english literature elective paper 1 section a william...

English Literature Elective Paper 1 Section A William Wordsworth

2016

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The prescribed poems for detailed study : William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

1. William Wordsworth. The following poems:- Ode on Intimations of

Immortality. Tintern Abbey. Three years she grew. She dwelt

among untrodden ways. Michael. Resolution and Independence.

The World is too much with us. Milton, thou shouldst be living at

this hour. Upon Westminster Bridge.

Content

1. Wordsworth, as a Romantic Poet

2. Text of the Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of

Early Childhood

3. Significance and Analysis of the Ode

4. The Sonnet form

5. Text of Sonnet The World Is Too Much With Us

6. Text of Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

7. Text of England, 1802. Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

William Wordsworth. 1770–1850

1. A few characteristics that had been evolving for four

decades are adopted in poetry in a major way during the Romantic

Period. These included shifting :-

a) the focus of faith and belief from God to Man;

b) from objectivity in poetic description to subjectivity

c) from traditionalism to originality

d) from Reason to Emotion

e) introduction of a new imaginative individualism

2. This was an emotional and imaginative literature, breaking

the constraints of reason that had predominated for over a century. The

movement was partly caused by social and moral changes at the time.

It was a part of the wider political movement in Europe that had

liberated man and mind from the bondage of traditional through the

French Revolution. Earlier the society was viewed as being more


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important than the individual because the State was believed to be a

divine creation.

3. The French Revolutionary demand for ‗Equality, Liberty,

Fraternity‘, had shifted the individual to the centre of all human

thought and activity. The writings of Rosseau, Voltaire, Hume,

Gibbon, Paine and Godwin highlighted the importance of the

individual and the concept that State was a creation of human effort

brought about a phenomenal change in socio- political outlook. These

began to be reflected in poetic themes of the Romantic period from

1798 to 1830.

4. Hope itself had been revolutionized in the process.

― Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive

But to be young was very Heaven‖

( Lines from Wordsworth‘s ‗The French Revolution‘)

Language was turned in to an instrument of freedom. Literary

writings in the national language gained priority over Latin and Greek.

In England, English became the sole medium of expression and

attempts were made to use the common man‘s simple and easily

understood version of English, in place of the courtly and formalized

version.

5. This shifted the content of poetry from aristocracy to

common folks and of seeing life as a living. This enabled the Romantic

poets to capture the inconsequential passing moments of life. The

publication of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ in 1798 marked the beginning of

the Romantic Period in English Literature. It contained poems such as

‗Lucy Grey‘ ‗ The Idiot Boy‘ ‗ The Peddler‘ ‗The Solitary Reaper‘ and

‗ We are seven‘, where the child‘s happy ignorance, effortlessly

reveals human attitude to death and its inevitability.

6. But the high point of the Lyrical Ballads was

autobiographical account in ―Lines Written above Tintern Abbey‖ that

traced Wordsworth‘s brooding, impassioned attitude towards Nature. It


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marks the transition from the initial ecstatic love of Nature of seeing

‗splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower‘ to a deeper, but

narrower study of his own mind.

7. Even after the loss of the visionary powers of childhood,

the poet thanks the human heart for its tenderness, its joys, and its

fears, as it enables the poet of find strength in what remains behind in

adulthood. For Wordsworth, recollection had the power of converting

aimless drifting of imagination and experience in to moments of

intense joy and creativity. This technique itself was revolutionary in the

power of poetic perception and thinking. For example in ‗The

Daffodils‘ his first sight gives the impression of profusion and

confusion. On reflection it gives way to order and harmony.

