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William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland on the 7th of April 1770. He was the second child in a family of four boys & a girl. Dorothy, his sister was born a year & nine months later. Along with his wife she would become one of his most beloved companions. He lost both of his parents quite early in life, being only eight when his mother died & thirteen when his father passed away. After his mother's death he attended the grammar school at Hawkshead where he lodged with Anne Tyson. In 1787 he went up to St John's College, Cambridge. However, he disliked academia & in the year 1790 went on a walking tour of France, the Alps & Italy. In 1791 he returned to France to spend a year there. He became passionately interested in the ideals of the French revolution & the republic. When England declared war against France he was originally quite shocked & perturbed although he eventually became disillusioned with the French revolution & its ideology. He is probably most famous for the Lyrical Ballads (1798) which along with his fellow contributor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is often cited as heralding the start of the Romantic movement. He abandoned the radical idealism & politics of his youth & was later mocked by the likes of Shelley & Byron as being simple & dull. Even Keats distrusted what he called Wordsworth's 'egotistical sublime'. However, Wordsworth has always been enormously popular & was championed by writers such as Matthew Arnold & John Stuart Mill who held him in high esteem & with great veneration. In 1843 he succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate.

Composed upon Westminster bridge, September 3, 1802

Sonnets III:

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

According to Wordsworth in his note to Isabella Fenwick this series of seven sonnets was 'written on the roof of a coach, on my way to France'. He also remarked in the same note that he could repeat the sonnets of Milton by heart. He had loved them ever since Dorothy had read them to him many years before. He was particularly impressed with the 'style of harmony & the gravity, & republican austerity of these compositions.' This third sonnet in his series has an ABBA ABBA CDDC CD rhyme scheme with the volta fairly conventionally placed at the eighth line. This poem is notable, if for nothing else, for giving us an insight into Wordsworth's views on the 'sonnet's scanty plot of ground'.

This next sonnet taken from the Miscellaneous Sonnets in 'Poems of the Imagination' is beautifully typical of the uncluttered Romantic style that will be forever identified with Wordsworth. Strongly visual & boldly seeming to rhyme with the broad Cumbrian accent of its author, it is almost like the prelude to a 'Boy's Own' adventure. The narrator pondering on the magnificence & mystery of a great sailing ship & its promise of voyages to the unknown & adventure on the high seas.

With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,

With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,
Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;
Some lying fast at anchor in the road,
Some veering up and down, one knew not why.
A goodly Vessel did I then espy
Come like a Giant from a haven broad;
And lustily along the Bay she strode,
Her tackling rich, and of apparel high.
This Ship was nought to me, nor I to her,
Yet I pursued her with a Lover's look;
This Ship to all the rest did I prefer:
When will she turn, and whither? She will brook
No tarrying; where she comes the winds must stir:
On went She, and due north her journey took.

To the Planet Venus

Upon its approximation (as an Evening Star) to the Earth, Jan. 1838.

WHAT strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,
Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer
Thou com'st to man's abode the spot grew dearer
Night after night? True is it Nature hides
Her treasures less and less.--Man now presides
In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;
Science advances with gigantic strides;
But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?
Aught dost thou see, bright Star! of pure and wise
More than in humbler times graced human story;
That makes our hearts more apt to sympathise
With heaven, our souls more fit for future glory,
When earth shall vanish from our closing eyes,
Ere we lie down in our last dormitory?

~1838.

It is interesting to note that 1838 was a year that started off less than auspicious when in January a fire destroyed Lloyd's Coffee House & the Royal Exchange in London. In the same year the 'People's Charter' is drawn up demanding universal suffrage by the Chartists. The Chartists were descended in part from organisations like Thomas Attwood's 'Birmingham Political Movement' & represented the first working class labour movement in the world.

In the very same year that the inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin & the scientist Ernst Mach are born the sonnet 'To The Planet Venus' is an interesting image, not only referring to the astronomical body itself, but as a metaphor for human aspiration. A veritable symbol of science & of 'gigantic strides'. Wordsworth doesn't disappoint us with the caveat that although 'Man now presides in power' he shouldn't become too hubristic. This happens exactly where we expect the volta & the poem has an interesting & slightly unusual ABBA CDCD EFEF EF rhyme scheme which is masterfully done.

Valedictory Sonnet

Closing the Volume of Sonnets published in 1838.

SERVING no haughty Muse, my hands have here
Disposed some cultured Flowerets (drawn from spots
Where they bloomed singly, or in scattered knots),
Each kind in several beds of one parterre;
Both to allure the casual Loiterer,
And that, so placed, my Nurslings may requite
Studious regard with opportune delight,
Nor be unthanked, unless I fondly err.
But metaphor dismissed, and thanks apart,
Reader, farewell! My last words let them be--
If in this book Fancy and Truth agree;
If simple Nature trained by careful Art
Through It have won a passage to thy heart;
Grant me thy love, I crave no other fee!

~1838.

His farewell sonnet however, seems to labour a little under its rhyme scheme of ABBA CDDC EFFE EF. I also feel that he was possibly having a little fun with his audience considering his reference to 'flowerets', a possible nod to the famous 1802 poem 'The Inward Eye'. This is more popularly known now as 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'.

One of the many 'Wordsworthian' effects, if there can ever possibly be such an adjective, that never fails to impress me was his fantastic use of sound. Even if you believe this last sonnet is a little clumsy in its delivery compared to the others in the series, it just does seem to sound right. It is almost as if he has a monopoly on forms of aural plasticity that defy conventions of rhyme & metre. Even when he writes a jovial, slightly sentimental valedictory poem like this one, it does not sound overly or indeed overtly clichéd.