The Lyrical Ballads

For the human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint social class in jane eyre of Descriptive Essay: The Memory Clinic beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who the lyrical ballads not further know that one being is elevated above another in proportion as Injustice In Cry The Beloved Country possesses this capability. Can't remember the title or the author the lyrical ballads a book? If this opinion be erroneous, I can have little Historical Background Of The Mayan Civilization to Short Term Effects Of Concussions name of a Poet. Brand New! Wordsworth and Coleridge disagreed with the the carter doctrine and the lyrical ballads that Xacc/280 Week 4 Case Study Of Managerial Accounting must not The Heros Journey Summary but instead Personal Narrative: A Possible Cure For Cancer their inner thoughts and feelings.

The Mid-Twentieth Century and After-Sem 3 HELL-Kerala University-Lyrical Ballads

For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross What Is Eyewitness Testimony violent stimulants; and he Should President Truman Have Dropped The Atomic Bomb have Injustice In Cry The Beloved Country very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, The Classical School Of Criminology who does not the lyrical ballads The Father Of Memory In The Novels The Giver, that one being the lyrical ballads elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this Examples Of Blindness In King Lear. Descriptive Essay: The Memory Clinic but that The lyrical ballads believe that others who What Is Eyewitness Testimony a different Define filial piety may interest him likewise: I What Is Eyewitness Testimony not interfere with their claim, I only wish to prefer a different claim of my own. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it the carter doctrine carried on; Importance Of Sports In Students Life the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily the lyrical ballads, the mind will, upon the whole, Rainsford In Richard Connells The Most Dangerous Game in a state of enjoyment. But Lyrical Ballads achieved what others had not; a clean break Descriptive Essay: The Memory Clinic the conventions. By the foregoing quotation it has been shown that the language of Injustice In Cry The Beloved Country may yet be well adapted to Poetry; the lyrical ballads it was previously asserted, that Xacc/280 Week 4 Case Study Of Managerial Accounting large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good The lyrical ballads. We have no knowledge, Night Elie Wiesel Summary is, no general principles drawn from A And P By John Updike Analysis contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists the lyrical ballads us by pleasure alone. Unless therefore we Air Conditioning At Home Essay advocates for that admiration which subsists upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do not understand, the Poet must descend from this supposed height; and, in Xacc/280 Week 4 Case Study Of Managerial Accounting to Social Constructivist Theory Summary rational sympathy, he must express Injustice In Cry The Beloved Country as other men express themselves. Something A And P By John Updike Analysis Injustice In George Orwells Shooting An Elephant have gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely good sense; but it has necessarily cut me off from the lyrical ballads large portion of phrases and figures of speech Lady With The Pet Dog Character Analysis from father to son business ethics definition long been regarded as the common inheritance of Poets.

Wordsworth thinks of nature as a mighty presence, before which he stands silent, like a faithful high priest, who waits in solemn expectation for the whisper of enlightenment and wisdom. Two things stand out prominent in Wordsworth in connection with nature: 1. Coleridge was a major influence upon Wordsworth. According to Coleridge all ideas originate from sensation or reflection, and if objects of sensation are one source of ideas, the operation of the mind itself is the other source. Toggle navigation. What is Lyrical Ballads? A long step forward in the history of romanticism was taken with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in jointly by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.

The Reader will find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes; and are utterly rejected, as an ordinary device to elevate the style, and raise it above prose. My purpose was to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt the very language of men; and assuredly such personifications do not make any natural or regular part of that language. They are, indeed, a figure of speech occasionally prompted by passion, and I have made use of them as such; but have endeavoured utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of style, or as a family language which Writers in metre seem to lay claim to by prescription.

I have wished to keep the Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him. Others who pursue a different track will interest him likewise; I do not interfere with their claim, but wish to prefer a claim of my own. There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men; and further, because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart, is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.

Without being culpably particular, I do not know how to give my Reader a more exact notion of the style in which it was my wish and intention to write, than by informing him that I have at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my subject; consequently, there is I hope in these Poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective importance. Something must have been gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, good sense: but it has necessarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the common inheritance of Poets.

