Poor Susan

Reading Wordsworth’s biography was very interesting. His life story was really a bit sad. He seemed lonely for a good portion of his life. It wasn’t until he was over the age of thirty that he married. Although the marriage was a positive he went on to lose his brother and two of his five children. After reading Wordsworth’s biography I already began making assumptions of what his poems would be like. I felt they would be sad based upon, what appeared, his own loneliness.

I focused on Wordsworth’s poem, Poor Susan. I enjoyed this poem because I felt the rhyme scheme made the poem easier to follow. It was a bit sing-songy, which I found made it more interesting. Also, the fact that it was sing-songy was somewhat ironic considering what the poem was about. The way that I read it made it feel lighter and happier when, in retrospect, the poem was a bit sad. Wordsworth is talking about a woman named Susan who seems to be pitied by everyone. She is considered an outcast and seems to be searching for her happiness. It seems that when she thinks she has found happiness it disappears and leaves her in the same condition that she was originally in. Between Wordsworth’s biography and Poor Susan, it seems Wordsworth may have been writing from a place of experience. It may be presumptuous to assume Wordsworth may have had loneliness in his life, but he quite clearly must have felt sadness and perhaps he was able to convey Susan’s sadness so well because of his experience with pain and loss.

Wordsworth … The Ending Made Me Sad

Wordsworth’s poem entitled, “Three years she grew in sun and shower,” captures the coming of maturity in the life of a young girl, followed by her untimely demise. The poem begins with Wordsworth’s beautiful description of the girl’s appearance and Nature’s realization of the girl’s beauty. Nature decides that it will take possession of the girl stating, “This Child I to myself will take/ She shall be mine, and I will make/ A Lady of my own.” Nature goes on to make a promise to the girl that she will become a part of all nature: rock and plain, earth and heaven, mountain springs and floating clouds. The girl, who in the final lines of the poem we learn is named Lucy, lives in peaceful harmony with Nature, until Nature decides its work is done. Soon after Nature makes its decision to step away from Lucy’s life (the end of maturation) she dies. Wordsworth concludes, “The memory of what has been/ And never more will be.”

This poem left me very simply, depressed. Lucy has been guided by “Nature” throughout her maturation, growing from beautiful girl to woman. She has become one with Nature and all its gifts, but just as she has reached maturation, she dies. As I read through the beginning of the poem I thought … “what beautiful writing” … not focused around slavery or women’s rights, but just beautiful. Then Lucy dies! I very much expected Lucy’s death, because of Wordsworth’s connection to the character, but I didn’t want it to happen.

Natural Selection

In his work, “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” William Wordsworth labels himself a “worshipper of Nature” (Line 153). His deeply entwined relationship with nature seems to inform all of his works, especially “Lines… above Tintern Abbey,” and “Lines written in early spring.”

In “…early spring,” Wordsworth seems to argue that the simple actions of hopping, playing birds and budding twigs represent a better and more pleasurable experience than human life. The opening stanza indicates that even while he reclines, relaxed, his pleasant thoughts “bring sad thoughts to the mind” (Line 4), while “every flower… enjoys the air it breathes” (Lines 11-12). I believe the entire poem sums up a general statement from Wordsworth, contending that as man has become more complex, he has forgotten the simplistic beauty that surrounds him. Most individuals take air, trees, birds, etc. for granted; they are elements of life that have always been there. Perhaps Wordsworth is arguing that the growth of complexity of man is due to his loss of awareness of life’s simple pleasures.

After all, Wordsworth was said to have learned more from nature and his travel experiences than from his studies. His “Lines… above Tintern Abbey” were composed following a trip there with his sister in the summer of 1798. The attitude is very different – while the reverence for nature is in both, this one seems to be more positive, perhaps due to the timing of its creation. It was said that Wordsworth spent cold winters cooped up in his home; “…early spring” may be the backlash of too much wintertime to think. “Tintern Abbey,” however, was written two weeks into July – the height of summer, it can be argued. “Tintern” seems to claim that nature helps us keep our faith in hope and good, and has an everlasting comfort value, which keeps our minds occupied to avoid any alternative states of evil or negativity. If this is the case, it can be proof to the attitude adjustment seen in Wordsworth’s “…early spring,” a reaction to the loss of his source of comforting solace and strength during the cold, dead winters.

Nature and Man in “The Thorn”

Wordsworth’s “The Thorn” certainly displays why he was considered by Victorians to be the poet of nature. He expresses more excitement and passion for the landscape than any other subject. I was struck by how he showd pity for the thorn as the moss clasped it, trying to bring it down. This image stayed with me as a read Martha Ray’s plight. It seems that she suffers the same misfortune; Wordsworth portrays society to be as menacing to Martha Ray as the moss is to the thorn. I also found it interesting the the man who betrayed her by marrying another is named Stephen Hill, and she finds solace sitting by a mountaintop, above him (and society).

At first I found the image of an infant’s grave (50-55) to be odd and eerie, but now I see it as a foreshadowing device for Martha’s story. I think Wordsworth does well to reinforce his belief that nature has an important place in our lives. The poet even mistakes Martha for a jutting cave. I think this shows that we are not as above nature as we think we are. He urges the Reader to experience nature as Martha has in line 108 to begin to understand what she has endured. Martha was mad with grief and rage, until nature reminded her of what she had inside her: a baby. To add to her sorrow, Martha lost the baby, and the town coldly wonders how it was lost. To Nature though, her story is just another element in the “Circle of Life” as it were.

Wordsworth’s Solitude

After reading a little about Wordsworth’s life, it seems to me that he went through a lot at an early age. He lost his mother at 8 years old, which split up his family, and then 5 years later, he lost his father. He seemed especially close to his sister Dorthy and ended up living with her in his later years. In his poem, “Lucy Gray”, end editor of our book gave the footnote that the events in the book were true to history in that a little girl did get lost in a snowstorm and ended up dying. Wordsworth’s sister told him this story to which he based this poem after. In another footnote, the editor tells us that the poet Coleridge thought that Wordsworth has a fear that his sister would die, so he wrote “Lucy Gray” from those emotions. It seems to me that Wordsworth’s past still haunts him with all the deaths in his family. He mentions “Lucy” in “Strange fits of passion have I known”, and Song (“She dwelt among th’ untrodden ways”). In each one, it refers to Lucy’s death and solitude in many ways. Wordsworth’s emphasis on another’s solitude directly relates to his own feelings of aloneness. His poems, to me, are a clear reflection of his past and have influenced his writings tremendously.