The Preface to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth discusses multiple Romantic-era poetry characteristics. Wordsworth wanted poetry to “bring his language near to the language of men,” describing situations without overly contrived language, using elements of prose, in order to demonstrate the commonalities of life. Wordsworth also described this style of poetry to be less centered on strict meter and rhyme than other works, but still maintaining a poetic quality.

            Samuel Coleridge, in This Lime Tree Bower My Prison, builds off and uses concepts mentioned in Preface to Lyrical Ballads. The poem’s form, blank verse, uses extensive line length and long stanzas, appearing more like paragraphs than traditional form. The form reads more like prose than poetry, but does use descriptive language, enjambment, and a non-ridged cadence used often in poetic writing. Coleridge, although using descriptive language like, “Ah! slowly sink / Behind the Western ridge, thou glorious Sun,” and, “Pale beneath the blaze / Hung the transparent foliage,” he does not use overly complex language. The poem is clear yet imaginative in its descriptions of nature, without using language unknown to the working class of the time.

            This Lime Tree Bower My Prison also touches on ideas of nature as mentioned in Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In line 42, nature is described as spiritual or close to God: “As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes / Spirits perceive his presence.” This connects to Romanticism notions that nature is central to humanity, something beautiful and sacred, and necessary to life. Wordsworth said as follows, “…the conditions of the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature,” and, “Humble and rustic life…in that condition of life our elementary feelings exist coexist in in a state of greater simplicity.” Although Coleridge discusses his long to be in nature with his friends, to be outside of the bower, the poem does discuss the inherent beauty of being outdoors, and the comforting qualities of it. This Lime Tree Bower My Prison also brings up the idea that nature is a connecting force, between the author and his friends, and that man and nature are spiritually and emotionally connected, which calls back to Wordsworth’s concept of the “conditions” of men being unified with nature.

                Coleridge’s piece also mentions the call to rural life that Wordsworth appreciates in Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In This Lime Tree Bower My Prison, Coleridge writes about his friend, “My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined / And hunger’d after Nature, many a year, / In the great City pent, winning thy way / With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain,” describing his longing for the embrace of nature and the bleak effects the city has had on him. Wordsworth wrote of rural life being superior to city life due to the heightened interaction with nature it allows for, and how poetry benefits from the contemplation nature can provide. Coleridge’s writing is in line with Wordsworth’s philosophy on how man and nature should and can interact.

                Samuel Coleridge, in This Lime Tree Bower My Prison, follows the ideas set forth in Preface to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth. Coleridge follows a similar format and style to Wordsworth, with long lines and stanzas, simplistic language, and non-standard meter. Coleridge particularly focuses on the connection between man and nature, and the benefits of rural living, which directly aligns with Wordsworth’s views. Coleridge’s poetry connects to greater Romantic era themes while still maintaining his own voice and sharing his own experiences.

Over the past two weeks, we have read works by both Wordsworth and Coleridge. All of the poems that we have read by these two poets share many of the same ideals that are set forth in “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”. In this blog post we will be examining the similar ideals within “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” and Coleridge’s “This Lime-tree Bower me Prison”.

Coleridge’s “This Lime-tree Bower me Prison”uses powerful language in reference to nature to evoke positive emotion into the readers. This powerful language comes, in part, from the poet’s ability to celebrate ordinary life more than the average man; a trait that Wordsworth believes is a distinguishing trait that poets must possess. These ideas shine through in “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”.

“This Lime-tree Bower me Prison” consists of observations that took place in a garden due to an injury that prevents the poet from going out on a walk with his friends. The poet talks about the nature around him with a fiery passion that excites the readers and their imaginations. Coleridge explains the world as he sees it. He does not go above and beyond making the details seems beautiful. Instead he describes the little beauties that catch his eyes as he sees them. Such as the way he tells the sun to “slowly sink / Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!” (Coleridge). This simple way of describing nature falls into par with Wordsworth’s primary objective in the poems that he collected for his lyrical ballads as discussed in his work “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”.

