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The Impossible Balance
I
n his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth outlines and
formalizes Romantic poetry. His stated purpose is to “follow the fluxes
and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections
of our nature” (62). In the Preface, Wordsworth names the features he
wants to add to established poetic structures, including the use of common
situations, language, “a certain coloring of imagination,” and contemplative
thought (59). He argues that good poetic language only differs from good
prose in the use of meter, but also writes that though “all good Poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” good poets are required to bring
something else forward “for our continued influxes of feeling are modified
and directed by our thoughts” (62). Instead of remaining sure of how much
poets need to bring forward, Wordsworth later edited his Preface from
merely adopting the conversational language of the lower classes to only
permitting a selection of the purified language (Parrish 11). These diverse
poetic tenets could be considered as falling on an artistic spectrum between
the deliberate craft of lyrical poetry and the natural overflow of feeling that
interested Wordsworth. However, these disparate elements do not always
fit well together. Because Wordsworth struggles within his own poetry to
balance all those aspects of poetic art he outlines in the Preface, he is unable
to create a single, defining Romantic poem and instead distributes his ideas
into different poems.
In “The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman,” Wordsworth relates
common influxes of feeling that transcend any situation, but is hampered
by the demands of his chosen poetic structure. He uses a traditional ballad
format and rhyme structure to anchor his poem, and writes the poem
completely from the Native American woman’s point of view instead of
describing the event as an observer. Wordsworth’s short note before the
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poem explains how, in America, the spectacle of an abandoned, dying Native
American woman would be thought unremarkable; this explanation allows
readers to empathize with the woman’s plight (LB 253-4). Wordsworth
couples this ability to feel the same emotions as the dying woman with the
ballad format, using rhyming couplets and a rhythmic meter. Even though
he was criticized for supposedly not valuing poetic structure, Wordsworth
felt strongly about meter. He believed it allowed the poet to discuss truths
with “many hundreds of people who would never have heard of it, had it
not been narrated as a ballad, and in a more impressive metre than is usual
in ballads” and he shows this appreciation in “The Complaint of a Forsaken
Indian Woman” (83-4). Wordsworth uses enjambment and pauses on a line
to alter the traditional ballad structure, thus keeping the woman’s speech
from sounding stilted. However, even with alterations made to the ballad
format, the rhythm and rhymes seem excessive. He successfully portrays the
woman’s thoughts and acceptance of her imminent death, but his rhyming
couplets betray the spontaneity of her thoughts, not allowing Wordsworth
to completely create the illusion of a sudden overflow of human emotion
in the poem.
In “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth
leaves behind the narrative for looser meditative structure to closely follow
the arc of his mental processes, not including common conversation in the
process. “Tintern Abbey” is descriptive without telling a dramatic story,
and does not include any encounters with common people or dialogue
that are often featured in Wordsworth’s ballads. However, the flow is more
conversational and relaxed than the ballads, due to its uneven rhythm and
irregular stanzas. The natural writing does not mean that Wordsworth
abandons meter and the poetic art. One understands Wordsworth’s
opinions on the interchangeability of good prose and poetry upon reading
his wonderfully eloquent descriptions of the countryside scene. The careful
way the meter and diction roll off the tongue reflects the tranquil landscape
Wordsworth describes, proving his poetic artistry and adding another
dimension to the poem. Wordsworth also does not allow himself simply
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to write anything down. The internal rhymes, alliteration, and references
to previous parts of the poem show his thoughtfulness in composing it.
Wordsworth treated this free-flowing creative process as a matter of
conscious artistry (Parrish 5). Nonetheless, he was unable to find a way
to work a dialogue or conversation into a contemplative poem such as
“Tintern Abbey.”
Wordsworth found it more difficult to combine the two styles than he
originally thought in “Old Man Travelling,” ultimately removing a portion
of the poem to portray a more contemplative style. First published in his
Lyrical Ballads in 1798, the poem focuses on an old vagrant—a common
figure on English country roads. To emphasize the vagrant’s position as a
natural component of the scene in the poem, Wordsworth cleverly plays
upon the dual meanings of “nature.” The beggar’s soul is peaceful and
contained, but he is also as necessary as the hedgerow birds to the lonely road
scene. However, in a later version of the poem, more aptly titled, “Animal
Tranquility and Decay,” Wordsworth removes the dialogue between the
narrator and the vagrant. Prose-like speech or narration assumes a starring
role in many of his other poems such as “The Brothers” or “Goody Blake
and Harry Gill,” which are common conversations in verse, but these
features are abandoned in this case because of the sudden, unwelcome shift
the dialogue brings. In “Animal Tranquility,” Wordsworth recognizes that
the dialogue feels off at the end, drawing attention from the meditation on
the beggar’s distinct composure. Wordsworth rightly edits the speech out to
emphasize the imaginative coloring and description of the rest of the poem.
In doing so, he signals to the reader that holding all of his components
of Romantic poetry in the same poem may be more difficult than it first
appeared to be.
But finally, although he can only include common speech implicitly,
Wordsworth does successfully combine most of his poetic tenets into a
single poem, “The Solitary Reaper.” In this poem, the narrator encounters
the singing “solitary Highland Lass” while walking through the countryside.
This poem is a ballad with regular stanzas, but to avoid simplistic rhythm,
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Country Claire, Ireland, by Molly Kelly
Wordsworth alternates between rhyming couplets and an ABAB structure
within a single stanza. Like “Tintern Abbey,” the rhythm and beautiful
rhymes reflect the theme of the poem in the girl’s unheard song. His
colorful imagination emerges in the second stanza when he says that “No
Nightingale did ever chaunt / More welcome notes” than her even in exotic
locations like Arabia or the Hebrides. The parallel drawn between the girl
in the field and the nightingale, Romantic symbol of poetic inspiration,
is a powerfully imaginative comparison. This stanza contains more poetic
pre-thought and modification and less apparent spontaneity than when the
narrator later writes, “I listened motionless and still / And, as I mounted up
the hill.” In the third stanza, the narrator plaintively asks after the meaning
of the song with rhythm and rhyme, mixing a spontaneous, questioning,
stream-of-consciousness format and a rhyming ballad. Here, the mix of
styles is interesting, not problematic. The only theme from Wordsworth’s
Preface missing is common speech. However, even though Wordsworth
cannot include it outright, common language is implicitly evident
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throughout the entire poem. The Highland girl sings a mysterious song
the entire time the poet walks by her field. Although he could not find a
way to put in the actual song in her common and incomprehensible dialect,
Wordsworth managed to fit it into the poem subliminally. Only by using
this clever device is Wordsworth able to attempt to combine all of his poetic
tenets in the same poem.
With all of his different ideas for his poetry in the Preface, Wordsworth
clearly has a difficult time choosing what parts he wants to include in each of
his poems. His concepts of spontaneous feeling, poetic meter, and structure
have been viewed by many critics as being in opposition with each other.
But Wordsworth often successfully reconciles those ideas in his poetry,
struggling perhaps a little more with the integration of common language,
as shown by his revisions of several poems, the Preface, and the varying
types of poems he wrote under his experimental umbrella. Nevertheless,
including all of his tenets together in one poem proved to be a challenge
he was unable to meet completely without crafty devices. Thus, although he
tried many combinations, the original elucidator of Romantic poetry was
never able to compose a single, defining Romantic poem, trapped by his
numerous ideas.
Works Referenced
Parrish, Stephen Maxfield. The Art of the Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1973.
Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. Ed. Michael Mason. London:
Longman, 1992.
-----. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. New York: Crowell,
1888.