8. In his Reflections on Nature the predominant senses

described are of sight and sound. Natural sounds of beasts and birds,

(‗To the Cuckoo‘) wind and water, ( ―The sounding cataract / Haunted

me like a passion..‖). These were ‗felt in the blood by him‘ but he had

no ear for instrumental music. Other senses of touch, taste, smell and

temperature were absent from his poetry. His landscape is an austere

world ―where bare trees and mountains bare‖ predominate in a ―silence

beyond silence‖. However, he had a sense of space so remarkable that

he almost ‗felt‘ the Earth as a solid sphere. In Wordsworth‘s later

poetry he adopts a loftier style and themes as in the ‗Immortality Ode‘

‗Ode on Duty‘ and ‗Resolution and Independence‘

9. Wordsworth was also a great dreamer – ― Dreams, books,

are each a world‘ that was vivid, bright, happy, glorious, and fresh. The

serene and blessed mood of ‗The Tintern Abbey‘ gave him the

visionary communion with Nature even in ‗lonely rooms‘ ‗ a‘mid the

din / of towns and cities‘. But the death of his brother shifted his

attention from Nature to religion where he sought solace and produced

the ‗ The Excursion‘ and ‗ The Ecclesiastical Sonnets‘

10. In sum, Wordsworth began with the simple lyrics based on

inspiration from Nature and the common man. This love of Nature led

him towards the love of Man, in general, and to the probing of his own

mind in particular. For this reason his best work The Prelude, the


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Sonnets, and Tintern Abbey are more an account of personal

experience captured through introspective moments of poetic

inspiration:

― For oft when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude‖

(Lines from Wordsworth‘s ―The Daffodils‖)

Through his theory of poetry that he developed later and his

emotionally inspired early poetry, William Wordsworth widened the

horizon of poetic expression by bringing about a total break away from

the traditional courtly poetry and including the common man as a

subject of his poems. Along with new subject matter he also introduced

a new poetic diction appropriate to the subject, placed his source of

inspiration in Nature rather than in religion or the royal court,

attempting to see ―into the life of things‖. The new trend established by

him remained unchallenged for a century till the beginning of twentieth

century poetry, heralded by T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats.

Exercise 1. The Ode is to be read first. The coloured lines are to be noted for

fuller understanding. They are to be learnt for their placement in the flow of

thoughts, for reference to context question, that is mandatory, to test the

examinee‘s ‗first- hand knowledge‘ of the poems prescribed.

536. Ode

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparell'd in celestial light,


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The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair; 15

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound 20

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea 30

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday;—

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35

Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival, 40

My head hath its coronal,


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The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.

O evil day! if I were sullen

While Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning, 45

And the children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,

And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

—But there's a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have look'd upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

The pansy at my feet 55

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended; 75

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,


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And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80

And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came. 85

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' darling of a pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,

With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral; 95

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long 100

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105

That Life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy soul's immensity; 110

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted forever by the eternal mind,—

Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,


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In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120

A presence which is not to be put by;

To whom the grave

Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight

Of day or the warm light,

A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live, 135

That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise; 145

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realized, 150

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may, 155

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,


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Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160

To perish never:

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither, 170

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound! 175

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright 180

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind; 185

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death, 190

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;


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I only have relinquish'd one delight 195

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet; 200

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Exercise 2. Significance and Analysis of the Ode:

1. The ‗Immortality Ode‘ is part of Wordsworth‘s later poetry

where he adopts a loftier style and themes, similar to that

in ‗Ode on Duty‘ and ‗Resolution and Independence‘. His

earlier ‗Lines written above Tintern Abbey‘ had traced

Wordsworth‘s brooding, impassioned attitude towards

Nature. The ‗Immortality Ode marks the transition from his

initial ecstatic love of Nature , of seeing ‗splendour in the

grass, of glory in the flower‘, to a deeper, but narrower

study of his own mind.

2. Even after the loss of the visionary powers of childhood,

in this Ode, the poet thanks the human heart for its

tenderness, its joys, and its fears, as it enables the poet of

find strength in what remains behind in

adulthood.Wordsworth began with the simple lyrics based

on inspiration from Nature and the common man. This love

of Nature led him towards the love of Man, in general, and

to the probing of his own mind in particular.

3. For Wordsworth, ‗recollection‘ had the power of

converting aimless drifting of imagination and experience,

in to moments of intense joy and creativity. This technique

itself was revolutionary in the power of poetic perception

and thinking. For example in ‗The Daffodils‘ his first sight


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gives the impression of profusion and confusion. On

reflection it gives way to order and harmony.