Wordsworth also believed in creating poems with language that was in line with the way the common man spoke. Coleridge seems to use a mix of common mans and more proper English in his poem. “This Lime-tree Bower me Prison” seems to be a mix of poetic type language due to the abbreviations used in words such as “dimm’d” and “o’erwooded” to help the physical form of the poem. However, he also uses common man’s language to describe the vast majority of the beautiful, natural world around him.  Although there are many similarities among Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” and Coleridge’s “This Lime-tree Bower me Prison”, each writer’s unique style shines through, giving each work and their accompanying ideals a unique fingerprint. Both works focus on the beauty of nature and how it interacts with the human world. Both men capture the beauty that accompanies the age of romanticism beautifully.

Wordsworth Preface to Lyrical Ballads urges poets and the genre of poetry to take a more holistic approach to writing a poem. What I mean by this, is that poetry should not have to follow austere and arbitrary rules, when in reality the objective and enjoyment that comes from poetry is the emotion and passion of the subject. Therefore, Wordsworth practices/develops poems that are simplified to the common language, so all demographics of people can read and appreciate the emotion and message of his poetry.

This idea of poetry being based more on the subject (i.e. message) and emotion through common language, rather than the elitism the poetry has been subjected before Wordsworth’s time, inspires other poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the Coleridge poem titled “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison”, the message is that their is an appreciation for nature even in the smallest most common things like the leaves on a lime-tree. Coleridge takes ideas of Wordsworth and implements it into his poem. For instance when the poem states:

This expert of the poem displays the most crucial and basic aspects of Wordsworth’s ideas in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads: the poem is simple in language (i.e. for the common man), exuding emotion and passion for the subject at hand (the beauty of the leaf on the lime tree), and it does not follow some austere traditional poetic form that can discourage understanding and a desire to read the poem.

After reading both William Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison” I have come to the conclusion that Coleridge’s poem does reflect the ideals Wordsworth set forth in his essay. This can be deciphered through the fact that the aspects of poetry Wordsworth mentioned in his piece can be found throughout Coleridge’s poem.

Wordsworth states in his essay that “the principal object… in these Poems was to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men: and at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way.” All of which are characteristics are found in “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison.” Coleridge pulls this poem from a real and common situation that happens to nearly everyone, the feeling of being left out. More specifically, the feeling of being angry about being left out. This disdain his narrator feels about being the one left behind can be seen in his opening lines that read, “well, they are gone, and here I must remain,/ this lime-tree bower my prison!” Relating the situation his speaker is in as a prison is also a common feeling that people can experience. They may not actually be in a cell, but for some people the four walls of their classroom, or in this case the branches of a Lime-tree can make them feel as though they are just as trapped as an inmate. Coleridge also uses language that is well planned out, but is very much common to depict his story. There are no complex SAT words that the common person would have to think twice about while reading. Instead, he uses words like “fling,” “ye,” and “gentle-hearted” for the speaker to use to tell his tale.To, as Wordsworth would put it, throw the simple situation over “a certain colouring of imagination,” Coleridge takes his readers to an eden-like place in nature. He depicts the scenery whimsically by describing it as “richly ting’d, and a deep radiance lay/ full on the ancient ivy, which usurps/ those fronting elms.” This provides almost an enchanting lens for readers to look through while reading about a man who is just simply sitting by a lime-tree.  

Due to the techniques of basing the poem on a common situation, using common language, and adding a flair of imagination finding their ways into both William Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison” I am led to one conclusion. Coleridge’s poem does reflect the ideals Wordsworth set forth in his essay.  

There are a few elements essential to my analysis; elements which occur in repetition in Preface: nature is likened to the universe and that metrical composition is not a thing important intrinsically, and as such, it imparts on the reader a sense of enjoyment and a purpose suiting something beyond that which prose can offer. In describing it so simply, however, I do injustice to Wordsworth’s vast description of these implicit poetic maxims. His argument is never so simple as those two maxims I’ve simplified from his writings, his writings thus: “for all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Anthology p.188); “a good poem can in no respect differ from that of good prose;” “there [is no] difference between the language of prose and metrical composition…;” a poet is a person with “more lively sensibility” and “enthusiasm” for “a greater knowledge of human nature” and concerns with the “goings-on of the Universe” (Anthology p.190); that the language of the poet falls short of what “men in real life” convey in language; the poet is “slavish and mechanical” in following poetic devices in strict academic senses (Anthology p.191); and, lastly, that “meter is regular and uniform, and not like that which is produced by what is usually called poetic diction” (Anthology 191). These selections of the text convey a maxim of metrical inclusion: that it is against the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Anthology p.193) but must be included anyhow because it serves an “end of Poetry” such that it “is injudicious” to be excluded, being “the small part of the pleasure given by Poetry” so to differ from prose. In “Lucy Gray,” he plays with meter and meaning and rhyme scheme alongside his ideas of “powerful feelings” and embeds the maxims (that of the importance of the universe in the “overflow” and the combination with the necessary evil of meter) inside a narrative poem that concerns itself with  the “common life” (Anthology p.187).

