Wordsworth

and
Romanticism

Wordsworths Life
born in 1770
Lake District
when he was 8, his
mother died.
his father died, when
William was 13

Cockermouth, Cumbria

Wordsworths Earliest House

Home Life
father was an estate
manager
The family lived well

View of the kitchen and fine china

Williams Schooling

local
Grammar
school
poetry

Undergraduate Years
St Johns College, Cambridge
In the summer of 1790
landscape & Revolution

The French Alps

The Savoie region of the Alps, through which Wordsworth and

Jones traveLled in the summer of 1791

Dove Cottage, Wordsworths home from

1799-1809

Dorothy
Mary
Hutchinson
Home

Wordsworths
Mature Years
the Lake District
Poet Laureate
Died in 1850

Society and Influences

a reaction to the
world
the Industrial
Revolution and
Nature
Lyrical Ballads,
with Coleridge, in
1798.
a break with the
Renaissance

His Own Poetry

focus = the simple miracle of
perception and experience.
thought long and deeply.
vivid, direct images and
descriptions.
lyrical blank verse

London, 1802
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
5
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

10

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
5
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
10
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
15
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:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
20
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 the daffodils.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

Wordsworths Legacy

the start of the Romantic movement.

rural life is considered to be a haven
celebrated the immediate, the
emotional and the personal
a valuing of personal experience and
reaction
His contemporaries: Coleridge, Byron,
Keats, and Shelley