Elegiac Stanzas

Sea – Ship – drowned – Shipwreck – so it came,
The meek, the brave, the good, was gone:
He who had been our living John
Was nothing but a name. – William Wordsworth

In this quote from Wordsworth the reader is once again reminded of the message in the Lucy poems that nature is capable of taking life much like a god. However the tone of Elegiac Stanzas differs from that in the Lucy poems, and I would venture to guess it is because this poem actually expresses the genuine despair Wordsworth feels over having lost his brother. The poem begins with a appreciative praise of a castle by the sea, which he is observing in a painting is being hit by a storm. He initially points out that this castle is on a "glassy sea" (4). Though it is a storm, Wordsworth's initial reaction to the sea has far more to do with its general appearance than its appearance in the observed storm. However, as his description of the sea escalates, the reader senses a connection between the way that Wordsworth feels about the sea and the way Wordsworth is feeling about his brother. As he talks about wishing he had "the Painter's hand" (13), so that he could create a painting in which the sea "could not cease to smile" (19), the reader begins to sense a shift in Wordsworth's tone from being from the perspective of a simple art viewer, to someone who is more invested in this picture. It is also important to note that the description begins to shift away from the castle to almost an obsessive discussion about the sea. It then becomes clear the Wordsworth has a deeper emotional attachment to this topic when he wishes for "Nature's breathing life" (28), and then instantly begins the next stanza referring to how these desires for a friendly sea are not real, but that they are merely a "fond illusion" of his "heart" (29). It is then that the footnote introduces the reader to Captain John Wordsworth, William's brother who was lost at sea in a shipwreck.

The poem's description of the sea begins to shift at a far more rapid pace from Wordsworth's idealized sea, a calm and inviting body of water into a "sea in anger" (44). The reader can feel Wordsworth's emotion coming out of this poem, and he trusts the reader enough to make himself very vulnerable, admitting that he is experiencing a "deep distress" that has "humanised" his "soul" (36). This line references his quote that I began my post with where he refers to his brother John as now being "nothing but a name." I read the "power" that Wordsworth believes to be gone is the power that comes from the special bond between brothers. Now that his brother is gone "nothing can restore" (35) this feeling of companionship that two brothers have, and therefore, the power that he feels dies along with his brother. His feeling of being humanized directly relates to this loss of power, because he not only has encountered the fleeting nature in life, personally experiencing someone close to him dying, but he also feels the way that his brother's death is in a sense the death of a piece of himself. There is a certain immortality that all people feel, and those who make us feel loved and appreciate us strengthen this feeling because they help to build us up as not just human beings but as ideals. Having lost his brother, Wordsworth no longer has that person to speak to the ideal that is William Wordsworth, and what is left behind is the flawed and very real person that Wordsworth truly is. However, though the tone of this poem is incredibly sad and heavy, it ends on what I read to be a very positive note. As he concludes the poem with the thought that "not without hope we suffer and mourn" (60), I read this to mean not that we suffer and mourn which crushes our hope. Instead I think Wordsworth is saying that despite his suffering and despite the assumed suffering that all of his readers either have or inevitable will face, life is still filled with hope. I think this poem ultimately suggests, though this is making somewhat of a leap, that it is better to feel the agony of losing a loved one, but know what it is to love someone enough to mourn them, because such a strong connection to someone else gives you a power that you simply cannot achieve on your own.



The site below is where I found Wordsworth's quotation, and it also provides further reading about the shipwreck that took Captain John Wordsworth's life.

https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/tag/john-wordsworth/

The Lucy Poems

The Lucy poems very evidently address the loss of Lucy. What I find so intriguing is Wordsworth’s ability to capture the breadth of feelings that result from this loss. In particular the juxtaposition of Strange fits of passion have I known and A slumber did my spirit seal strikes me as particularly jarring.

Strange fits of passion have I known is the opening poem in the Lucy poems (although I am not sure if that is how Wordsworth intended it to be or if that is merely how The Norton Anthology printed it). The title alone conveys raw emotion – the idea of a ‘ fit of passion’ is both beautiful and tragic given the context. The fits are only intended for the Lover’s ear and thus become something private and intimate – a whisper of sorts. The poem manages to exude a sense of anxiety at the moon’s impending “dropping” and comparably, Lucy’s death. The poem ends with an expression of emotion, “’O mercy!’ to myself I cried,/’ If Lucy should be dead!’” (27-28). The reader can sense the speaker’s sense of panic and presumably passion as the poem wanes with the moon.

