sounds it utters, we meditate on the whole matter.

The boisterous sounds may want to tell us the sad change of the social environment from a rural one into an industrial one, resulting in many tragedies of human beings, though it does bring material comforts. When we look back again, we can obviously see Michael make a wrong decision; he loses not only his son, but all his properties. Were he not so addicted to his land and properties, maybe the story would end up differently--Luke would still stay with him, though some land is sold to pay off the debt.

That's what nature has been telling us, and will tell us more, with each rereading, when we listen carefully to the ferocious boisterousness of the brook.

Summary

A major technique Wordsworth employs in making nature “speak” is to make the same nature scene appear repeatedly, but in different contexts of the plot. A nature scene, when appearing for the first time, may connote nothing significantly, and the feel it gives us is casual and easy. Yet as the scene makes its appearance for the second or third time, it cast a deeper and deeper impression on the mind.

Nature not only links and combines the messages conveyed in the story line, but makes them ferment and expand in our minds to bring out strong passions and feelings through its seemingly hollow effect of a valley echoing and magnifying whatever sound it receives. It says nothing, yet means almost everything the story line can offer. The story line and nature speak in a parallel and interwoven way. Though nature is put in the background, she echoes and conflicts with the plot line, magnifies all the feelings and tells us much. The narration tells us the development of the whole event, while nature adds meaning and magnifies feelings.

Nature never does speak in language; it speaks through making our heart feel. In our minds, a strong feeling can be aroused when the detail of the story line and the silence of nature combine. A powerful feeling can be forced out through an echo—when nature scenes help make us the readers feel the same as narrated in the plot line.

From “Michael”, we see Wordsworth always has nature in mind even if his focus does not seem directly to be on nature in every poem. He let nature show in a decisive way, enlivening the whole poem with emotions and feelings we will deeply feel.

Section Six

Analysis of Wordsworth's “Daffodils”

Dear learner, you must be enjoying nature's jocund company now through Wordsworth. It is his intention to take you to beautiful nature scenes so that even though you are not visibly there to explore nature you are still there with nature in the text to enjoy her powerful comfort and pleasant association. How did you feel in the solid pastoral fields of valleys and mountains, rocks and windy sunshine? What about the boisterous brook?

You weren't there? But you were there. Well I hope you enjoyed the tour.

The story of Michael and his family might have brought you mixed feelings, but be strong! We are entering another natural environment made of Daffodils, and not interwoven with sad events. Here, Wordsworth leads us through some beautiful springtime flowers with trumpet-shape. This beautiful plant will appeal to your sense of sight.

Objectives

By the end of this section you will be able to

• Discuss the form of Wordsworth's “Daffodils”

Discuss the content of Wordsworth's “Daffodils”

Form and Content of Wordsworth's “Daffodils”

Whenever the word form is used in poetic context, it means the organization of the words, lines and stanzas. This will also imply the rhyme scheme. Content is the inherent message contained in the poem.

Sometimes, the form gives expression to the content. That is to say, its peculiar composition may serve to represent the nature of the message it contains. For instance, a poem with short lines or long lines may represent the shortness or length of the message of the speaker. It can look at consistency of patterns in the lines, like the use of words, their simplicity or complexity or duplicity (repetition).

This surface structure (the form) typically represents the organization of the message but not necessarily the message (content). You will need to understand the form so that it can guide you to the content.

In contemplating form verses content in the light of romantic poetry and Wordsworth's poetry for that matter, you need to consider the classical organization of consistent rhyming patterns occurring through the lines. It is the verse or measures in the lines that makes the piece of composition poetic. Even though the content of romantic poetry differs from classical poetry, it is similar to it in terms of the form.

The four by six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: A.B.A.B.C.C. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter. This means that it is composed of four stanzas of six lines each; and each line has a consistent pattern of four feet-eight syllables to a line with each feet starting with a weak accent followed by a strong. Within the a-b-a-b-c-c parameter, it uses consistent rhyming to invoke nature at each stanza's end. Each stanza contains sweet imagery from the natural world.

Such imageries are reinforced through figures of comparisons such as simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, but the rhythmic effect is established mainly through consonants, interlaced with alliteration. Each of the figures used has a powerful evocation of nature's liveliness and her corresponding beneficence. The daffodils are even made anthropomorphous (possess human attributes) in order to create a humanly portrayal of Mother Nature in the process. The beauty of nature is seen through these images.

Most romantic poems are composed in this form with a wealth of references to the natural world, and to use rhyme in their work. In this style, the poem flows like a song in a rhythmic structure. There is profuse use of the sensory imagery that is more visually appealing, and we shall look at how this imagery evokes powerful mood from stanza to stanza. Read the poem below:

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And dances with the daffodils.

Brief historical overview:

William Wordsworth dwelled in scenic Lake District (United Kingdom), far from the madding crowd. Walking along the Glencoyne Bay with his family, he stumbled across beautiful daffodils along the bay. The daffodils seemed immensely beautiful from a far-off view.

It was truly a magnificent sight, and this magnificent sight forms the backdrop from which the poem “Daffodils” was composed. Its roots can be traced back to Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, in which she reminisces, the casual stroll with his brother in 1802, where they came across the beautiful daffodils. The poem was composed within the time period of 1804 to 1807, and subsequently published in 1807, with a revised version published in 1815. Shall we now look at the content of the poem.

Analysis

The first stanza is a complex sentence, in which the persona presents the scene, the setting of the daffodils. The natural setting is established in the description: “Beside the lake, beneath the trees, in the breeze”. The rest of the stanza uses descriptive imagery in representing the daffodils, in expressions like “a crowd, a host, golden, fluttering and dancing”.

Although, yellow would be more suitable for daffodils, the poet intends to signify its beauty by using golden colour. The daffodils are termed as hosts/crowd since they are together in a collective bunch. The speaker prefers the human description in 'host' and 'crowd' rather than bunch for the flowers.

Moreover, the verbs 'fluttering' and 'dancing' indicate liveliness and exuberance. The daffodils seem to possess the enthusiasm of strong youth, continuously active. Thus, the extraordinary beauty and activeness of the daffodils are hereby presented in personification and metaphors.

In describing his own movement, the speaker employs simile to create the imagery of cloud circumnavigating (moving round) valleys and hills, in the lines: “I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills”. It is as if the action of the clouds over the hills and vales is deliberate, but it is to underscore the moving activity of nature. In all of these, the sense of sight is evoked; and this is why the persona says: “I saw”.

In the second stanza, the speaker continuous the descriptive imagery in simile, hyperbole and personification, presenting the beauty and activity of the daffodils. Comparing them to shining stars: “…as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way”, the speaker evokes the imagery and corresponding beauty of the Milky Way galaxy (assembly of stars). The daffodils are hereby depicted in terms of the array of light presented in the Milky Way, thereby deepening the extraordinary brightness and splendor of the sight. A significant component of the beauty of daffodils is its colour—brightness because stars that shine also emit gold-like beams of light, and the daffodils are depicted in this light. Then to underscore the number and emphasize the sense of sight, there is a deliberate inversion of the words in a hyperbolic expression: “Ten thousand saw I at a glance” instead of I saw ten thousand at a glance. Thus, in this stanza he does not use crowd and host as in stanza one, but employs a more vivid imagery that brings out the idea of number clearly. It is not possible to see ten thousand flowers in a glance, and so the exaggeration has the effect of emphasizing the initial 'crowd' and 'host' used in stanza one to convey the uncountable nature of the daffodils.

