Name/ Wed Al-Qurashi

College Number/42907763

Course/ Romantic & Victorian Poetry

Group/ 3

Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" Analysis

The publication of a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, began the Romantic period in England. Romanticism is defined as a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. It was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. Romanticism turned away from the eighteenth-century emphasis on reason and artifice. Instead, the Romantics embraced imagination and naturalness. Most Romantics believed in individual liberty and sympathized with those who rebelled against tyranny. The Romantics thought of nature as transformative; they were fascinated by the ways nature and the human mind mirrored the others creative properties. The era was dominated by six poets: Three (William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge) were born before the period began and lived through most or all of it, while three others (the second generation of Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and George Gordon, Lord Byron) began their short careers in the second decade of the new century but died before 1825.

William Wordsworth born April 1770, was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's father, although rarely present, did teach him poetry, including that of Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser, in addition to allowing his son to rely on his own father's library. Along with spending time reading in Cockermouth, Wordsworth would also stay at his mother's parents house in Penrith, Cumberland. At Penrith, Wordsworth was exposed to the moors and was influenced by his experience with the landscape and was further turned toward nature by the harsh treatment he received at the hands of his relatives. In particular, Wordsworth could not get along with his grandparents and his uncle, and his hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Robert Southey came to be known as the "Lake Poets". Many of his poems revolve around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.
1

Name/ Wed Al-Qurashi

College Number/42907763

Course/ Romantic & Victorian Poetry

Group/ 3

The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years, is one of his most famous poems. The year 1793 saw Wordsworth's first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. That year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. One of Wordsworth's most famous poems, "Tintern Abbey", was published in the work, along with Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility". William Wordsworth died by re-aggravating a case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St. Oswald's church in Grasmere. His widow Mary published his lengthy autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" 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.

William Wordsworth wrote "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" while in Germany in 1798. Longman published it in London in 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This poem is one of five Wordsworth poems centering on a woman named Lucy, who died young.Whether she was a real person whom Wordsworth encountered while living in the village of Grasmere in Cumbria County, England, is unknown. Other Lucy poems include "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower," "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known" and "I Travelled among Unknown Men." William Wordsworth's She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways is a three-stanza poem with characteristics of an elegy (in that the poem laments a person's death) and a ballad (in that the poem tells a bit of a story). The setting of the poem is set in northern England in Cumbria County's Lake District, near the village of Grasmere. The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef. It is a three-stanza poem with characteristics of an elegy and a ballad. The diction of the poem is simple and the words used are easy.
2

Name/ Wed Al-Qurashi

College Number/42907763

Course/ Romantic & Victorian Poetry

Group/ 3

The first two stanzas focus on Lucy while she is still alive, and the last stanza tells the reader of Lucy's death and the poet's response to it. In these short stanzas, the poet tells of his admiration and singular devotion to Lucy and his utter despair over her death. In the first stanza, Lucy lived in seclusion near the springs of the river Dove. She remained unmarried, unpraised, and unloved except by a few. One wonders who those few were. Lines like, "none to praise," "very few to love," and the word "untrodden" tell the reader that Lucy was a nobody to everyone except the poet. The 'untrodden ways' not only refer to her life, but also to the people among whom she mixed with because when we refer to a group of people, we commonly make use of the word 'among'. This tells us that the people with whom Lucy lived or mixed with, possibly did not have a very good image and maybe that was the reason why she wasn't loved by anyone.

In the second stanza, Wordsworth's aim is to show her innocence and beauty again. He uses two simple metaphors to emphasize these qualities. "A violet by a mossy stone" and "Fair as a star, when only one is shining in the sky." Lucy is a "violet growing " by a mossy stone." She is all by herself and "half hidden" from view. A simile now intrudes. She is - Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. Again her loneliness is emphasized. Not only is she a single flower, but also she is not like the sun - the most dominant inhabitant of the daytime sky - but a lone star passively reflecting sunlight. Some thinks that Wordsworth is referring to the star Venus who comes out all alone after sunset and is hence, the first star. Venus is also the Goddess of love, and in contrast to the violet, very public for all the world to see. In the third stanza, Wordsworth tells the reader of Lucy's death. He doesn't just say she died. He says, "She ceased to be," which creates greater impact with the typical expectancy of an infinitive. Again, the diction of anonymity is shown in that she lived "unknown" and "few could know." However, in the last two lines, her significance to Wordsworth is made very clear with "and oh, the difference to me!" Wordsworth clearly experiences a great sense of loss at her death. This last line also emphasizes her "only one" status as the only star in the sky. The theme of this poem is that the noble and virtuous sometimes receive little or no attention during their journey through life. They are blazing stars who soar through the heavens unnoticed or seldom seen, then burn out and die. The poem can stand as a lament on behalf of all people who go through life unnoticed and unappreciated.
3