Conversely, A slumber did my spirit seal seems to lack emotion or feelings – perhaps addressing another reaction to death – one that is cold and closed off, or “sealed.” In this poem the speaker does not even mention Lucy’s name but only refers to her as “she,” as if to not connect to her too intimately, a drastic contradiction to the intimate whispers of Strange fits. In A slumber, the speaker mentions his lack of fears in addition to her lack of feelings and senses. In contrast to Strange fits concluding lines, A slumber ends with “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,/ With rocks, and stones, and trees” (7-8). The speaker likens “her” to a cold rock and does not seem to possess the same fit of passion as the speaker of the last poem. This being said, while Wordsworth manages to capture the variety of feelings or lack there of that have resulted from the loss of Lucy, I am not sure if we are supposed to read these poems as having the same speaker or a different one – that could easily change the interpretation.  

'Michael' and the Anxiety of Entropy

I haven’t done much outside reading on the Romantics, but I was recently recommended Harold Bloom’s survey of the poets entitled A Visionary Company as a good introductory text to the “major” writers. In reading “Michael,” which reads as the longest text we’ve seen so far, I considered some of Bloom’s thoughts in order to begin organizing my own.

In a general discussion of Wordsworth, Bloom describes:

“This fear of visual appearance is at one with Wordsworth’s worship of the outward world, though it presents itself as paradox. For the visual surfaces of natural reality are mutable and Wordsworth desperately quests for a natural reality that can never pass away” (Bloom, 154).

Although Bloom is not specifically talking about “Michael” (but is instead gesturing toward his own reading of “Tintern Abbey”), I feel like the “paradox” he defines can apply to Wordsworth’s pastoral poem.  This worship of the natural world for its universal totality, in which old mountains rise and winds speak again and again, is misguided in that it attempts to overlook the entropic decay and order of the universe, in which everything is always passing away and never eternal.

Bloom dedicates barely two pages in A Visionary Company to his discussion of “Michael.” He opens by stating that the poem “is the most directly Biblical of Wordsworth’s poems. It turns upon the symbol of a covenant between father and son” (Bloom, 178). This is a fair assessment; however, I was more interested in using Bloom’s depiction of natural paradox in reading the poem. This paradox (one could even call it a binary between urban/pastoral and dying/eternal) also figures into Bloom’s characterization of Wordsworth’s “Biblical” father and son covenant, wherein the prodigal fails to return and reinstate an age-old order. The father passes away; the son is subsumed by the city. Yet the rocks remain – and this is the “simple object” Wordsworth’s speaker marks as “appeartain[ing] / A story – unenriched with strange events” (18-19). These rocks, although they will decay, do not decay within the timeline of the poem, within the lives of the characters. They are the keys to the narrative of Michael the shepherd and his son, like the thorn’s many signifieds. The heap of rocks – “natural” and “simple” objects (18 and 30) – leads the speaker to “feel / For passions that were not my own, and think / (At random and imperfectly indeed) / On man, the heart of man, and human life” (30-33). The “unhewn stones” at once become what they represent (the covenant between father and son) and, by remaining what they are (retaining their “stone-ness”) show how the story persists, despite the broken bond of what they represent. The mark is made where the figurative becomes literal and thus lasting. The symbol becomes literally real and eternal where the thing it symbolized (relationship between father and son) faded – the figurative successor outlives its literal father. The rocks are like the “second self” of the narrative, existing even after the narrative and its figures are “gone” (39).

I think Bloom is right in defining Wordsworth’s anxiety as desiring to dwell in what is lasting and yet never finding what lasts except in the natural world, which itself only faces entropic decay at a much slower rate than human beings themselves. The rocks are “lasting” because they outlast Michael and his son. But these stones too, like the covenant they represent, will break.

Wordsworth’s narrator seems to desperately to depict Michael himself as long-lasting in body. He is, when introduced, “an old man” but “stout of heart, and strong of limb,” since “his bodily frame had been from youth to age / Of an unusual strength” (42-44). Michael is the object he uses to represent the covenant; his own body is the covenant (this builds nicely off of Bloom’s analysis that the poem is primarily Biblical in influence and tone – Michael is both an Old Testament patriarch and a kind of Christ). He survives the storm and exists alone “amid the heart of many thousand mists” (59). Even his mind is “stern” and “unbending” (161). But he is only able to lay “the first stone of the Sheep-fold” – the sheep-fold being a covenant for the sheep, a hard structure that binds them and prevents chaos – before his own body finally breaks and is represented by “the unfinished Sheep-fold … / Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Ghyll” (420, 481 and 482).