It’s important to note that the quatrains are identical in syllabic structure. Each stanza, line by line, is, in syllables, 8, 6, 8, 6. Along with this, the rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, etc; the only dissent from this is the last stanza, which has “wind” rhyming with “behind,” which I cannot correctly assess as something that doesn’t rhyme, for I don’t know how they may have been spoken in 1800. As far as “wind” and “behind” not rhyming, however, it suits my analytical purposes to be as so.

In being a poem that reflects upon a real occurrence, we see actual “common life” being broached; by adding such a strict metrical rhythm to this “common life,” we see his ideas of the “end of Poetry” inherent in meter being exemplified. The remainder of the poem works on internal figuration to draw the attention of the “goings-on of the Universe” discovered by the poet, who, through “overflow of powerful feelings,” can depict “an account of a drowned girl” (Anthology p.195) with the “enthusiasm” and the “greater knowledge of human nature.”

We are introduced to Lucy Gray as a “solitary child” that the speaker attempted to see by crossing “the Wild;” that she is “The sweetest Thing that ever grew/Beside a human door.” It draws attention to her being grown, as if more than human and a part of that wild the speaker crosses; and that she is associated with nature in this way and so sweet, we have our first intimation that nature is beyond a human “slavishness and mechanical” design that the meter imposes upon the contents. Furthering this separation from humanity, portraying the girl as an embodiment of nature’s divinity, the girl is unseen whereas “You yet may spy the Fawn” or the “Hare upon the Green,” animals of a “sweet” connotation and sweeter being upon a “Green,” a color symbolically linked to an image of nature and working as a double entendre: that it is also a field or knoll or knob or whichever.

In the fourth quatrain, however, the tone begins its first intimation at death and an unmovable force of nature, opposing the levity of the “Hare” and the “Fawn” in the “Green.” Instead of these pleasant images, we’re given a “Stormy night,” showing us that the girl will be at the whim of this nature. Without straying from this new element, that of time presented in “Stormy Night,” we’re introduced to God amongst the mix: “The Minster-clock has just struck two/And yonder is the Moon!” With this stanza, we get a sense of the “Universe” as a natural element—the “Moon”—in contrast to a doctrine-focused sense of time in the “Minster-clock.” This makes us aware that, going forward, Man’s conception of time is now being played with against the nature that truly dictates life.

So, then, within the elements of the following two stanzas (6 and 7), nature is being regarded in narration as something wanton. The snow that the dead girl’s tracks will be found in are regarded as “Not blither” and she carries wood in her lantern, this wood more appropriately recognized as dead tree mutilated to suit the needs of a “wonton” girl who is to defy the coming storm of the night. And in rhyming by variations of iambic alongside this, and by having a very young girl walk out in the snow, it seems to mock nature. Thus, nature responds by sending “The storm…before its time.”

When the storm seemed to be something past what the Minster-clock could predict, the parents were fine to send the girl. When the storm proved incomparable to the church, they became “wretched parents” “shouting far and wide;” they moved ‘homeward” and “cry’d” that they should meet this girl in heaven then. Ironically, the parents, upon this lament, see in the same snow this girl wantonly strolled her footsteps remaining, a reminder that, once again, nature is more than Man (and this is supported by the proximity of the lines: the lament and the spying of the tracks occur within three lines).