4. In his Reflections on Nature the predominant senses

described are of sight and sound. Natural sounds of beasts

and birds, (‗To the Cuckoo‘) wind and water, ( ―The

sounding cataract / Haunted me like a passion..‖). These

were ‗felt in the blood by him‘, but he had no ear for

instrumental music. Other senses of touch, taste, smell and

temperature were absent from his poetry. His landscape is

an austere world ―where bare trees and mountains bare‖

predominate in a ―silence beyond silence‖. However, he

had a sense of space so remarkable, that he almost ‗felt‘ the

Earth as a solid sphere.

5. His theory of poetry, developed in the ‗Immortality Ode‘

and other later poems, he blends Nature and religion , to

provide solace ―In the soothing thoughts that spring / Out

of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death,

/In years that bring the philosophical mind.‖ This was in

contrast to his emotionally inspired early poetry.

6. With his two phases of poetic inspiration, William

Wordsworth widened the horizon of poetic expression

through new common subjects, and new poetic diction,

appropriate to the new subjects. In place of the royal court

and religion, his inspiration from Nature allowed him to

see ―into the life of things.‖

( 429 words)

Exercise 3. The Sonnet form and prescribed Sonnets:

What is a Sonnet?

1) The Sonnet, is a poetic form of fourteen lines , that had

reached England from Italy in the 16th century. The greatest

Italian sonneteer was Petrarch in the 14th century, who created

the Italian Sonnet form. It had an eight line of an ‗octave‘ and


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six line ‗sestet‘. The rhyme scheme for the octave was fixed at

abba, abba. For the sestet it was cde,cde. , but variation was

allowed only in the sestet .

2) In England, the Italian Sonnet was modified. The first

twelve lines could be in three quatrains of four lines each,

ending with a couplet. Alternatively, the octave could be

followed by a quatrain and a concluding couplet. This form

was called the Elizabethan Sonnet.

3) Edmund Spenser, Sidney, William Shakespeare were the

greatest exponents of the Elizabethan sonnet. There was

greater flexibility of the rhyme scheme in the Elizabethan

sonnet and Spenser used his own scheme, leaving the ending

couplet to stand alone with its own idea. Most sonnets were

written as love poems to woo real ladies. For example,

Spenser wrote ‗Amoretti‘ meaning ‗Little love‘ or ‗infant

cupid‘ to woo Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. All

the sonnets of Shakespeare are addressed to the ‗Dark Lady‘

with whom he was in love, and whose identity was never

revealed.

4) As Shakespeare wrote during the period when England as a

nation had defied the Roman Catholic Church and established

the Protestant Church of England, he adopted the English

version of the sonnet form that subsequently came to be known

as the Shakespearean Sonnet in English literature.

5) Milton was the poet representing the re-establishment of the

monarchy after the demise of Cromwell, Lord Protector of

England. He therefore, brought back the classical Italian

Sonnet form of Petrarch, that had an Octave and a Sestet. This

came to be known as the Miltonic Sonnet in English literature.

6) Please note that only the classical Italian sonnet form of

Petrarch existed in European countries, and Shakespearean or

the Elizabethan sonnet form exists only in English Literature.


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Two Sonnets prescribed for Paper 1

The World Is Too Much With Us

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I‘d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-wordsworth

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-wordsworth


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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;

O 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: 10

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.

GREAT men have been among us; hands that penn'd

And tongues that utter'd wisdom—better none:

The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington,

Young Vane, and others who call'd Milton friend.

These moralists could act and comprehend: 5

They knew how genuine glory was put on;

Taught us how rightfully a nation shone

In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend

But in magnanimous meekness. France, 'tis strange,

Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then. 10

Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!

No single volume paramount, no code,

No master spirit, no determined road;

But equally a want of books and men!

IT is not to be thought of that

524. England, 1802

ii


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the flood

Of British freedom, which, to

the open sea

Of the world's praise, from

dark antiquity

Hath flow'd, 'with pomp of

waters, unwithstood,'

Roused though it be full often

to a mood

5

Which spurns the check of

salutary bands,—

That this most famous stream

in bogs and sands

Should perish; and to evil and

to good

Be lost forever. In our halls is

hung

Armoury of the invincible

Knights of old:

10

We must be free or die, who

speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spake; the

faith and morals hold

Which Milton held.—In

everything we are sprung

Of Earth's first blood, have

titles manifold.


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english literature elective paper 1 section a william...

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