The physical objects are so crucial to Michael because the bodies in the poem (the body of Michael, of his wife, and of his son) ultimately cannot last forever and change (note how often we are informed of Luke’s physical changes). What ultimately works in this poem is that Wordsworth does not land on the “simple natural object” as the final image of the poem. Unlike his other works we have considered (especially the Lucy poems), the grave is not the final image. Instead, we begin and end the poem by the boisterous brook, which is described as very active, even beside the “remains’ of the sheepfold (2, 480 and 482). The brook, although it alters, does not decay like the static object. Its fluidity somehow is not only more lasting, but continuously active, not unlike the poem that persists in moving even on the still page. 

some thoughts on Lucy poems

What I find intriguing about the Lucy poems is that they seem outwardly to be so wrapped up in Lucy—she is absent but she is the driving force in each poem, and has a presence through her absence, her death becoming an inspiration or just a reason for the speaker to write—but at the same time, the speaker never addresses Lucy directly. The poems feel at points like they are not so much about how much the speaker loves Lucy, or how sad he is about her death, but that they are more about his chance to write about Lucy, and see nature through Lucy—their relationship being the medium through which he is able to understand the natural world and cycles of life.

In “Strange fits of passion have I known,” the speaker starts out suggesting that his “fits of passion” (1) are for “the Lover’s ear alone” (3), but then he goes on to describe what I, at least, take to be one of his fits of passion in the rest of the poem. He says in the second line “I will tell,” which suggests that the rest of the poem will be a description of one of his fits. But then, why is the poem not addressed to Lucy? Lucy is “she I loved” (5) for the speaker, but he tells the story to someone else, immediately contradicting his claim in the first line that it was only for his lover’s ears. The construction suggests that the speaker finds a kind of lover in the act of writing and his composition of the poem, one that makes Lucy more of a representation of the concept of a lover than an actual lover. While in “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” the speaker claims it makes a difference to him that she is dead, he also says there were “none to praise/And very few to love” (3-4)—while he expresses his love for her in the poem, he doesn’t exactly praise her, or at least claims he doesn’t, though the next stanza acts like praise.

In “Strange fits of passion have I known” there is also a growing comparison with Lucy and the moon, which appears to represent the natural cycles of both night and day and life and death for the speaker—as he travels and sees the light of the moon move and fall he comes to the conclusion that Lucy may be dead (odd that he knows this while he’s going to see her, by the way—the poem doesn’t explicitly confirm it on its own, of course, but the rest of the poems suggest that Lucy is, in fact, deceased and if we think about them as a group the sort of premonition in this one is strange—unless all of the poems are no more than “wayward thoughts” (25) in “a Lover’s head” (26) exploring the idea of Lucy’s death).  

The connection with nature is also explicit in “Three years she grew,” in which the speaker personifies Nature into another of Lucy’s lovers, almost aligning nature with himself. Nature’s assertion that Lucy will own “the silence and the clam/Of mute insensate things” (17-8) reflects the place of silence that the speaker gives Lucy in his poems, and also draws a nice parallel to the final lines of “A slumber did my spirit seal” where she is one with “rocks, and stones, and trees” (8).

The most description of Lucy that we get is really when Nature is describing what she will be like dead in “Three years she grew”—Lucy seems to be most inspiring for the speaker when she is representative of the natural world and its cycles. The speaker’s own place among nature is interesting, as well—he says he has “strange fits of passion,” and in the same poem describes himself following the moon, perhaps displaying a kind of lunacy that is also connected with Lucy (not just because the names also sound alike…but there could be a connection there). The passion and love that the speaker is able to express through all the poems contrasts intensely with Lucy’s silence and inability to express, or apparently feel, any passion, except through Nature, which clearly has power over her. The speaker appears to be outside of or above this influence at times, but his passions in connection with the moon/natural world and Lucy perhaps demonstrate the way in which he lives at the mercy of Nature as well, though there is no explicit reference to his eventual death.

A Comparison of "Michael"

“Michael,” for me, is very reminiscent of the type of poetry Chaucer was doing in his day. Both were focussed on elucidating different walks of life as well as being in conversation with their respective genres or structures within the literary tradition. They also operate in the same long-winded style of narrative poetry, which consciously constructs and follows character and narrative. Yet, the difference between the two poets seems to be that Wordsworth is pointing more toward universal beliefs and Chaucer concentrated on issues central to his society.

Wordsworth wants to point out the destructive nature of the urban compared to the simple life of the pastoral. The narrator states toward the end of the poem in regard to Luke, the son, “He in the dissolute city gave himself/ To evil courses: ignominy and shame/ Fell on him, so that he was driven at last/ To seek a hiding-place beyond the seas” (444-47). Not only has the city pulled the son from his family, it has caused the boy to abandon his homeland, irrevocably tearing the father from the son.

Comparing the separation present in “Michael” to that of Chaucer’s “The Man of Law’s Tale” (a comparison that may be a stretch due to the pieces’ striking differences) we can see the weight of environment in Wordsworth opposed to that of culture in Chaucer. Chaucer’s misfortunes come regardless of location, but are linked to the un-Christianness to the societies encountered (and general misogyny). Whereas Wordsworth seems to suggest society is constructed by location, the pastoral is more wholesome than the city because it is exactly not the city.