To wrap this up, then, as I’ve overstayed my place in this blog, I will jump stanzas 8-15 (she is rumored as still happily alive amongst the whim of the Wild). In returning, now, to “behind” and “wind,” the two instances I noted as dissenting from the rhyme scheme, the context of the two lines makes a summarized comment on the entirety of the story. “O’er rough and smooth she trips along/And never looks behind;/And sings a solitary song/That whistles in the wind,” the full stanza, intimates again at the wonton strolling of Lucy, but now it’s done in death amongst the forces that Wordsworth considers divine (as is the Romantic notion); further, the odd choice in rhyme, which I postulate isn’t rhyme but an intentional play on the “-ind” in “behind” and “wind”to look like a kind of rhyme, draws attention to looking back at life as it was, outside of nature, and how it is incomparable to the song she “whistles in the wind.” Nature, then, is not wonton, as the rhyme scheme has thus far suggested, but that he tracks in the snow, which once were, are nothing but memories of such wrong perceptions; it’s in nature, and not in her parents perception of the afterlife, that Lucy finds a heaven.

For this blog post, I’m choosing to compare two works by William Wordsworth. The first, of course, being Preface from Lyrical Ballads and the second is Strange fits of passion I have known. I chose to compare two Wordsworth works because I find it interesting to look at different works and compare them to one another.

The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is a longer work by Wordsworth, not necessarily written in the form of a poem. The work reminds me more of an essay, and Wordsworth published this in the same publication as some of his own poems, as well as some by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the Preface, Wordsworth outlines his beliefs of what poetry is and what it should be. Many of his guidelines became, in a way, standard for what was to be expected of a poet during this time. Wordsworth outlines his and Coleridge’s plan to influence the creation of another “genre” of poetry. As we now know, they were able to achieve this and now we have an entire era of “romantic” works by various writers which we refer to, as you may guess, the Romantic Era. 

Another goal outlined in the Preface was Wordsworth’s belief that poetry should use the “selection of the real language of men,” (p. 186) meaning to use the language which most readers would easily understand. Words worth compared this to other writers pre-Romantic Era, who used more complex language that had started to become outdated for the age. Even now, the language used by Wordsworth and Coleridge seems a bit outdated to us. However aged, the language within the poems is still mostly understandable and used in our common conversations today.

In Wordsworth’s Strange fits of passion I have known, he writes of a meeting with his Lover, in which he discovers her tragic death. When it comes to the language, we see much of what we still use today, with the exception of lea (meadow; translated in book), boon (helpful), nigh (near). As compared to other writers of this period, with all the “how art thou” and other dated words and phrases, Wordsworth’s poetry tended to be more simplistic and easy to understand.

The final big point made in Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads was how poetry should be written about the “passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (p. 187). By this, Wordsworth and Coleridge (who had extremely similar writing styles) were intending to have readers find connections between human experiences and the natural world. This can be found in many of the works by both of the men.

Comparing again the standards of poetry outlined in Preface and Wordsworth’s Strange fits.., we see many ties to nature. One example is the second stanza, where Wordsworth comparing himself to a bent “rose in June” and travelling “Beneath the evening moon.” Wordsworth uses a few of his standards: using the language of the common man and tying together the actions of the common man and descriptive images of nature and beauty.

Wordsworth and Coleridge laid a path for a new genre of poetry, writing in a way that may be understood even by readers today. Wordsworth makes it obvious that he has certain standards for what he believes should be expected from poetry and poets during the Romantic Period.

The poem I will be talking about is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge. In this poem it has a stanza that reads “the Bridgeroom’s doors are opened wide,/ And I guess I am next of kin;/ The guests are met the feast is set:/may’st hear the merry din” This part of the poem relates to the ideals set forth in “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” when they say “The principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men” I believe that this stanza represents incidents and situations that can be seen in common life, having dinner and being around family is an example of common life, this supports the idea seen in  “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”. In the “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” it mentions   “I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the triviality and meanness, both of thought and language” this is supporting the idea of meanness and triviality in the stanza that reads “the sun came up upon the left,/ Out of the sea came he!/ and he shone bright and on the right/ went down into the sea. This stanza proves that their can be hostility and coldness within poems, which is brought up in the “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”. In the “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” it mentions “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.” this can be supported in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge” when it states “Higher and higher every day,/ Till over the mast at noon-/ The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,/ for he heard the loud bassoon” this stanza supports the recent quote because it demonstrates an overflow of powerful feelings when it mentions “The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,/ for he heard the loud bassoon”. In this blog post, I used examples from “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge to compare how each of these works complements each other. 

