.

Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, which is in the North East of England, an area known as the “Lake District”. In 1798, he, along with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published a book of poetry called “Lyrical Ballads”. It is a major work in what is called the “Romantic” movement of poetry. It contains his most celebrated work, “Tintern Abbey” as well as Coleridge’s famous poem “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”. In the introduction to the second edition of the book, Wordswort wrote that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”.
 
Wordsworth was very close to his sister Dorothy. In the autumn of 1798, they, along with Coleridge, traveled to Germany. Unfortunately, Wordsworth was very homesick. During that winter, Wordsworth lived with his sister in the German town of Goslar and began writing an autobiographical poem eventually called “The Prelude”. He also wrote other famous poems while he was there, including “The Lucy Poems”. These were five poems about unrequited love for a girl he called Lucy, an English girl who had died young. The interesting thing is that nobody knows who exactly this girl was, whether Wordsworth knew her or whether he just made her up!
 
 
He and Dorothy moved back to England, to live in Dove Cottage in Grasmere which is in the Lake District.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and another poet called Robert Southey came to be known as the “Lake Poets”.
A lot of the poems that he wrote at this time contain themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.
 
In 1802, Wordsworth married an old friend called Mary Hutchinson. They had five children, three of them dying before they did.
He himself died of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St. Oswald’s church in Grasmere. His widow published his autobiographical poem as “The Prelude” several months after his death. Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850, it has since come to be recognized as his masterpiece.

Here is some brief information about the poetry of William Wordsworth that is on your course.

*

More detailed information can be found further down the page.

Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.
In this poem, we see Wordsworth write about nature and how much he has missed his home over the five years he has been away.
We see how close he sees people here are to nature when he writes that the homes are “green to the very door”.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge.
This poem was inspired by a coach ride into London at 5am one morning.
Wordsworth notices how the city seems to be at one with nature in the early morning as the smoke has not yet begun to rise. He sees the city as being somehow alive and at one with nature. At the end of the poem, he says that “the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still”.
 
To My Sister.
This poem is in the form of a letter to his sister telling her to forget about the normal everyday things she has to do and to come enjoy nature with him.
He says it is so beautiful that “there is a blessing in the air” and that ”this one day we’ll give to idleness”.
 
 
(The next two poems are two of the “Lucy” poems that he wrote.)
 
She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways.
This rather simple poem is about a girl who lived quietly in a remote area.
He describes her as “A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye!”
Although few people knew her, he misses her very much, saying “But she is in the grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!”
  
A Spirit Did My Slumber Steal.
This poem is again about the death of “Lucy”.
The difference between this poem and the last is that although she dies, Wordsworth sees her as still being a part of this world, saying that she is “Rolled around in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks and stones, and trees”.
 
(Scholars are still not sure who Lucy was or if she ever existed at all.)

It Is A Beauteous Evening, Calm And Free.

In this poem, Wordsworth celebrates nature as he often does in his poetry. He writes here about the beauty of the evening. He says that it is so beautiful that it seems that God is all around him and the girl he is walking with.

Skating. (Extract)

Here, Wordsworth describes skating in winter time and how much fun it was.

The Stolen Boat. (Extract)

Wordsworth here writes about finding a small boat in a cave and taking it out on the lake. He finds himself thinking about it for a long time after!

The Solitary Reaper.

In this poem, Wordsworth sees a girl walking in the fields. She is singing too. He is amazed by her and what she is doing.