WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wondered lonely as a cloud (Daffodils)

It contains several cardinal points of his poetry:

o Poetry derives from the memory of past emotions;
o Nature is seen as the expression of the ideal in the real, is God who manifests himself
throught it;
o He takes inspiration from everyday life and from his personal experience;
Comparing himself to a cloud, Wordsworth leaves himself from the ground including a sense of
spatial disorientation and a sort of lightness. The position of the clouds allows an inversion of
prospective: the daffodils become a cluster of stars in an inverted cosmos where the ground has
become the infinity of space.

The Lyrical Ballads

The first edition of the Lyrical Ballads was published jointly and anonymously by
Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798. Most of poems were by Worsworth but Coleridge
contibuted with severals (4) including his famous The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The second edition came out in 1800 including the famous Preface written by Wordsworth;

The third edition was published in 1802;

In his Biographia Literaria Cloeridge described the nature of their collaboration, saying that
they had been discussing two cardinal points of poetry:
-the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithfull adherence to the truth of
Nature;
- the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifyinfg colours of imagination;
In particular he explains the different roles they had:
-Wordsworths was to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday life;
-Coleridged was to give a supernatural vision in order to provoke a willing suspension of
disbelief.

The Preface is the manifesto of Romantic poetry written by Wordsworth. According to him,
poetry must concern the everyday life and must be a recollection of emotions and feelings in
tranquillity. The best subject for poetry are the humble and rustic people as they are the
most in contact with nature. The poet has a greater sensibility than ordinary men and thanks
to the the power of imagination he/she can communicate his feelings and help people to get
in touch with their interior world.