Savannah Tristan

“Nutting” by William Wordsworth seems to reflect all his observations of successful poetry put forth in the “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”. For example, Wordsworth points out in the Preface that subjects in poems are something that should be significant and worth discussing on a moral and spiritual level as to keep the reader engaged. Nutting doesn’t seem all that impressive on a surface level but upon further reflection it is an awakening of this child whose job it is to harvest nuts for food. At first, he is forcing his way through this grove until he notices, “A virgin scene!”, and takes note of the beauty of nature and by the end of the poem he knows, “there is a Spirit in the woods”(pg.197). This follows the ideas set forth in Lyrical Ballads as Wordsworth believed that to make a work timeless you had to conceive a piece whose subject matter would “be worth attaining” through it’s “multiplicity and quality of its moral relations”(pg.194).

Nutting is a great example of a poem from the Romantic time period as many poems discussed topics concerning nature or would draw metaphors based around nature. In this case Nutting is about nature, which mankind has always had a very intimate relationship with. According to Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads man had always “delighted to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them”, as man finds his “spirit of life” that is in him, also in the universe but it takes a particularly “comprehensive soul” to communicate this effectively(pg.190). Wordsworth notices the smallest details in Nutting and relays them to the reader in a way that leaves the reader in awe. He connects himself to nature at one point when he declares, “The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air”(pg.197). He also likens a banquet to the numerous trees surrounding him as well as a flock of sheep to the mosses on rocks. By doing this Wordsworth has made his poem engaging by presenting this seemingly ordinary interaction in a unusually exciting way, which he points out is what makes strong poetry.

It is admirable the manner in which Wordsworth has written, Nutting, it is abundantly clear that the work means a lot to the author and the readers because as he points out in Lyrical Ballads, “all good poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and the author has “thought long and deeply”(pg.188). In Nutting the reader gets the sense that this boy has fallen in love with nature as he takes in every detail of his surroundings. From the “water-breaks that do murmur on forever” to “the violets of the five seasons that reappear and fade, unseen by any human eye” there is a lot of descriptive language that makes apparent the type of person William Wordsworth is (pg.197).

William Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballad” includes the does and don’t of poetry. Within these suggestions, Wordsworth pays particular attention to the concept of nature, relatable content to the common man, and the structure of the poem itself. His own work,  “Lucy Gray”, demonstrates an application of his own rules to a piece of poetry. 

Wordsworth, along with his Romantic era contemporaries, displayed an admiration and devotion to nature that was often encompassed into their writing. “Lucy Gray,” tells the story of a little girl who is lost while traveling in between her home and town. Wordsworth included a constant description of the natural setting while narrating the story of Lucy with such lines as, “You yet may spy the Fawn at play/ The Har upon the Green…” (10-11, 195). Nature is mentioned in nearly every stanza and is used in tandem to the events unraveling in the story, especially as Lucy’s parents search for her. The poem describes the hills they climbed while looking for her and the snowprints that she left behind. The second to the last stanza hints that Lucy has either become a nature spirit or a ghost. Either interpretation displays the emphasis of nature being a place that transcends human life. The fact that Lucy is lost on the way from her country home to town should be noted. Woodsworth’s romantic ideals would have placed an urban setting as the least desirable place to go. Lucy’s disappearance can be interpreted as Woodsworth commenting on the loss of innocence and purity as humanity shifts from nature to industry. 

According to “Preface to Lyrical Ballad”, Wordsworth felt a strong desire to write in a way that could be understood by anyone, without the fanciful and ever changing jargon used by an educated, upper-class. “Lucy Gray” is a easy to follow, relatable story for the common man. The reader would’ve understood the dangers of venturing into nature, and the emotions felt by the parents when looking for Lucy. Perhaps a similar event could have happened in the reader’s own life. 

Keeping his audience in mind, Wordsworth used figurative language very briefly in “Lucy Gray”. His wording is very simple and is easily read through the structure of the poem. Although Wordsworth spoke unfavorably of meter, his use of the quatrain and his rhyming scheme help the flow of the poem. This ballad-like structure would allow the reader to easily memorize the poem and recite it as a warning to children walking to town.