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Two years later, the
Wordsworth discovered that they were at last to get the money owed to their
father. Perhaps because of this, William asked Mary Hutchinson, a friend
since childhood, to marry him. After a quick visit to Annette to straighten
everything out, William and Mary were married quietly in the country church,
and then William, Mary and Dorothy lived together quietly in their cottage.
In 1807, William published a two-volume set containing 113 poems, which was
again given a very bad review by critics, including Lord Byron. Wordsworth
tried to take it all in stride, but it was probably no coincidence that he
changed his mind about publishing some long poems he had just finished. He
also started writing prose, at least partly because Coleridge had recently
started a magazine that needed articles. But Coleridge’s growing drug
addiction and paranoia soon put the end to that literary endeavor and
friendship with Wordsworth.
Wordsworth’s family life, generally happy, was nearly shattered in 1812. In
June of that year, Catherine, his fourth child, died of convulsions at age
3; and in December, the third child, Thomas, died of pneumonia. Mary herself
came close to dying from grief, and Dorothy was little better. Wordsworth
wrote a very touching sonnet on Catherine’s death some years later, called
Surprised by Joy.
A couple of years later, he started cautiously publishing some poems again.
Though he published a few of the poems he had been afraid to before, William
did not write much over the next few years, concentrating instead on his
family. In 1839, William finished The Prelude, a poetical
autobiography of his early life, which he had been working on for years. He
sealed it away and then printed it out after his death. In 1843, Wordsworth
succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate at his age of 73. He died at Rydal Mount
in 1850, after the publication of a finally revised text of his work, and
the Prelude was published posthumously at the same year.
His Major Poems
Wordsworth was a master in describing mountains, rivers, flowers, birds,
children, and peasants—all that connect to nature. His adoration to nature
runs through all his poems both long poems such as The Prelude and
short lyrics such as To the Same Flower, The Solitary Reaper, Lines
Written in Early Spring, To a Sky-Lark, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, My
Heart Leaps Up, And his “lyrical hymn of thanks to nature”—Lines
Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. Cite I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud as an example:
“…………
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid 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:”
But this kind of gay not only gave the immediate sensational excitement, it
also can be stored up and thought long and deeply:
“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 then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with daffodils.”
In another words, Wordsworth stored up the natural impressions and
recollected over them for a long time before reproducing them into poetry.
Which he declared as: “our continued influxes of feeling are directed and
modified by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our
past feelings.” And then the result he describe is that:
“These beauteous of forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye：
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ：’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensation sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration：--feelings, too,
Of unremembered pleasure：such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.”
The way of recollection he invented, use
George Brandes’ word to describe is
“He collects a winter store of bright summer moments.”
He not only praises the nature sceneries but also the people that live in
nature—the rural peasants, children, even beggars and bastards, and gives
his deep sympathy towards them. Such as The Old Cumberland Beggar, Lucy
Gray, Michael, The Affliction of Margaret.
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