“The Thorn”: A Requiem for a Lost Child

Mankind’s relationship with nature is a thematic subject that is at the forefront of “The Thorn.”  The poem concerns a woman who may or may not have killed her child.  Regardless of whether the child’s body lies on the mountaintop where she returns to weep, his character is represented in the story by nature.  “I cannot tell how this may be,” (32) the speaker says of the rumors of the mother’s possible murder of her child.  With the uncertainty over the mother’s role in her child’s death, the only evidence the speaker can rely on is the natural landscape.

            The poem suggests that the mountaintop and the child may be literally connected.  For example, there are rumors that the moss’s red color is from the blood of the child.  It is also said that the child can be seen in the pond, with a face that “looks at you” (218).  The child is therefore embedded in nature regardless of whether he is actually buried there.  The mountaintop is not only a “shrine” to the child – it has become the symbolic “child” because of the child’s literal absence.  The fact that the mountaintop has become the metaphorical “child” of the mother is clear from the language the speaker uses to describe the mountain.  For example, the thorn is said to be “no higher than a two year’s child” (5).

            The resilient thorn itself represents the mother’s curse, for she is doomed to return to the mountaintop every day to weep.  For example, the thorn is “erect” despite the moss that threatens to “drag it to the ground” (20).  Thus, the woman’s grief is persistent and unyielding.  The thorn is also described as “ melancholy” (15) and “forlorn” (9), traits that can be applied to the woman after the loss of her husband and her child.  The thorn is not prickly, but has “knotted joints” (8) – representing the twisted mass of emotions within her.  This is appropriate considering the woman lives with her grief in a “knot” that she cannot untangle.

            The old and grey thorn contrasts with the “beauteous heap” (36) of the colored moss.  The moss is “An infant’s grave in size” (52) and even more “fair” (55).  This statement is ominous even given the possibility that the child is buried under the moss.  The suggestion that the infant’s grave is “fair” could be ascribed to the fact that the infant is “good” – not yet able to be corrupted by the world.  The disparity between the descriptions of moss and the thorn could reflect the how the “good” and the “corrupted” can exist in tandem with one another (such as potentially in the woman who may or may not have killed her child).

             The mystery of whether the woman killed her child is not the focus of “The Thorn.”  Instead, the poem stresses that woman views her child as connected to a specific place.  The line between humanity and the physical world in which we exist blur in this instance.  It is as if, to Wordsworth, the physical world is of equal importance to the unseen elements – such as the soul.  Therefore, to Wordsworth observing nature can be a revelatory experience.