The Tables Turned
William Wordsworth
LEARNING CHECK
No study aids.
1. Six questions.
What is the metre of the poem? _____________________
What is the rhyme scheme? __________________________
What do you call this kind of verse? ___________________
What does “Close up those barren leaves” mean?
______________________________________________
Fill in the missing word: “We ____________________ to dissect”.
Which personal pronoun does Wordsworth use when referring to Nature? _____________
WIDER CONTEXTS
1. Other works of art: painting by John Constable, The Hay Wain.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/john-constable-the-hay-wain
a. Students work in pairs and are numbered 1 and 2. All the number 1s turn their backs to the
screen in the class. The number 2s face the screen. The teacher shows Constable’s painting The
Hay Wain on the screen, and the number 2s explain what they see to their partner. After 5-10
minutes, the number 1s see the painting and comment on the differences between what they had
imagined and the painting itself.
b. What can an 18th century person learn in that kind of environment? What would you be able to
learn? What – if anything - does the painting add to your understanding of the poem “The Tables
Turned”?
c. Compare the drawings you did in Pre-reading task 2. What are the main similarities and
differences? How do these reflect the differences between the Romantic view of the relationship
between man and nature and a modern view?
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2. Literary contexts: other poem by the same author: William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps
Up”
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Gloser
behold se
natural piety: reverent
(ærbødig) regard for nature
1802
a.
b.
c.
d.
What are the three phases in the poem?
How does the speaker’s response to the rainbow connect the three phases?
Explain the paradox in line seven. In what sense is the child the father of the man?
Is the relationship between man and nature the same in this poem as in “The Tables Turned”?
Discuss.
3. Literary context: poem by a different author (written assignment): William Blake: “The
Schoolboy”.
a. Read the poem and answer the questions.
b. Discuss whether Wordsworth’s view of nature and bookish learning as expressed in “The Tables
Turned” is the same as the views expressed in Blake’s poem.
© Gyldendal, 2012
The Schoolboy
Gloser
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!
distant fjern
wind blæse i
skylark sanglærke
outworn udmattet
sigh sukke
dismay rædsel
droop synke sammen
bower bolig; løvhytte
worn through slidt ned
dreary kedsommelig
annoy gøre urolig
but andet end
droop lade synke
tender ung, følsom
bud knop
nip nippe af
blossom blomst
strip of fratage
care bekymring
dismay skræk
mellow modne
blast vindstød
But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning’s bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?
O father and mother, if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care’s dismay,—
How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?
(1794)
© Gyldendal, 2012
What is the child’s relationship with nature?
Why doesn’t the child like to be at school?
Make a list of the words associated with nature and the words associated with school.
Why can’t the child learn anything in school?
In what way is the child like a caged bird?
In what way is the child like a plant?
In your own words, what are the questions asked in the last stanza?
Are the questions in the last three stanzas answered?
What is the tone of the poem:
melancholic amused sincere outraged ironic cheerful
10. Is the poem a condemnation of learning from books? Why/Why not?
11. Why is this poem in “Songs of Experience” and not in “Songs of Innocence”? (For
information about Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience” see under Blake “The
Ecchoing Green” p. 201.)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
4. Literary context: poem by a different author: (written assignment): Walt Whitman, “When
I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”.
You may choose to do assignment b. as a written assignment.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American writer who came from a working class family. He
only had five or six years of formal schooling. He was briefly employed as an office boy and then
became a printer’s apprentice, worked as a handyman and taught in a variety of schools. He then
worked as a reporter, a magazine writer and an editor. In the early 1850s he started writing poetry
and the first edition of his book of poems Leaves of Grass, which consisted of 12 poems, was first
published in 1855. The last edition contained about 400 poems. Leaves of Grass was revolutionary
in that it was the first American effort to break free from the conventional forms and patterns of
poetry. Whitman used the phrase rather than the foot as the unit of rhythm and thus helped to create
what has come to be called free verse. In his poems Whitman celebrated nature, democracy, love
and friendship. You may also know Whitman’s poem “O Captain! My Captain!” in which he
mourns Lincoln’s death from the film Dead Poets Society.
a. Read the poem and answer the questions.
b. Compare Whitman’s view of nature and bookish learning/academic knowledge as expressed in
“When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” and Wordsworth’s view in the poem “The Tables
Turned”. Point out the differences between the two poems and discuss which of the two poems you
prefer.
© Gyldendal, 2012
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
Gloser
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick,
figure tal
chart kort, kurve
moist fugtig
unaccountable
uforklarlig
Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence of the stars.
(1865)
Comprehension and analysis
1. In pairs or groups: Translate the poem.
2. Read it aloud and comment on the sentence structure.
3. Where is the speaker?
4. Why does he leave?
5. What is the cumulative effect of words like “proofs”, “figures”, “columns”, “charts” and
“diagrams”?
6. What is the effect created by the first four lines starting the same way, a technique known as
anaphora?
7. What is implied in the word “mystical”? And how is the implication reinforced in the last line?
8. What is the theme of the poem?
9. Do you agree with the view expressed in the poem?
10. On the basis of this poem would you classify Walt Whitman as a Romantic poet? Why/Why
not?
© Gyldendal, 2012
5. Literary context: poem by a different author (written assignment): Matthew Arnold, “In
Harmony with Nature”.
You may choose to do assignment b. as a written assignment.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was a major Victorian poet and prose writer and one of the leading
literary critics of his time. He wrote most of his poems during the 1850s and then shifted the focus
of his writing to literary and social criticism. His best known poem today is ‘Dover Beach’, part of
which he wrote on his honeymoon in 1851. This is the last stanza of the poem: “Ah, love, let us be
true/To one another! for the world, which seems/To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So various,
so beautiful, so new,/Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help
for pain;/And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night.” You will find a very different tone in the poem “In
Harmony with Nature”.
a. Read the poem and answer the questions.
b. Compare Matthew Arnold’s poem and Wordsworth’s poem “The Tables Turned”. Focus on
views expressed, tone and form.
In Harmony with Nature?
Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were thee,
When true, the last impossibility—
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!
Gloser
heat intensitet
dost does
thee (for)you
hath has
fain gerne
adore tilbede, forgude
fickle omskiftelig
blest velsignet
pass overgå
rest forblive
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;
Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;
Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;
Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!
(1849)
© Gyldendal, 2012
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
Comprehension and analysis
In pairs or groups. Translate the poem and then read it aloud.
What is the form of the poem? Look at the rhyme scheme, metre and the number of lines.
According to the speaker what characterizes nature and what characterizes man?
How does the speaker react to the preacher’s idea that man should be in harmony with nature?
Why does he react in this way? Why must people “begin ... where Nature ends”?
What is the tone of the poem?
Does the speaker “preach”?
Would Wordsworth agree with him?
Do you agree with him?
© Gyldendal, 2012