Similarly, the line “They stretched in never-ending line” repeats this idea. They certainly have an end, but to say “never-ending” is to suggest their multitude. Once again, nature possesses life in the line “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance”.

The metaphor of the daffodils dancing in the earlier depiction in stanza one where they were 'fluttering and dancing' is repeated. Here, the description is deepened with a more vivid imagery of “sprightly dance”, bringing out the fullness of life and vigour in the daffodils. Thus, stanza one and two present similar form in terms of the content. They both present brightness (colour), number, and liveliness of the daffodils as the bases of its beauty and attraction.

The impression presented of nature in the above two stanzas is that nature is beautiful, full of life and highly spirited.

In the third stanza, the speaker compares and contrasts the daffodils and the waves of the lake. Both of them are personified to be lively and full of passion, but the daffodils are more enthusiastic than the waves: “The waves beside them danced; but they / Out-did the sparkling waves in glee”. It is important to note the use of the word 'dance' associated with the daffodils throughout the poem. It gives the impression of the daffodils and for that matter nature being full of energy and action.

In this stanza this imagery of 'dance' is embellished with the modifiers 'jocund' and 'glee' which all suggest jubilant feeling and cheerfulness. In such condition, the speaker suggests, man can find solace and equal joy: “A poet could not but be gay”. Wordsworth uses the word 'poet' here in reference to himself. The sight of the interaction between nature—daffodils and the waves is so enchanting as to keep a poet like himself in trance. In stanza two he glanced and 'saw ten thousand', but now he gazed: “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought / What wealth the show to me had brought”. The repetition of 'gaze' emphasizes the persona's lost in trance, under the enchantment of the daffodils' extraordinary beauty.

Describing the scene as a 'show' connotes its thrilling effect on the persona, and for that effect, the sense of the word 'gay' is clearer. Overwhelmed by the daffodils' appearance, he is light-hearted and full of merriment; his heart burden has disappeared under the scenic showcase of the daffodils. But there is a more profitable effect of the daffodils on the persona beyond the immediate pleasurable feeling and satisfaction. The word 'wealth' is that permanent blessing.

In 'wealth', the imagery of nature's benefits to mankind is complete. Describing the reward of nature as 'wealth' is metaphorical, and its true meaning is in the last stanza of the poem:

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And dances with the daffodils.

The sense of the word 'dance' is deeper in stanza four and redefines its overall sense in the preceding stanzas. The persona's heart 'dancing with the daffodils' signals a state of happiness in which his heart leaps out. The speaker reveals that he not only still has the memory of the daffodils, but that he has also kept the memory of how they made him feel.

He reveals this when he says, “And then my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils”. Even though he no longer sees the dancing waves and the golden daffodils, he reveals that he will never forget them when he says, “they flash upon that inward eye”. 'Inward eye' refers to the speaker's imagination (his mind's eye). The pleasurable feeling is recollected in tranquility, and nature here is seen to have visited the speaker in his lonely or pensive mood to replace any morose or pessimistic feelings with ecstasy and felicity.

It is in this sense that 'wealth', used in stanza three is meaningful. The use of the word “wealth” reveals that this sense of peace and joy are worth more to the speaker than money or other worldly wealth. When he says, “What wealth the show to me had brought”, it shows that the mere sight of the golden daffodils somehow enriched his life and brought wealth to him. This also gives us the idea that some things such as peace, joy, and life are worth more than money and worldly goods. Thus, the 'bliss of solitude' is enjoyed only by one who has had experience with nature.

It gives the idea of a kind of utopian peace enjoyed by one who visits nature, since only nature can offer that inestimable and everlasting 'wealth'.

Summary

The poem Daffodils produces imagery skillfully. The word 'dance' has been repeated diversely throughout the poem to reinforce the liveliness associated with the daffodils and nature for that matter. More so, it underscores the ecstatic mood associated with nature—in daffodils.

Words that help establish the meaning in this context include 'glee, gay, jocund, bliss, pleasure, show'. Closely linked with this, personification is dominantly used to give human attributes to nature—in daffodil, signifying its liveliness. The lines that express this idea include “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”, “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance”, “The waves beside them danced”, “they out-did the sparkling waves in glee”, “In such a jocund company”.

He also uses metaphor and simile, and hyperbole to describe the multitudinous nature and beauty of nature—in daffodils. Words and lines like 'golden', 'host', 'crowd', 'Continuous as the stars that shine', 'They stretched in never-ending line' are used to express this idea. Then finally, representing the reward of engaging with nature, a powerful metaphorical imagery in 'wealth' is used. It is in this word that the permanent effect of nature—in daffodils is recorded. Reflecting on the daffodils provided the persona with some peace when alone. Therefore, nature brings hope, peace, health, joy and comfort to man, which are essential ingredients for the soul. Underlying themes in the poem therefore are the celebration of the beauty of nature, or the blessing of nature, or the liveliness of nature. In this poem, the writer employs consonants to build the rhyme scheme in the form: A.B.A.B.C.C.

Unit Three

Dear learner, you are welcome once again to our discussion. In this unit, we are looking at the life and literary career of Robert Lee Frost—one of the prominent poets of the 20th century American Literature and also a prominent poet of the modern era. This is because he stands at the crossroads of nineteenth-century American poetry and modernism, for in his verse may be found the culmination of many nineteenth-century tendencies and traditions as well as parallels to the works of his twentieth-century contemporaries.

Unlike the poetry of such contemporaries as T.S Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and the later William Butler Yeats, Frost's poetry shows no marked departure from the poetic practices of the nineteenth century. For this reason he is considered a perennial poet (one that lasts for an indefinite time or era). His theory of poetic composition ties him to the 19th and 20th centuries as well as the post 20th century modern poets. Recognizable aspects of modern poetry include an emphasis on strong imagery and emotional content and less reliance on the use of rhyme. The modern elements of Frost's poetry are those of capitalism, the self-centeredness of the modern man, the bored existence, isolation, dilemma, and symbolism.

Objectives:

By the end of this unit, you will

Know Robert Frost's profile as a poetic genius

• Appreciate at least four of his poems

Frost's Profile

Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to

• Know Frost's profile along his poetic career.

Introduction

In spite of the pastoral element predominant in Frost's poems, he is still a modern poet because his poetry has been endowed with the awareness of the problems of man living in the modern world dominated by Science and Technology. Meanwhile, he was a contemporary and friend to such modernist writers like Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. But as a modern poet Frost is different from other modern poets. While modernist poetry is sometimes associated with an elitist culture that takes poetry away from the general public through experimental forms and esoteric references, Frost is a modern poet in his rural, working-class persona, his traditional, metered voice and use of colloquial phrases, as well as the mundane (common place and ordinary) subjects of most of his poems.

Frost's Profile

Frost was born and bred in San Francisco, California in 1874, and his poetical education also began there. But following his father's death when he was 14 years, his mother moved the family to New England in 1884 where he settled permanently to compose poetry. Frost attended high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts from where he graduated as valedictorian in 1891. But the next twenty years after high school were hard years in his life. After brief attendance at Dartmouth College and Harvard and a difficult period as a teacher and farmer in Derry, New Hampshire, Frost in 1912 moved his family which then included four children, to England and published his first collections of poems: A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). These were favourably reviewed by Ezra Pound who recommended them highly, especially the latter which was positively evaluated by critics in both the U.S and England. These publications earned Frost the professional esteem denyed him in his native country, so that his return to the United States in 1915 was as a celebrated literary figure.

