Selected Poetry

by Wordsworth, William; Gill, Stephen; Wu, Duncan

• ISBN13: 9780192832801
• ISBN10: 0192832808
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-06-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the most important and enduringly popular of all the English poets. His unique relationship with the poet and political activist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, founded in the political and social ferment of 1795, produced a revolution in literature, resulting in the joint volume, Lyrical Ballads (1798-1805)--a landmark in the history of English Romanticism. This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes all Wordsworth's finest lyrics, and a large sample of The Prelude (1805), his extraordinary autobiographical poem in blank verse and the first truly great achievement of a new era in English poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix	(5)
Chronology	xiv	(3)
Note on the Text	xvii
Old Man Travelling	1	(1)
The Ruined Cottage	1	(14)
[A Night-Piece]	15	(1)
[The Discharged Soldier]	15	(5)
The Old Cumberland Beggar	20	(5)
Lines Written at a Small Distance from my House	25	(1)
Goody Blake and Harry Gill	26	(4)
The Thorn	30	(6)
The Idiot Boy	36	(14)
Lines written in Early Spring	50	(1)
Anecdote for Fathers	50	(2)
We Are Seven	52	(3)
Expostulation and Reply	55	(1)
The Tables Turned	56	(1)
Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey	57	(4)
The Fountain	61	(2)
The Two April Mornings	63	(2)
'A slumber did my spirit seal'	65	(1)
Song ('She dwelt among th' untrodden ways')	66	(1)
'Strange fits of passion I have known'	66	(1)
Lucy Gray	67	(2)
Nutting	69	(1)
'Three years she grew in sun and shower'	70	(2)
The Brothers	72	(12)
Hart-Leap Well	84	(6)
from Home at Grasmere	90	(9)
from Poems on the Naming of Places	99	(5)
To Joanna	99	(1)
'A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags'	101	(3)
Michael	104	(12)
'I travelled among unknown Men'	116	(1)
To a Sky-Lark	117	(1)
Alice Fell	117	(2)
Beggars	119	(2)
To a Butterfly ('Stay near me')	121	(1)
To the Cuckoo	121	(1)
'My heart leaps up when I behold'	122	(1)
To H. C., Six Years Old	123	(1)
'Among all lovely things my Love had been'	124	(1)
To a Butterfly ('I've watched you')	124	(1)
'These chairs they have no words to utter'	125	(1)
Resolution and Independence	126	(4)
Travelling	130	(1)
'Within our happy Castle there dwelt one'	130	(2)
'The world is too much with us'	132	(1)
'With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh'	133	(1)
'Dear Native Brooks your ways have I pursued'	133	(1)
'Great Men have been among us'	134	(1)
Composed by the Sea-Side, near Calais	134	(1)
'It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free'	135	(1)
To Toussaint L'Ouverture	135	(1)
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge	136	(1)
London, 1802	136	(1)
'Nuns fret not at their Convent's narrow room'	137	(1)
'She was a Phantom of delight'	137	(1)
Ode to Duty	138	(2)
Ode ('There was a time')	140	(5)
'I wandered lonely as a Cloud'	145	(1)
Stepping Westward	146	(1)
The Solitary Reaper	147	(1)
Elegiac Stanzas	148	(2)
A Complaint	150	(1)
Gipsies	151	(1)
St Paul's	151	(1)
'Surprized by joy--impatient as the Wind'	152	(1)
Yew-Trees	153	(1)
The River Duddon: Conclusion	154	(1)
Airey-Force Valley	154	(1)
Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg	155	(2)
from THE PRELUDE	157	(1)
Book I	157	(11)
Book II	168	(13)
Book III	181	(2)
Book IV	183	(1)
Book V	184	(9)
Book VI	193	(4)
Book VII	197	(6)
Book VIII	203	(5)
Book IX	208	(2)
Book X	210	(6)
Book XI	216	(4)
Book XII	220	(1)
Book XIII	221	(4)
Abbreviations	225	(1)
Notes	225	(21)
Further Reading	246	(4)
Index of Titles and First Lines	250