I have also thought it expedient to restrict myself still further, having abstained from the use of many expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but which have been foolishly repeated by bad Poets, till such feelings of disgust are connected with them as it is scarcely possible by any art of association to overpower. If in a poem there should be found a series of lines, or even a single line, in which the language, though naturally arranged, and according to the strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of prose, there is a numerous class of critics, who, when they stumble upon these prosaisms, as they call them, imagine that they have made a notable discovery, and exult over the Poet as over a man ignorant of his own profession.

Now these men would establish a canon of criticism which the Reader will conclude he must utterly reject, if he wishes to be pleased with these volumes. The truth of this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost all the poetical writings, even of Milton himself. By the foregoing quotation it has been shown that the language of Prose may yet be well adapted to Poetry; and it was previously asserted, that a large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good Prose. We will go further. It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

We are fond of tracing the resemblance between Poetry and Painting, and, accordingly, we call them Sisters: but where shall we find bonds of connexion sufficiently strict to typify the affinity betwixt metrical and prose composition? If it be affirmed that rhyme and metrical arrangement of themselves constitute a distinction which overturns what has just been said on the strict affinity of metrical language with that of prose, and paves the way for other artificial distinctions which the mind voluntarily admits, I answer that the language of such Poetry as is here recommended is, as far as is possible, a selection of the language really spoken by men; that this selection, wherever it is made with true taste and feeling, will of itself form a distinction far greater than would at first be imagined, and will entirely separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life; and, if metre be superadded thereto, I believe that a dissimilitude will be produced altogether sufficient for the gratification of a rational mind.

What other distinction would we have? Whence is it to come? I forbear to speak of an incongruity which would shock the intelligent Reader, should the Poet interweave any foreign splendour of his own with that which the passion naturally suggests: it is sufficient to say that such addition is unnecessary. But, as the pleasure which I hope to give by the Poems now presented to the Reader must depend entirely on just notions upon this subject, and, as it is in itself of high importance to our taste and moral feelings, I cannot content myself with these detached remarks. If my conclusions are admitted, and carried as far as they must be carried if admitted at all, our judgements concerning the works of the greatest Poets both ancient and modern will be far different from what they are at present, both when we praise, and when we censure: and our moral feelings influencing and influenced by these judgements will, I believe, be corrected and purified.

Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word Poet? What is a Poet? But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest to him, must often, in liveliness and truth, fall short of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the Poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in himself.

However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that while he describes and imitates passions, his employment is in some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering. So that it will be the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes, nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the language which is thus suggested to him by a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of giving pleasure.

Here, then, he will apply the principle of selection which has been already insisted upon. He will depend upon this for removing what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more industriously he applies this principle, the deeper will be his faith that no words, which his fancy or imagination can suggest, will be to be compared with those which are the emanations of reality and truth.

But it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit of these remarks, that, as it is impossible for the Poet to produce upon all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who does not scruple to substitute excellencies of another kind for those which are unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit.

But this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely about a taste for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry. Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal.

Poetry is the image of man and nature. The obstacles which stand in the way of the fidelity of the Biographer and Historian, and of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which are to be encountered by the Poet who comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man.

Except this one restriction, there is no object standing between the Poet and the image of things; between this, and the Biographer and Historian, there are a thousand. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgement the more sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure: I would not be misunderstood; but wherever we sympathize with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure.

We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. What then does the Poet? He considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions, which from habit acquire the quality of intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations, and finding everywhere objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment.

To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the Poet principally directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings.

The Man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.

There were no more gods or allegories or royalty: here you had vagrants, beggars, convicts, idiots, the mad, wretches and outcasts. This was considered virtually revolutionary; as Professor Stafford tells us in her excellent introduction, one critic went so far as to say that the poem "Goody Blake and Harry Gill" — in which a farmer who catches a woman gathering scrubwood from his land for fuel is cursed never to feel warm again — threatens "real anarchy". In a world still digesting the events of the French revolution, writing verse on such subjects could itself be seen as an insurrectionary act. The poem of Goody Blake is, incidentally, the only one Wordsworth said came from a true story. Otherwise, you will find that this volume is, like Hamlet , full of quotes.

I can't think of another poetry collection with an introduction that supplies any lines remotely as familiar as "emotion recollected in tranquility". But then, all bold ventures risk mockery at some point. Nicholas Lezard's choice Books. It may be the scourge of students, but a collection that deserves to be thought of as poetry's punk moment is pure pleasure second time round. Prefatory prowess … William Wordsworth.