The sales of his books also brought him much wealth. Financial and social success however was accompanied by personal tragedies as he lost a son through suicide and a daughter went completely insane. The bitterness of his earlier struggle for survival never completely left him all his life. In the last 20 years of his life he devoted most of his time to poetry reading and talks, and to lecturing at universities across America. He was very unique among American poets of the 20th century in the sense that he was the only one among them who barely received adverse criticism; only wide popularity and deep critical admiration.

The Context of Frost's Literary Career

Except for the brief period of his stay in England, Frost was himself a farmer all his life, from early boyhood down to his ripe old age. Poetry was his vocation, but farming was his pastime or avocation, something he does during his leisure. He combined the two and this gave him an intimate knowledge of the life of the farmers and hence brings out the truthfulness of his depictions of rural life.

During the early seventeenth century a band of puritans immigrated to the New England America from Europe. During the 1630s and 1640s the puritans built a strong stance in the New England. New England is a place where the European puritan immigrants settled. When they came, most of them opted for Adam's profession—cultivation. One of the central beliefs of puritanism is labour or hard work. Puritans do not believe in the distinction between gentleman and laymen or landlords and slaves.

To them nobody is gentleman as Adam tilled the ground and Eve span the wheels. Thus, most of them became farmers. Though Frost was at no time a firm member of any Christian sect, he was significantly influenced by puritanism. He closely observed the life of the farmers of New England and depicted their life in his poetry.

Thus, he found inspiration in his day-to-day experiences. New England therefore is a recurring setting throughout his work.

Apart from the setting, the puritan beliefs also form the themes of most of Frost's poems. This hard working nature is a characteristic of Frost's poems. Moreover, like all puritan literature, Frost's poems are also simple and unornamented. As a folk philosopher, Frost is the most cherished nature poet of New England, the puritan land. He writes about the objects, the incidents, the events and the characters of New England. But he treats all these elements of nature differently from the English romantics.

Life was hard for Frost, but he rose steadily to fame through poetic composition in England and America. Living in the Puritan New England environment, the rustic life also influenced his writings. He closely observed the life of the farmers of New England and depicted their life in his poetry. Labor therefore functions as a tool for self-analysis and discovery in Frost's poetry. His poetry abounds in all familiar things like pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds etcetera He also employed symbols and imagery much like other modern poets as a basis for stressing clarity, precision and economy of language in poetic composition.

Section Two Robert Frost's Poetic Philosophy

Robert Frost presents a problem because he is a great poet who in the company of other great poets of the 20 superscript th century does not appear to be a modern poet at all. He ignores all the considerations of modernism just like the minor poets. And yet he is not a major poet. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Frost never saw the language at his disposal as a corrupt, unusable tool. His language therefore has clarity of diction and simplicity of imagery unique among his contemporaries.

Objectives:

By the end of this section, you will be able to

• Know Frost's poetic philosophy.

Robert Frost's Poetic Philosophy

Frost was one of such poets who sought to represent ideas and referents with appropriate words. As a writer, Frost proudly sees himself as a New England poet in the tradition of the New England transcendentalists (philosophers believing in the intuitive knowledge of spiritual reality and the existence of divinity in nature) of the 19 ^{th} century. However, he differs from them in his refusal to see a divinity behind things. In nature and his outdoor scenery, he sees “no expression, nothing to express”. He however shares in the transcendental view of the centrality of individuality where collective existence will enfeeble the self; hence has no political affiliation, as he believes a group activity diminishes the individual.

This makes him a political conservative and this was evident in his political persuasions throughout the 1930s into the 1960s. This earned him a lot of criticism which he resented deeply, and his last poems reflect this resentment. In these poems he is uncharacteristically didactic and ideological.

His speaker/persona, unlike Pound's and Eliot's is sociable and friendly, and his style is informal, casual, familiar and ordinary. This manner of presentation, according to Frost, is to make his poems sound natural, uncontrived, and unplanned. Some have described Frost's style as a thoughtful reply to the modernist tendency towards obscurity and incoherence.

One may perceive his obsession with the rural landscape as an affirmation of the modernist distaste for the city. But unlike the modernists he is not concerned with the urban dweller at all; hence he cares less whether the urban is disoriented or not. To him, it is still possible to write traditional poetry with traditional material and diction, something the 'new poets' say is impossible in a disjointed world.

Frost succeeds where his European counterparts like the Georgian and War poets failed perhaps because he is an American. He is considered the American Virgil precisely because of the pastoral theme in his poetry. To his American readers, both his protagonist and setting are typically American and his poetry is an investment in America which all patriotic Americans must embrace. But it is not completely true to say that Frost's success is primarily because of his unique Americanism. He succeeds in achieving his own unique kind of internal dynamism through a blend of the rhythm of ordinary speech and the formality of formal verse forms without departing too much from traditional versification.

For instance, his dramatic monologues, he achieves the perfection of Elizabethan dramatic vigour through the use of blank verse couched in colloquial diction. To Frost, the only true poetry is the one composed in traditional verse forms, and those forms are the only available poetic tools for the modern poet who wants to confront the 'decay' of modern sensibility. Nothing 'permanent' may be forged without them.

Because of his internal dynamics, when he observes rural life, he perceives their details acutely and thereby invests them with universal as well as metaphysical meaning despite the colloquialism and familiar rhythms. There is always a symbolic dimension even in the simplest poems depicting ordinary life. Often, in his rural setting the visible pastoral cohabit with the darker side of the rural.

Frost never changed in terms of method or material throughout his career as a poet, and the style and technique of the very first collections remained with him throughout. His poetry is essentially of three types:

1. Nature (outdoor) lyrics describing an event/scene in which there is often a comparison of the outer scene with the inner self.

2. Dramatic narratives in colloquial blank verse about the dark side of country life

3. Lyrics about life in general.

There is also a humorous side to Frost's thought, sometimes it is dark humour. His collections include Mountain Interval (1916), New, West-Running Brook (1928), Collected Poems (1930; Pulitzer Prize), A Further Range ( 1936; (1962), and The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969).

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols of Frost

Self-knowledge through nature

Nature figures prominently in Frost's poetry, and his poems usually include a moment of interaction or encounter between a human speaker and a natural element or phenomenon. These encounters culminate in profound realizations or revelations, which have significant consequences for the speakers. Actively engaging with nature—whether through manual labor or exploration—has a variety of results, including self-knowledge, deeper understanding of the human condition, and significant insight into the metaphysical or supernatural world. Throughout Frost's work, speakers learn about themselves by exploring nature, but nature always stays indifferent to the human world.

In other words, people learn from nature because nature allows people to gain knowledge about themselves and because nature requires people to reach for new insights, but nature itself does not provide answers. While humans might learn about themselves through nature, nature and its ways remain mysterious. Frost's earlier works mainly focus on this act of discovery and demonstrates how being engaged with nature leads to growth and knowledge.

Community and isolation

Closely linked with the theme and motif of self-knowledge through nature, Frost also presents the contrast between the human capacity to connect with one another and to experience feelings of profound isolation. In several Frost poems, solitary individuals wander through a natural setting and encounter another individual, an object, or an animal. These encounters stimulate moments of revelation in which the speaker realizes his or her connection to others or, conversely, the ways that the individual feels isolated from the community. Earlier poems feature speakers who actively choose solitude and isolation in order to learn more about themselves, but these speakers ultimately discover a firm connection to the world around them.

