William Wordsworth
1770–1850 · England
“I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills.”
The lineage through William Wordsworth
Drew From(2)
who shaped William Wordsworth
via Paradise Lost
- Wordsworth's epic ambition is Miltonic to the core — after Coleridge, no poet shaped him more than Milton
- The Prelude answers Paradise Lost in its own blank verse: a paradise lost and recovered, relocated from Eden to the growth of the poet's mind
- Wordsworth's allusions actively summon Milton — read Paradise Lost first to catch what he's reaching for, and against
- Among these poems is Wordsworth's own modern-English rendering of Chaucer's Prioress' Tale — a Romantic poet reaching directly back to the medieval source
- Read the Tales first and the homage lands: Wordsworth translated them, he said, "out of my love and reverence for Chaucer"
- The line from medieval English verse to Romantic poetry, drawn by Wordsworth's own hand
Portraits
An elderly Wordsworth stands arms-crossed in meditative pose atop Helvellyn, mountains receding behind him under a brooding sky.
Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1842
Young Wordsworth in three-quarter view, plain dark coat and white cravat, intent expression, painted the year of Lyrical Ballads.
William Shuter, 1798
Edridge's c.1807 pencil drawing (Wordsworth Museum, Dove Cottage) of the poet at 37; an intimate contemporary likeness from the height of his great decade.
Henry Edridge, 1807
Anonymous English-school oil at Wordsworth House (National Trust, acc. 866458), a full portrait of the poet held at his birthplace; a solid alternate likeness.
Famous Quotes
“The Child is father of the Man.”
“The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”
“I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;”
“The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.”
About William Wordsworth
English Romantic poet whose 1798 Lyrical Ballads, co-authored with Coleridge, marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in English literature. Wordsworth aimed to write in 'the real language of men' about ordinary subjects — a revolutionary departure from the formal diction of his Augustan predecessors. He was named Poet Laureate in 1843, by which point his radicalism had long since cooled into conservative Anglicanism.