The foremost literary figure of Romanticism - William Wordsworth

 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850):-

Born:- 7 April, 1770 in Cockemouth, England

Died:- 23 April, 1850 in Rydal, England

            

            William Wordsworth was English romantic poet who, with Samuel coleridge help to launch the romantic age in English literature with their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads.

 Wordsworth's long and an eventful life divides itself naturally into four periods:-

                     

 1. His childhood and youth, in The Cumberland Hills, from 1770 to 1787

2. a period of uncertainty, of storm and stress, including his University Life at Cambridge, travel abroad and his revolutionary experience from 1787 to 1797

3. a short but significant period of finding himself and his work from 1797 to 1799

4. a long period of his retirement in the Northern Lake region, where he was born and where for a full half century lived so close to nature that his influence is reflected in his poetry

              In the first period of his life very devotional in his career. it is almost A shock to one  who knows Wordsworth only by his calm and noble poetry to read that he was of a moody and violent tempered. His mother was despaired of him alone among her five children. his mother died when he was 8 year old. His father died some 6 year later and he become orphan. he was taken in charge by relatives, who sent him to school at Howkshed, here, the unroofed school of nature attracted him more than the discipline of classes and he learning more eagerly from the flowers and Hills and stars than from his books.

     

               The second period of Wordsworth's life begins with his University course at Cambridge in 1787. Wordsworth proved to be a very ordinary scholar following his own genius rather than the curriculum, and looking forward more eagerly to his vacation among the hills than to his examination. He made two trips to France in 1790 and 1791, seeing things chiefly through the rosy spectacles of The young Oxford republication.

Two things rapidly cooled Wordsworth's revolutionary enthusiasm and ended the only dramatic interest of his placid life:-

1. Excesses of the revolution, execution of Louis XVI

2. Rise of Napoleon

            The third period of his life begins when he was living with his sister Dorothy and with Coleridge at Alfoxden. All his life he was born and lived in an atmosphere of plane living and high thinking. His poetry brought him nothing in the way of money rewards and it was only by a series of happy accidents that he was enabled to continue his work. The last half of century of his life remind one strongly of Browning's long struggle for literature recognition.

              The best thing about Wordsworth must always remain inside it is a comfort to know that his life, noble, sincere, "Heroically happy", never contradicted his message. Poetry was his life, his soul was all his work and only by reading what he was written can we understand the man.

Poetry of Wordsworth:-

Two difficulties of Wordsworth's poetry:-

1. Absolute simplicity which miss the beauty, the intensity, that hide themselves under his simplest lines.

2. The second difficulty is in poet, not in readers, that he is seldom graceful, and occasionally inspired.

Characteristic of his poetry:-

1. The truthfulness of his representation

2. Abundant beauty in the common word...

         - he pointing out some beauty that was hidden from our eyes.

3. Sensitiveness about the world.

         - he compares himself with the every aspect of the world in his poetry.

4. The impression of some personal living spirit

    

 If we search for his philosophy of human life, we shall find four more doctrines, which rest upon his basal conception that the man is not apart from nature.

  1. Wordsworth explains gladness and sensitiveness to nature by doctrine that the child comes straight from the creator of nature. In his three works he gives the glimpse of the philosophy of childhood, kinship with nature and God and natural influence:-

1. Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early childhood - (1807)
2. The Retreat
3. Tintern Abbey

 2. The natural pleasures, which a man so early neglects in his work, are the chief means by which we may expect permanent and increasing joy. We can see this plain teaching and also like the fragrance of a wildflower through his works, like...

1. Tintern Abbey
2. The Rainbow
3. Ode to Doty

   

3. Wordsworth presents the truth of Humanity of common life in his work, like...

1. Michael
2. The solitary reaper
3. To a Highland Girl
4. Stepping Westward       

4. To this natural philosophy of man, Wordsworth adds a mystic element, the result of his own belief that every natural object is a reflection of living God.

               In "Intimations of Immortality" the mystic conception of man is seen more clearly. Which Emerson calls "The high watermark of poetry in nineteenth-century"  

Works of Wordsworth:-

• The best of his work appeared in the "Lyrical Ballads (1789)"  write in partnership with Coleridge
• The prelude
• The Excursion
• The recluse
• The home of Grasmere
• The Duddon sonnets (1829)
• To a skylark (1825)
• Yarrow Revisited (1831)

          

Conclusion:-

                        

             So, Wordsworth became the greatest figure of romantic age, which everyone can get in his poetry which presents the man and nature together as they are the part of nature.