Manual Labor

In most of Frost's poems, labour functions as a tool for self-analysis and discovery. Work allows his speakers to understand themselves and the world around them. Traditionally, pastoral and romantic poets emphasized a passive relationship with nature, wherein people would achieve understanding and knowledge by observing and meditating, with only occasional direct interaction with the natural world.

In contrast, Frost's speakers work, labor, and act, even children work. Thus, Frost implies that a connection with the earth and with one's self can only be achieved by actively commuting with the natural world through work.

Solitary travelers

Solitary travelers also abound in Frost's poems. Their attitudes toward their journeys and their surroundings are the backdrop of poetic and historical themes. The figure of the wanderer and the changing social landscape of New England in the twentieth century are not inconsiderable. As in romanticism, (a literary movement active in England from about 1750 to 1830), Frost's poetry demonstrates great respect for the social outcast, or wanderer, who exists on the fringes of a community. Like the romanticized notion of the solitary traveler, the poet was also separated from the community, which allowed him to view social interactions, as well as the natural world, with a sense of wonder, fear, and admiration. His characters live on the outskirts of the community, largely away from the warmth and complexity of human interaction.

Birds and birdsong

In Frost's poetry, birds represent nature, and their songs represent nature's attitudes toward humanity. Birds provide a voice for the natural world to communicate with humans. But their songs communicate only nature's indifference toward the human world. This means the presence of birds in Frost's poems is primarily to lead the speakers to other natural phenomena for a deeper realization.

Symbolism

Symbols also abound in Frost's poems. He takes the familiar objects as the subject matters of his poetry but makes them highly suggestive and symbolic to represent some universal wisdom. His poetry abounds in all familiar things like pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds etcetera Puritans tried to interpret everything symbolically. This is because Frost wrote in the Puritan context of the New Englanders who mostly found symbolic interpretation to things.

Summary

Frost's poetry abounds in all familiar things of the natural world. He takes the familiar objects as the subjet matters of his poetry but makes them symbolic to represent universal and philosophical truth. Thus, his themes have universal appeal.

They treat elements of nature differently from the English romantics. However, he was more successfully than any other American poet, in fulfilling Wordsworth's aim of using common speech heightened by passion. His writing is not ornamented, but simple and colloquial, just like the puritan writers. His colloquial language, homely, seemingly unpoetical is yet a sensitive literary idiom. He basically composes in the free-verse or blank verse style with few variations here and there.

Recurrent themes and motifs of his poetry include birds singing, solitary travelers, manual labour, community and isolation, self-knowledge through nature among others. Symbols also abound in his poems, as Puritants had a symboic interpretation of things. Frost's New England trascedentalits philosophy (in which they believe in existence of the divine and supernatural through nature) also influenced his writings greatly. Consequently he lived the individuality and wrote about the dark side of countryside life differently from the Romantic Movement's notion of countryside living.

Section Three Analyze Frost's Poem—“Mending Wall”

Hello; welcome. You are now sufficiently informed to comfortably study and enjoy Frost's poems. The last two sections have given you inkling into Frost's poetic orientation with regards to his subjects, themes and techniques. He is a nature poet-different from the Romantic nature poets. Traditionally, pastoral and romantic poets emphasized a passive relationship with nature, wherein people would achieve understanding and knowledge by observing and meditating, not by directly interacting with the natural world. But as indicated above, Frost's speakers are actively engaged in labour—mending fences, as in “Mending Wall”; harvesting fruit, as in “After Apple-Picking”; or cutting hay, as in “Mowing”. Let's look at one of these experiences in “Mending Wall”.

Objective:

By the end of this section you will be able to

- analyze Frost's poem—"Mending Wall"

Analysis of “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost

The New England farmers built walls as boundaries to their farms. These walls often became weak and broke down. So, they needed mending. “Mending Wall,” is based on a fence near Frost's farm in Derry, New Hampshire. The day-to-day experiences of the New Englanders were a source of inspiration for him.

In this poem, he describes the friendly argument between the speaker and his neighbour as they walk along their common wall replacing fallen stones; their differing attitudes toward “boundaries” present a symbolic significance. Read the poem below:

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it.

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone.

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

No one has seen them made or heard them made.

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game.

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours”.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me.

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying.

And he likes having thought of it so well.

He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours”.

This is one of Frost's dramatic monologues, whose speakers are New England farm people. In this poem, he makes use of the familiar aspects to suggest a symbolic meaning. The familiar experience here is the game or activity of mending a wall. That is to say, the poem Mending Wall is also a poem about two neighbours and a wall. Therefore, in this poem, Frost juxtaposes the two opposite aspects of the theme of the poem and then leaves it to us to draw our own conclusion. The conservative farmer says: “Good fences make good neighbor” and the modern radical farmer says: “Something there is that doesn't love a wall”. These are two underlining utterances upon which the symbolic meaning of the entire poem is built. There is tension created from the attitudes of the two friends building or mending the wall. The persona, who in this case is also representing the modern radical farmer says:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it.

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The speaker thinks that there is something in wall mending or building that does not support the activity. This is because of the seeming presence of 'frozen-ground-swell' that causes the wall to 'spill' away the stones (boulders) that make the wall. When this happens they have to every now and then build or mend it. For this reason he thinks that there is something mysterious in the nature that does not want walls.

That something always destroys the walls, making a gap in the wall through which two people can easily pass. Ironically, it is the persona that constantly reminds the other friend who believes that “Good fences make good neighbor” about the need to mend the broken wall:

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

But when the walls have broken, the one who believes in good fences making good neighbours does not seem to recognize or care about it until his other friend (the persona who thinks that something doesn't support wall mending) prompts him to work at it. This certainly sounds ironical and creates tension. The narrator says that sometimes the wall is damaged by some careless hunters, who pull down the stones of the walls in search of rabbits to please their barking dogs:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone.

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

No one has seen them made or heard them made.

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

When both of them (narrator and neighbor) walk along the wall, determined to mend or fix the mysterious gaps that have been created, they are surprised to see stones scattered on the ground. They see that some stones are shaped like bread loaves, while a few of them are round in shape. Due to their mysterious shape, the narrator and neighbor find it a bit difficult to put them in their original position. Due to the unusual shape of the stones, the narrator thinks of using some kind of magic trick “a spell” to place the stones back on the wall.

In this process of tackling the stones their fingers become too rough and make them exhausted. It is like an outdoor game (volley or tennis) for them, wherein the wall works as a net and both (the narrator and his neighbor) are opponents.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game.

One on a side. It comes to little more:

The narrator makes every possible effort to make his neighbor understand that they don't need a wall. He asks why they need to have a wall when he (the neighbour) has only pine trees and he (the narrator) has only apple. How can his apple trees trespass the wall border and eat his neighbor's pine cones. Moreover there is no chance of offending each other as they don't also have any cows at their homes that may destroy each other's farms.

While the narrator tries to make his neighbor understand that they don't need a wall, as there is something that does not love a wall, his neighbor is stone-headed savage, who continues to believe in his father's age old cliché that, "Good fences make good neighbors". But there is always in the mind of the narrator the lingering question of the purpose of a wall when there is apparently nothing to wall in or wall out. These ideas are expressed in the lines below:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

ars".

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence.

