William Wordsworth

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

• ISBN13: 9780192822697
• ISBN10: 0192822691
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-06-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

For many, William Wordsworth personifies the Age of Romanticism. The Prelude , his masterpiece, is one of the finest poems in the English language, and the Lyrical Ballads , written with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a defining text of the Romantic movement. This new selection of his poetry, prepared by his biographer Stephen Gill and the Wordsworth scholar Duncan Wu from Gill's authoritative Oxford Authors edition, offers generous extracts from The Prelude , his work from Lyrical Ballads , as well as many of his fine shorter lyrics. It charts the growth of this great poet's mind from his early radical years as a champion of the French Revolution, to his later years as Poet Laureate and political conservative.

Table of Contents

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