Wordsworth vs. Emerson

In class, we mentioned the similarities between Emerson and Wordsworth and the way in which they both display their love of nature through their writings. Having read some of Emerson's work in the other class I'm taking with Professor Oerlemans, I thought I would share some comparisons.

In "Tintern Abbey", Wordsworth recalls revisiting a beautiful area below Tintern Abbey, where he felt one with nature. He talks of the first time he was in this spot and the great affect it had on him. He carried it with him afterwards as a way to recall purity amidst a world lacking it. In his travels, he thinks back on his visit there and "oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the hear, / And passing even into my purer mind / With tranquil restoration" (26 - 31). Clearly Wordsworth's outlook on nature is that it holds something more pure and good then cities and other parts of the world. Emerson is similar in this way in that nature to him speaks to the soul. In his essay, "Nature", he claims that "Every natural face is a symbol of some spiritual fact." He believes fully in the connection man has to nature. 

Though both lovers of nature, I believe that Wordsworth and Emerson approach the way in which they share their love for it in their writings. Wordsworth wants to spread the love of nature but makes it more personal within "Tintern Abbey" by expressing his hope that his sister will have the same experiences in nature as he has, "Knowing that Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, / Through all the years of this our life, to lead / From joy to joy." It's important to him that she can carry the memory of the natural world when she is away from it. In this way, Wordsworth presents to the world how important nature is without demanding his audience have the same experience as him. 

Emerson's approach is different in this matter in that he asks a lot of his audience. In "Self Reliance", he is making the case that it is up to us to seclude ourselves in nature and find that higher state of mind but all the while suggesting that we're wrong if we don't do that. Overall, he is directly asking his readers to go out into nature and those who don't are blind. Emerson is pretentious in his delivery of his theories, which is a sense I don't get when reading Wordsworth.

“Michael” and the Sprawl of Eternity

“Michael” begins as a meta-narrative, with the speaker reciting the tale of a Shepard who passed away years before.  The story of Michael appears to come to a melancholy end, with the Shepard’s son having lost his way and leaving the old man without a legacy.  However, Michael’s memory is able to endure through the speaker’s account of his troubled life.  “Michael” is a poem that speaks to the redemptive power of storytelling, and the renewed life it can provide.

            Wordsworth begins by articulating how the ultimate storyteller is (in typical Wordsworth tradition) nature.   The speaker, wandering the brook, observes a pile of stones.  This pile of stones provides the introduction to the story of Michael, for they are the remains of the Sheep-fold he was unable to complete.  The unfinished structure, which the speaker says one “Might see and notice not” (16), may be of middling interest to the casual onlooker but were in fact the basis of Michael’s livelihood, and the bane of his final days as he was unable to lift the final stones.  There is a story of tragedy behind the simple rock pile – that of a man who loved his son only to see him go astray.  The fact that such a structure carries so much of a legacy speaks to the fact that nature has an infinite number of stories – a bountiful history - if one would just observe it.  The speaker reflects on the impact nature has on him with the lines, “Nature, by the gentle agency / Of natural objects, led me on to feel / For passions that were not my own” (29-31).  Nature allows the speaker to embody the feelings of someone else, to imagine himself (for instance) in the place of Michael the Shepard.  The tangible, physical objects of nature transport the speaker to a new emotional space.  The speaker argues that he can learn more from nature than any human or any book, for he can consider “On man, the heart of man, and human life” (33).

            The speaker coveys how he himself will live on due to the fact that he is reciting the story of Michael.  He states, “youthful Poets” (38) “Will be my second self when I am gone” (39).  Though the speaker may die, the inspiration his words give to future generations of artists will continue to endure.  In effect, the speaker is fighting to be remembered just as he is advocating for the reader to remember Michael.  In many ways, the speaker directly reflects Wordsworth, who through his writing became immortal (his poetry is still widely read today).  The speaker states his story is, “unenriched with strange events / Yet not unfit, I deem, for the fireside” (19 - 20) – essentially, a simple folktale.  However, because it is unadorned and simplistic – like the poetry in the language of the everyman Wordsworth advocates for in “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” – its impact is enhanced.

            Finally, the speaker pays tribute to Michael himself through his storytelling.  The speaker makes clear that Michael meant to uphold his legacy by passing his land down to his son.  However, his son fell into temptation and the Michael was left to care for the land alone.  By telling the Shepard’s story, the speaker is able to give Michael what he so desired in life.  He is able to let the Shepard’s memory endure even past his death.  Nature may stand as a monument to the Shepard, but it is poets such as the speaker that give objects such as the Sheep-fold meaning.  The speaker will ensure that Michael lives forever, just as he will through the pages of Wordsworth.