At this juncture, the narrator tries to imagine some weird idea about what might be breaking the walls. He tells his friend (neighbor) that there is something like non-human entity as 'elves' that come and break the walls. (Elves are those supernatural beings that are tiny in size and can only be seen in the mythological stories and folklore). But he immediately changes his opinion as it is not the work of elves, but rather some kind of power in nature as he reasoned earlier.

It is the work of nature that works against any type of walls and barriers. However, the narrator gets immensely irritated to see his neighbour firmly holding a stone and giving a look of an ancient stone-age man, who is getting armed to fight. The narrator sees that his neighbour is too ignorant to convince. He always wants to be stuck and follow his father's words that 'good fences make good neighbours':

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me.

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying.

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours”.

The symbolic meaning of the poem

The poem suggests a wiser perspective on the boundary wall: it tells how good fences make good neighbours and how we can keep our relationship with our neighbours peaceful and stable by establishing walls. This also reflects the importance of walls and boundaries between two countries. However, in our lives as social beings, walls also create the seemingly unsociable conditions of secluding or separating people and eventually dissociating them from communal life, and nature seemingly discourages this practice. This is the essence of the line: “Something there is that doesn't love a wall”.

But this same process of wall mending also helps respect the privacy of neighbours. As we live in a civilized society, it is always better to maintain a distance, and good fences keep that distance maintained. Thus, rules and laws are walls symbolically. Justice is the process of wall-mending. The ritual of wall maintenance highlights the dual and complementary nature of human society: The rights of the individual (property boundaries, proper boundaries) are affirmed through the affirmation of other individuals' rights. That is the import of “Good fences make good neighbours". Thus, what seems an act of anti-social self-confinement can, ironically, be interpreted as a great social tool for establishing peaceful co-existence.

In the final analysis, the narrator does not suggest to us whether the walls are good or bad. His neighbour seems to support the idea of the walls while he (the narrator) seems to object. We are hence left to think about it.

Style and Form of Mending Wall

The form of the poem Mending Wall is blank verse (without end-rhyme but in iambic pentameter). The poet makes perfect use of five stressed syllables in each line of the poem, but he maintains extensive variation in the feet so that the natural speech-like quality of the verse can continue to be sustained. Although the poem doesn't have any stanza breaks, obvious end-rhymes, or rhyming patterns, a number of end-words (for example., wall, hill, balls, wall, and well sun, thing, stone, mean, line, and again or game, them, and him twice) share an assonance. Moreover, there is no use of fancy words in the poem. All words are short and conversational, according to the conversation of the two speakers.

Summary

In the poem Mending Wall, the poet is a New England farmer, who walks along with his neighbor in the spring season to repair the stone wall that falls between their two farms. As they start mending the wall, the narrator asks his neighbour why we need a wall. The speaker says that there is something that doesn't love a wall, but his neighbor says, "Good fences make good neighbours". He says man makes many walls, but they all get damaged and destroyed either by nature or by the hunters who search for rabbits for their hungry dogs.

Hence, as soon as the spring season starts, he (narrator), with his neighbour, sets out to repair the wall that keeps their properties separated. Though the narrator comes together with his neighbour to repair the wall, he regards it useless. He believes that in fact both of them don't need a wall. He asks why should there be a wall, when his neighbour has only pine trees and he has apple. How could his apple trees trespass the border and eat his neighbour's pine cones.

There is no chance of offending one and another as they don't also have any cows at their homes. All attempts made by the speaker to make his neighbour understand that they don't need a wall fall flat, as his neighbor is stone-headed savage, who only believes in his father's age old saying that, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Figuratively, the poem analyzes the nature of human relationships. Wall-building is ancient and enduring—the building of the first walls, both literal and figurative, marked the very foundation of society. Unless you are an absolute anarchist (revolutionary) and do not mind livestock munching your crops, you probably recognize the need for literal boundaries. But these boundaries divide us while serving to protect us. We need to philosophize and dive deep to search for a definite conclusion underlying the poem's message. The poem uses the blank verse form, with very simple and conversational tone, as a suitable choice for the conversation of the two friends in the poem.

Analysis of Frost's Poem: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Dear learner, you are once again welcome to Frost's poetry analysis. As indicated earlier, Robert Frost's poems abound in all familiar things like pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds etcetera He is therefore a nature poet. But apart from this fact, he also presents solitary travelers in his poems.

Solitary travelers appear frequently in Frost's poems, and their attitudes toward their journeys and their surroundings highlight poetic and historical themes, including the figure of the wanderer and the changing social landscape of New England in the twentieth century. One of such poems is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".

Objectives:

By the end of this section you will be able to

- analyze Frost's poem—"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Analysis of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

On the surface, the poem is about a traveler who feels tempted to go into the woods which are “lovely, dark and deep” and to stay there in order to enjoy their strange beauty and charm. However, he is not able to carry out his wish because he realizes that he had promises to keep and miles to go. Read the poem below:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Returning to his house from a distant place, the speaker is apparently enchanted by the sight of somebody's woods. The woods are covered with snow, presenting beautiful scenery. It is as though he is stealing glances at what is not his.

This sight captures the attention of the speaker passerby. Even though he is on his way to his abode to attend to other compelling assignments, he would dawdle (linger around) at the sight of the snow and woods presenting a show:

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

The speaker seems to recognize some imminent danger in stooping to take in the natural scenery. He seems suspicious of the presence of the owner close by, albeit (even though) in-doors, oblivious to him. His introspection is seen through the horse he is traveling with, who appears uneasy because of the speaker's 'queer' (strange) attempt to delay around the beautiful thicket when it is deep dark. There is no farmhouse nearby visible, and the speaker knows this fact through the horse's silent speech.

Moreover, between the woods and the lake apparently frozen with the snow, there is deep darkness as the woods are immensely thick, dark and stand in all their glory through the fast approaching night. These factors present a looming sense of danger for the speaker to want to stoop there:

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

The speaker continues to narrate the horse's mind, which currently shakes his bell to trudge (walk wearily) along the road. The bells jingle playfully indicating the horse's inclination to leave the woods for good, which feels gloomy and solitary. Since the horse cannot speak his mind, the speaker, knowing what the actions mean, interprets them.

For him, the animal is awaiting the stooping to end and continue on his path home. In that gloomy silence, only the sound produced by nature through wind, snow and sound of the bells on the horse's harness (straps fitted to the horse) can be heard. But the traveler, the speaker, is miles from anywhere, buried deep in the woods:

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The horse in the above lines acts as the narrator's intuitive judgement. He is seemingly toying with his life. Perhaps he is tired and wishes to relax at the scene of the snowy woods, taking advantage of its idyllic beauty.

Maybe he is demotivated by the distressing nature of the awaiting duties of his life where he is returning. We are not specifically told. But in the last stanza, the traveler decides to go home since the calls to come home appear stronger than his involuntary decision to tarry at the woods. He admits feeling transfixed at the woods, enveloped in nature's exquisite beauty:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

The use of the word 'but', demonstrates the speaker's intense longing to stay put in his position observing the beauty at his disposal. For him, he's untended responsibilities ultimately bog him down, compelling him against his will towards his destination. The 'promises' could be varied, ranging from domestic errands to dealing with marital affairs, and the repetition in the last two lines emphasize the exigency of the engagements calling him home.

