William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth is one of the greatest poets of English language. He set the tone of delicacy in English language, which he got from the beehive of this beautiful world. He was nourished by the nature’s beauty as flowers nourish a bee. He loved nature and in return gifted his love with majestic verses.
Wordsworth was borne in Lake District of England in 1770. He lost his mother when he was seven and lost his father when he was thirteen. He was sent to a grammar school at Hawkshead.
William Wordsworth was in school when he found that he had developed a love for scenic beauty. He would prefer to remain in seclusion. The natural beauty of English lakes would terrify as well as nurture him, as Wordsworth would later to testify in the line;
“I grew up fostered alike by beauty and by fear.”
Another example can be given that, he writes in one of his initial poem – Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey…. “that nature never betray the heart that loved her.” This love for nature and its antics accompanied him wherever he went. Each and every part of his life was decorated with these blossoms.
In his college days in Cambridge, he was not faring well. He knew that but he could not help himself. The finest thing he did in this era which helped him a lot to develop beautiful reminiscences for rest of his life, was to travel to France. This was the time when France was experiencing a revolution. In his youth, Wordsworth was also influenced by political philosophy of Rousseau but later, he became more conservative. There he met a woman called Annett Vallon. He married her and had a girl child in 1792. At the same time, he was fascinated by fall of Bastille because this was a sign of freedom of human kind. This time was like a gem for Wordsworth but three or four years followed after his return to England in 1792 were the darkest period in his life. He was penniless, rootless, wandering in London for nothing. This was the time when he got himself among strong emotion for the people like, abandoned mothers, beggars, children, vagrants. This dark period ended in 1795, when he met his sister Dorothy and after that, they never lived apart.
In 1797, he met S.T. Coleridge, one of the finest poets of the era. Both of them travelled through literary vistas and created wonderful poetry. English owed too much to this celebrated friendship of 18th century. Before meeting, Coleridge Wordsworth was writing long poems on social issues. These poems were showing his protest against society. After that (meeting with Coleridge), he wrote short poems on nature’s poetry. Some of them were affectionate tributes to Dorothy; some were tribute to Daffodils, birds and other elements of “Nature’s holy plan.” Another important event happened in Wordsworth’s life after Coleridge’s friendship was that, he started writing an autobiographical poem. He thought that the name of the poem would be ‘The Recluse’ in 1798. He completed this poem after 40 years of hard labour. It was published in 1850; the name of the book was ‘The Prelude’ or ‘Growth of a Poet’s Mind’. In this poem, he has graphed his mental development since childhood. It is a long descriptive poem, which tells many important aspects of Wordsworth’s life. The poem exultantly describes the ways in which the imagination emerges as the dominant faculty, exerting its control over the reason and the world of the sense alike.
His most famous work is Lyrical Ballads (1798). This book was written along with S.T. Coleridge, who influenced him a lot. This book marked the beginning of Romantic Movement in English. In this book, he used new poetic principles, a new device, Wordsworth writes in the preface of the book-“poetry should express feelings…..recollected in tranquillity”
In company of Dorothy, Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 in Germany, where, in the remote town of Goslar in Saxony he experienced the most intense isolation he had ever known. There he wrote some elegies and some part of ‘The Prelude.’ In 1802, he went to France for third time and met his daughter and companion Annette. He made peace with them, came back to England, and married Marry Hutchinson. But peace was not very easy for him although he resided in beautiful and secluded places. He was living in Dove cottage, Grasmere (where he wrote many beautiful poems) he heard the news that his brother, John, drowned in the sea. This happened in 1805. He wrote several elegies in this period. He laments in his “Elegiac Stanzas”-
“A deep distress hath humanised my soul”
Many of his youthful fancies about that he wrote earlier were being seen as illusion. The sad music was flowing around him instead of beautiful orchestra. In the middle years, when his daughter Catherine died in 1812 he wrote a sonnet in her memory-
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
In same period, Wordsworth wrote some other sonnets and elegies. He wrote a series of six poems called Lucy poems. These poems were tributes to Lucy. Nobody knows who Lucy was. These poems are very delicate. These poems suggest he had deep feelings for Lucy. These feelings are so delicate that one would be afraid to touch it. One of them is-
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years
No motion has she now, no force
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
He settled in a house in 1818 and accepted a job of stamp distributor in local post office. So the rest of his life he remained by and large happily in that new residence. Though all these years, he was continuously attacked by critics. In 1820 when his book, The River Duddon was published, the critics and readers turned their way towards Wordsworth. By mid 1830s he had been established with both critics and the reading public.
Wordsworth succeeded his friend Robert Southey as British Laureate in 1843 and held that post until his own death in 1850. He died on April 23, 1850 in Rydal Mount, Westmorland, England. After his death, his influence was felt throughout the rest of 19t century. The world will remember him as delicate and nature loving poet
Milind
No comments:
Post a Comment