He now voices his concern about losing his way through the woods since it gets immensely dark at night-time; he decides to better get a move on. The traveler is getting worried as darkness draws nigh; he has to resume his journey. The contradiction or tension in the first line of the last stanza: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” brings out the speaker's state of indecision. He would like to stay on but he has promises to fulfill, hence, he must go home.

Truly, the woods are dark and enchanting in their own right; they are restful, seductive, lovely, dark, and deep—like deep sleep. Yet they can also be dangerous from the images of 'dark and deep'. Snow falls in downy flakes is like a blanket to lie under and be covered by. But to rest too long while snow falls could be to lose one's way, to lose the path, to freeze and die. Hence, the poem seems to express a death wish, considered and then discarded, or merely describes the temptation to sit and watch beauty while responsibilities are forgotten—to succumb to a mood for a while.

Symbolic significance of the poem

Like the romanticized notion of the solitary traveler, the speaker was also separated from the community, and the social world which allowed him to view the natural world, with a sense of wonder, fear, and admiration. The speaker represents everyman, the woods, Snowy evening, darkness, and deep also represent the brinks of death, while sleep represents death itself. “Stooping by the woods on a snowy evening” as the title presents, is a symbolic reference to the traveler's (in this case the narrator) or man's inclinations towards death in his journey through life, leaving many dreams and plans unfulfilled. In the poem, the narrator's imagination is presented in the action of the horse, and it signifies man's consciousness, the intuitive invitation to escape when the sub-conscious is leaning towards pleasure, danger, and death.

For, the last “miles to go” (journey) now seems like life; the last “sleep” now seems like death. The sense of the word “sleep” which is repeated in the last two lines is understood in terms of what the traveler naturally wants to do at this crossroad. Retiring to the 'lovely, dark and deep woods' signifies an end to his journey; hence, 'sleep' signifies death.

He must fulfil the rest of his duties in life before he dies. The traveler (narrator) decides to return to life and complete his mission or duties before giving in to death. (sleep). There are these times in everyman's life when in the midst of frustration, fear, workload, poverty, sickness and anxiety, death seems preferable to life. Sometimes we fall into a state of indecision when we have to abandon some intriguing indulgences that give us relieve from our labours and toils and return to the doldrums of labours from which we wish to escape. When such fancies and pleasures become the soul's indulgence, our professed assignments are left unfulfilled. Thus, in “Stopping By woods on a Snowy Evening” the familiar things of nature finally become highly suggestive.

Form

The poem consists of four almost identically constructed stanzas. Each line is iambic, with four stressed syllables: Within the four lines of each stanza, the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. The third line does not, but it sets up the rhymes for the next stanza.

For example, in the third stanza, queer, near, and year all rhyme, but lake rhymes with shake, mistake, and flake in the following stanza. The notable exception to this pattern comes in the final stanza, where the third line rhymes with the previous two and is repeated as the fourth line.

The poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” describes the evening walk of a rural farmer. Apparently, it's just about an ordinary stopping in the woods. But out of his evening walk beside snowy woods, the traveler discovers a truth universal in appeal. The individual immerses in the scene momentarily, torn between pending responsibilities and the temptation to stay for a while. Finally, he gives in to his pending journey and awaiting obligations. But the poem has a deeper, symbolic significance. Symbolically, it expresses the conflict which everyone feels between the demands of the practical life and a desire to escape into the land of reverie. The words “promises”, “miles”, and “sleep” have deeper meanings. “Promises” and “miles to go” imply duties and responsibilities. “Sleep” symbolizes death.

There are the promises which the speaker has made to himself and to others, or which others have made on his behalf. And there are the miles he must travel through other kinds of experience before he yields to that final and inevitable commitment—death. We are not told that the call of social responsibility proves stronger than the attraction of the woods, which are “lovely” as well as “dark and deep”.

But the basic conflict in the poem, which is resolved in the last stanza, is between an attraction toward the woods and the pull of responsibility outside of the woods, and the dichotomy of the poet's obligations both to the woods and to a world of promises is what gives the poem a universal appeal.

Section Five

Analysis of Frost's poem: “Road Not Taken”

Dear learner, we hope you are gradually assimilating Robert Frost's poetic orientation. Frost is a modern poet. He portrays the disintegration of values in modern life and the disillusionment of the modern man in symbolical and metaphysical terms as much as the poetry of great, modern poets does, because most of his poems deal with persons suffering from loneliness and frustration, regrets and disillusionment which are known as modern disease.

Again, he would always present the simple and common phenomena, but then, he would employ it symbolically to portray a philosophical truth. Therefore, his experience of the pastoral technique to comment on the human issue of modern world, his realistic treatment of nature, his employment of symbolic and metaphysical techniques and the projection of the awareness of human problems of the modern society in his poetry justly qualify him to be called modern poet. Let us see how he illustrates these ideas in "The Road Not Taken".

Objectives:

By the end of this section, you will be able to

- analyze Frost's poem: —“The Road Not Taken”

Analysis of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

The Poem The Road Not Taken deals with the dilemma of the modern mind. It portrays the confusion which prevails in modern life. The modern man does not know which way to go and it is difficult for him to make a choice. He is confused and his life does not have a clear purpose.

The speaker in the poem represents the modern man, who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made, but belatedly and wishfully sighs over the attractive alternative which he rejected: 'I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence'. Shall we look at the full poem below:

The Road Not Taken - by Robert Frost

Table summary: The opening lines of Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken, where the speaker describes two roads diverging in a yellow wood and their regret at not being able to travel both.

Table summary: A poetic sequence describing a traveler's choice between two paths in a wood. The narrator chooses the road that seemed grassy and wanted wear, though both were equally covered in leaves that morning. The text concludes with the narrator reflecting that they will tell this story with a sigh in the future, stating that taking the road less traveled by has made all the difference.

Throughout the poem, the speaker adopts the first person point of view “I” in order to underscore his personal experience with the subject matter. The speaker is a traveler who comes to a point of decision because “two roads diverged”. As a lone traveler, he must decide on one of them. So he examines the first road to a far point possibly to assess its safety and reliability:

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

The cross road symbolizes point of decision. If the road were not diverged, he would follow the single straight course. The two roads is a symbolic reference to two diverging choices, posited in front of an individual. Deciding upon one takes considerable observation and contemplation, with remorse as a by-product. In life, we decide alone. Even where others suggest ideas to us and try to influence our decision, we have the ultimate choice to make of the myriads of suggestions. Consequently, we are responsible for our actions and inactions and choices.

The roads are equally worn out. Thus, some people have trodden the ways of life before the speaker, but his choice must be given careful consideration albeit others have passed the same route. The speaker tries to see the end of the road from where he stands but it is impossible as “it bent in the undergrowth”.

It is not possible to see the exact end of the roads of life, even the decisions made in life at the time of making them. Decisions in life therefore amount to risk taking, the more reason why one needs to consider carefully. But the speaker or traveler considers the second of the diverged roads. He seems more inclined to go on that one instead of the first one.

Then took the other, as just as fair.

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear

His choice of the second is due to the fact that it was “grassy and wanted wear”. These symbolize newness and freshness, even though it is equally worn like the first one: “Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same”. The latter road appeared much less travelled upon than the former because of its grassy nature.

The evidence of one of the roads being less travelled is however not corroborated (supported) and the speaker admits that they are both worn the same way. On the overview, they visually strike as similar, with no significant distinction. This means that the travelers choice of the second road is not justifiably due to the fact that it is less travelled but solely due to the covered grass and its 'wanting' of some more 'wearing' from “wanted wear”.

It seems to the persona to be less travelled though there is evidence that it is much travelled like the other. “Wanted wear” here therefore can only mean 'attractive' or 'inviting' to the persona. The road wanted some more wearing; literally, it called him to walk on it. It is what appealed to the traveler. His personal interest is the motivating factor here for a final decision to travel on the second road.

This underlines the nature of people in general: that we will always choose the path which seems attractive and is of interest to us, even if both paths have equal potential of getting us to wherever it is we are headed.

In the third stanza, the speaker affirms what he earlier noted in stanza two: both paths were nearly identical:

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Both ways are equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves, no one had stepped through to disturb the leaves on both roads but the speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. But he also knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. This is because he knows as he moves forward he will continue to find other paths taking him further and further away from this point, where he is standing at the moment:

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

The individual seems double-minded here. Albeit, he has made a decision, he's still pondering over it. His lack of initiative and indecision causes him immense discomfort and hesitation, as a result. But the traveler is truly being honest with himself, as he makes the crucial decision of which road to take. His honesty is a reality check as well as a means of making a final decision. He notices that both choices lay equally in front of him and none of these choices has been “trodden black”. This means that none of the roads has produced any bad report yet, at least judging from the face value.

The traveler also seems to have no evidence of footsteps, which symbolize experiences of others. But the real question here deals with how the concrete visible present (yellow woods, grassy roads covered in fallen leaves) will look from a future vantage point. Despite the visible signs and evidences, one cannot tell how it will look in the end.

Sometimes in life, when we reach a crossroad, we are able to make quick decisions based on what we learned from other people's experiences. These experiences then leave marks in the choices that we have, these marks then form our bias towards or against that path. When we encounter choices in our lives where we find that the leaves are not "trodden black" by what we might have learned from the people around us, it becomes harder to make a decision between them, just like the situation of the traveler in this poem.

After making his decision, he exclaims that he will leave the first choice for another day, and then he honestly tells himself that if he lets this road go now, there is no coming back. There are many defining decisions in a person's life that shape their futures and sometimes when we select an option in these moments, they change the course of our life and there's no turning back. That is where the regret of not exploring our other options disturbs us.

Now the narrator/traveler predicts that one day far into the future, he will tell the story of this decision that he is now making. But those lines reveal that he intends not to tell the truth, and to claim he took the road that was less travelled (in reality both were equally travelled).

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

He is already imagining the regret he will feel, and decides that he will not be honest when he retells the story of his decision. He will tell people he chose the road that was “less travelled by” to come across as a person who took a chance and succeeded in life. In reality the speaker is trying to convince himself that when he does share his life experiences and distorts the truth that it will seem at that point that taking this road “made all the difference”. This really highlights the nature of our regrets.

When it comes to tough decisions in our lives, we always know that no matter what we finally choose, eventually, we will regret not being able to try the possibility that was left uncharted by us. We never can know for sure where life will take us, therefore, planning ahead of time what the end of the road looks like and building regret is really unprofitable especially when we haven't even started the journey in the first place. Life is about the paths one chooses to walk through, not about 'the road not taken'. Life is risk-taking.

Form

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas of five lines each. The rhyme scheme is A.B.A.A.B. There are four stressed syllables per line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base.

Summary

In “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. He then chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day.

Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: he will claim that he took the less-traveled road. The poem symbolizes the universal problem of making a choice of invisible barriers built up in the minds of the people which alienate them from one another mentally and emotionally though they live together or as neighbors in the society. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions.

Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the nexus (connection) of free will and fate: we are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is, thus, determined by an accretion (combination) of choice and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two. What we sigh over 'ages and ages hence' are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves—moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of a life. We must necessarily make a choice if we do not want to stand forever in the woods, and we have no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making.

But the nature of the decision is such that there is no 'right path'—just the chosen path and the other path. Our lives are hence like roads, with splitting paths representing the different choices that we must make.

Section 6

Analysis of Frosts Poem: the Wood Pile

You are welcome to the last section of our studies on Robert Frost, dear learner. Don't you ever forget that he is a romantic poet of a different type. His approach to nature is very realistic and modern in nature, though his natural world is not a world of dream. It is much more harsh, horrible and hostile than the modern urban world.

His retreat to the country side is not the romantic escape from the harsh, unpleasant realities of modern life, as pertains to the other Romantic poets. The rural world, the world of nature into which he withdraws, is not a world of dreams, or a pleasant fanciful arcadia, but harsher and more demanding than the urban world. Unlike the Romantics he has taken notice of both the bright and dark aspects of nature as we noted in his poetic philosophy in section three above. Let us now look at how he employs nature to philosophize life in "The Wood Pile".

Objectives:

By the end of this section you will be able to

- analyze Frost's poem—"The Wood Pile"

Analysis of Frost's “The Wood Pile”

In this poem, there is a man who wanders through a frozen swamp. The speaker assumes the first person point of view throughout the poem to indicate personal experience. This could likely be Frost himself. He considers going back but decides to continue. A small bird flies ahead of him, interacting with him cautiously.

Then the process of this interaction with the bird leads the speaker to a decayed woodpile, for which he forgets the bird. He wonders who made the pile and why that person left it there to rot. Read the poem below:

The Wood-Pile

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,

I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.'

No, I will go on farther—and we shall see'.

The hard snow held me, save where now and then

One foot went through. The view was all in lines

Straight up and down of tall slim trees

Too much alike to mark or name a place by

So as to say for certain I was here

Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

A small bird flew before me. He was careful

To put a tree between us when he lighted,

And say no word to tell me who he was

Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.

He thought that I was after him for a feather-

The white one in his tail; like one who takes

Everything said as personal to himself.

One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

And then there was a pile of wood for which

I forgot him and let his little fear

Carry him off the way I might have gone.

Without so much as wishing him good-night.

He went behind it to make his last stand.

It was a cord of maple, cut and split

And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year's cutting,

Or even last year's or the year's before.

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it

And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis

Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

What held it though on one side was a tree

Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,

These latter about to fall. I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labor of his ax,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

Here is another of Frost's hiking characters in arcadia. Wandering in roads and paths, and woods, the travelers are waylaid by indecision, by their sense of the gravity of the choice. In "The Wood-Pile," the wanderer's decision to go on comes easily, but we have difficulty ascertaining where exactly the journey ultimately takes him. The speaker walks down a path and becomes apprehensive and decides he will turn around. However, he decides to continue on:

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day.

I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.

No, I will go on farther—and we shall see'.

The hard snow held me, save where now and then

One foot went through....

The speaker is a peculiar character. One may question what the reason was for the walk; why would he even take a walk in the freezing winter snow? We certainly don't know why the wanderer is in the swamp, and why he decides to keep going despite his fears.

The speaker's feeling of fear and insecurity, added to the fact he is lost, makes him feel away from home. The speaker is frightened of the woods, as everything is static around him. Winter and cold are the cause of this: everything is 'frozen'; there are no signs of life. But due to the fact that 'One foot went through', it may not be a dangerous situation, but the idea of instability, of the ground not holding beneath one's feet, adds a touch of insecurity to the persona's mood.

It may only be presumed that he is probably admiring nature, an adventurer. He loves nature, yet he shows that he has a fear: when walking, he decides he will turn around; that is his fear of the unknown. He does not know what is ahead of him and is somewhat afraid. However, he is curious and looking for an adventure, so he decides to continue on. One can tell that he has a love for nature because he highlights the fine details of nature: the clustered nature of the trees, their height and number:

...The view was all in lines

Straight up and down of tall slim trees

Too much alike to mark or name a place by

So as to say for certain I was here

Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

The swamp may be interpreted as a metaphor for the speaker's mind. The further he goes into the swamp the more he becomes lost in his mind. Being an element and a symbolic figure of nature, the swamp thus, symbolically serves as the controller of the man just as much as his direction and movements is the product of his thoughts.

Thus, imperceptibly, the man obeys the silent dictates of nature. Although it is not explicitly said, there are a few things about this person that are evident from the situation. For instance, he seems to be a contemplative person, the sort of person who would take a walk without having a clear goal in mind. For a moment he wants to go back, but something urges him to go deeper, marking the conflict in his mind: “turn back from here No, I will go on further and we shall see”. He seems to be seeking something—something notable.

He is seemingly seeking something more somber and thought-provoking—something ultimately of human construction. He does not quite know where he is, but he does know that he is far away from home. The first sign of life the speaker encounters is a small bird, and he spends some time focusing on this small bird that flies by him during his walk:

A small bird flew before me. He was careful

To put a tree between us when he lighted,

And say no word to tell me who he was

Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.

He thought that I was after him for a feather—

The white one in his tail; like one who takes

Everything said as personal to himself.

One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

The speaker draws out a dramatic scene about the bird's wants and fears. There is seemingly a silent communication between the speaker and the bird, the bird seeming to be the active interlocutor. He assumes the bird is flying ahead of him to separate the two of them because it is scared. The small bird, in fear of him, lands to rest on a branch some feet away from him.

It does not sing or chirp, causing a slight unease in the speaker. But he thinks the bird is silly for being frightened. He assumes the bird thinks he wants one of its feathers.

Then he compares the bird to someone with an egocentric personality and implies that the loss of the feather (identity) is what frightens the bird most. Thus, the bird's white feather in its tail is individual to it and possibly what marks its identity. The bird symbolizes nature speaking and leading the man silently to other segments of nature for revelations about life.

This is because after discovering the wood pile, the man loses interest in the bird which then flees in the opposite direction. The speaker claims he might have continued on the same way as the bird if he had not paid attention to it in the first place:

And then there was a pile of wood for which

I forgot him and let his little fear

Carry him off the way I might have gone.

Without so much as wishing him good-night.

He went behind it to make his last stand.

The bird flies behind the wood pile, which grabs the speaker's attention once more. He describes the wood pile as it appears physically just as someone had supposedly abandoned it. He also claims that it was the only wood pile in sight. There were no signs of recent activity surrounding the pile. The speaker notes that it had clearly been there over a few years, untouched.

Then he provides physical evidence of the aging wood: It is not an ordinary woodpile; it is woodpile made of maple. This is odd because maple is not the type of wood that is normally burned. Maple is expensive and often is used for carpentry. It is stacked in neat four by four by eight piles.

He has never seen any wood pile like this wood pile. The speaker also notices that there are no recent tracks in the snow, so the pile is older than the year's cutting, and may even be from the year before last's cutting. The pile had been sitting there for so long that Clematis had grown around it, bundling it up. The speaker notices that the only thing holding up the wood pile is a young tree attached to a stake and a prop which both appear to be ready to fall:

It was a cord of maple, cut and split

And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year's cutting.

Or even last year's or the year's before.

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it

And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis

Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

What held it though on one side was a tree

Still growing, and on one a stake and prop.

These latter about to fall...

He notices that the wood pile was left untouched, and the axe used to cut the pile was still there too. He does not understand why the person who cut the pile would just leave it. So the speaker concludes that only someone who has the problem of starting things and not finishing would leave the pile there unattended after working so hard to create it. The speaker relates to the wood pile because it is far from a home where it could be useful. The wood pile becomes part of the scenery where it will slowly decay until there is nothing left of it.

...I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labor of his ax,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

The cutter obviously took pride in the pile at one point because he stacked it so beautifully, and it is a beautiful pile indeed. He is also sure that the cutter worked long and hard on cutting the pile of wood. Instead of the wood being used for its intended purpose, burning, it was left in the woods to decay and be consumed by the snow. His only explanation is the person who cut the wood likes taking on new task.

He was tired and bored with the woodpile, so he left it to pursue another task. It seems as if he wants to do something with the pile, but he does not know what. He does not want to be like the person who cut the pile and leave the wonderful pieces of hard work there. In a way, he feels useless. He did not determine who cut the pile, why they cut the pile and what to do with the pile.

The first four lines of the above extract: “I thought that only / Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks / Could so forget his handiwork” presents the cosmic puzzle of reality, which is among the poem's chief messages—the despairing tone. The recognition of the general condition of life might have dawned on the speaker/wanderer: the fate of human labour, the futility of human efforts, life decays into death, or the fruits of our labours decay into nothingness—vanity. The speaker chances to say that the anonymous labourer no longer lives, after building a treasure of wood pile; some tragedy has struck.

Thus, the speaker recognizes the woodpile as the visual, decaying reminder of an unknown tragedy, and it is slowly disintegrating. The images of death and corruption are represented by the last line of the poem: “With the slow smokeless burning of decay”.

Form

As it is customary with Frost's poems, the form of this poem: “The Wood-Pile” generally follows the 5-stress line but strains it more than usual. However, the strain is to the formal regularity and not to the sound of the poem. Some lines are blank verse, like the following:

“To warm the frozen swamp as best it could”

However, other lines present more stress and great irregularity, as in line 26 with its six stresses and spondaic (two or more successive stressed syllables) emphasis on this year's snow:

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it

Others simply mix and match feet to achieve natural speech rhythms. Such is the case in line 22, which can be scanned several different ways (here are two):

He went | behind | it to | make his | last stand.

The result of this formal variation is a poem that sounds like the speech of a good storyteller but looks and reads like poetry. There is no clear rhyming pattern, although the first and last lines conspicuously rhyme and reinforce each other: gray day and decay). Tasks and ax rhyme near the poem's conclusion, and several end-words repeat: see, here, tree and trees, him and himself.

“The Wood-Pile”, focuses on a man who adventures himself in a frozen swamp. Away from home, he fears the environment surrounding him. Until a small bird, flies ahead of him and draws his attention on a decayed woodpile.

At first, the speaker was consumed with the bird. However, he saw the wood pile and was more interested, so he went to inquire about it. Like the person that cut the wood, he also knows nothing about the bird. The speaker is like the person who cut the wood. This is the same thing that the wood cutter did. His mind goes from one topic to another, living in somewhat of a fantasy. He has an interest in uncovering mysteries of the unknown.

It is like a classic formula of fairytale and myth or in one of those ancient ballads where characters live unusual daring lives. Such journeys, in the mythologies of the world, lead to revelation, understanding, and transformation. Through his poem, Frost shows that home is an abstraction lost and gained through several stage of life, which requires harmonic relations with nature and our surroundings.

Through this he communicates the message of fear, uncertainty, decay, despair and human efforts in any arena and what it comes to. It is plausibly a euphemistic expression of the sad or tragic moments of life when death or the invisible forces of life curtails man's labours, rendering his efforts few-tul, as depicted in the 'decaying' of the abandoned wood pile by an unidentified labourer. His interaction with nature, even with the bird, the swamp, the wood pile, leads to in-depth discovery about life.

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