Book Review: Wordsworth and Coleridge Lyrical Ballads 1798

Title: Wordsworth and Coleridge Lyrical Ballads 1798

Authors: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Editor: W. J. B. Owen, Professor of English McMaster University

Published: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.  Pages-180.

This was the first collection of poems that Wordsworth and Coleridge put out.  It was released in 1798.  I got this book from my local library because I am interested in finding out more about the Lake poets.  Therefore, this was not a random pick out of the hat.  I have some meaning for reading and discussing this work.  This essay will cover a brief biographical sketch of the two poets and the editor, and next a discussion of the editor’s portion, and then finally my impression of the poems contained therein.

William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England and died April 23, 1850 in Grasmere, Westmorland, England.[1]  His mother died when he was eight, and his father five years later.[2] Before the age of thirteen , his father had him memorize “large portions” of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.[3]  He attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, in which he exhibited mediocre academic progress, and instead of striving for honors and fellowship, he settled with a pass degree in January 1791.[4]  In 1790, he made a walking tour through France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.[5]  In the 1795 he, with his sister Dorothy, met Coleridge and a developed into a very deep literary relationship.  “Their qualities were complementary: Coleridge ardent, animated, brilliant, unstable; Wordsworth solemn, withdrawn, introspective, deliberate; Coleridge taking a seraph’s eye view of all existence; Wordsworth brooding long and deeply over what he called “spots of time.””[6]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born October 21, 1772 in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, England and died on July 25, 1834 in Highgate, England.[7]  He had an excellent memory, read many books, translated German works, and was addicted to opium.[8]

Dr. Warwick J. B. Owen, “Jack,” was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1916 and died in Ontario, Canada in 2002.  Late Professor Emeritus of English at McMaster University, Canada, where he had taught since 1965 and he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1975.  “Jack Owen was a distinguished Wordsworth scholar whose research on the poet’s manuscripts and subsequent scholarly editions gained him an international reputation. The author of six books on the Romantic poet, many reviews, and over fifty articles mainly on Wordsworth and Spenser, he will be remembered particularly for his three-volume edition (with Jane Worthington Smyser) of The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (Clarendon, 1974) and his edition of The Fourteen Book Prelude (1985) in the definitive Cornell Wordsworth series.”[9] Owen was well recognized in his field and his insight aided me in understanding more about these two poets.

“The prime cause of the appearance of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 seems to have been the chronic poverty of its authors.”[10]  How often in my journey through the written world do I come across the circumstances that reaffirms the old adage, Necessity is the mother of invention.  A situation that has not changed much over the years.  An important person that I would be remiss if I did not mention, is Dorothy, the sister of William Wordsworth.  I came across her when I read of John Wilson and Thomas De Quincey.  In this production it seems she had an active hand, how much exactly, we will never know.  What make this work significant, is that it is a break from the traditional prosody we see from the early 18^th-century where poetry was dressed in a strict neo-classical form.  For better or worse, Lyrical Ballads, broke down those established customs and led to a new era in poetry.  Wordsworth thought it prudent to present both their works together, as he thought they would be complementary to each other, and that the reader may notice a difference in style, and yet notice a coherence in their overall theme as a representation of nature and of the common man. Wordsworth’s autobiographical The Prelude is referenced many times by Owen and it just so happens that this is on my short list of things to read soon.  I will be honest; Owen’s Introduction is very scholarly and covers details that I am not at a stage to appreciate.

The 1798 portion of the book starts with an advertisement written by Wordsworth.  It is really an apology for writing the book.  He states that the majority of the poems are experiments in which it is to be determined as to whether the conversational language of the middle and lower classes can be adapted to acceptable poetry.  The reader “should ask themselves if it contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents;” and if it should “they should consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own pre-established codes of decision.”[11]   At first, the book was published anonymously and did not have a wide circulation.  However, through its changes and reprints it gained recognition and influence.  Wordsworth was pleased and surprised at its acceptance.

Coleridge opens the work with “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.”  My mother was fascinated with this poem when she learned it in school many years ago and still gets excited talking about it.  I have read it many times and plan to read it many more.  The ancient mariner reminds me of Matthew Arnold’s “Wandering Jew,” and maybe something of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion motif that he portrays in several of his works.  I get the impression of a man who has experienced a mystical encounter and he is compelled to share this revelation with certain people that he meets.  There is no rational explanation that will completely encompass his journey, and to attempt this misses the mark.  It is a mixture of Christianity and pagan symbolism.  The event takes place outside a wedding feast and the ancient mariner stops one of three people to tell his tale.  This is not a random selection, but a deliberate, as he is compelled to tell the guest his tale.  The old man stops him with his hand and words, but this is not enough, however, the eyes of the old man stops him, and the guest sits upon a stone to listen.  The Church itself is a wedding of Christ and the Church.  The guest sits upon a stone which represents a firm foundation, at least he thinks so.  At first, he thought it would be a laughable tale, but instead he realizes it is much more solemn.  The mariner tells his story of a voyage which is blown off course by a storm.  How many times in life are we blown off course.  And the ship travels through mists and only a lone albatross visits them.  This bird is then shot by the mariner.  Something that was considered good and beneficial and done away with apparently no rhyme nor reason.  The mariner does not beat around the bush, but bluntly and tersely tells us I shot the albatross.  His shipmates are at first upset that he shot the bird, but when the fog is lifted they change their mind and say it was a good thing.  Then as the winds die down and they find themselves just floating on the water they curse him and claim it was his fault for what he had done, and they hang the albatross from his neck.  How true this is, the vacillations of the masses.  How they may know at first something was wrong, but because of circumstances they will change their mind and approve an immoral action.  Eventually, the sin must be acknowledged and the it weighs heavily upon his soul in the physical manifestation of the bird around his neck.  All of the crew, or rather society, suffers for his wrong.  They suffer from lack of water.  This crew is not some disassociated group of people, as we learn that his nephew is one of them.  The manifestation of the ghost ship is the spirit world and is part of that duality that is man.  We are just not materially mechanical beings, but we also have a spiritual side.  The crew all drop dead.  Death in two forms play dice for the men and ship.  The scene changes to a hellish symbology reminiscent of Dante’s inferno in fantastic imagery.  The mariner tries to pray but is unable.  This represents the chasm or gulf that he himself has put between himself and God.  It is only later when he has given up on his fate and sees the natural beauty of the water snakes and blesses him that his eyes are opened to truth and beauty and the albatross falls from off his neck and sinks like lead into the ocean.  This is the nature loving and symbology that both Wordsworth and Coleridge were attempting in this collection. That it is by observing nature, we can see God’s glory and by truly appreciating it, we can be saved.  In the final section of the poem he calls for us to return to the Kirk.  The Kirk was the name for the Church of Scotland, and we must all pray together and bend to the Father’s will.  “He prayeth well who loveth well both man and bird and beast.  He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small: For the dear God, who loveth us, He made an loveth all.”

“The Foster-Mother’s Tale” is another poem by Coleridge that is given in the form of a dialogue between Maria and her foster-mother.  She tells the tale of an abandoned babe found by a woodsman who grew up to be “A pretty boy, but most unteachable – and never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead, but knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes, and whistled, as if he were a bird himself.”  This youth was befriended by a grey-haired Friar who taught him how to read and write.  The youth then “read, and read, and read, ‘till his brain turned – and ere his twentieth year, he had unlawful thoughts of many things.”  Did Coleridge identify with this sentiment?  Did he find himself troubled over books he had read, perhaps some doctrine that would be considered heretical?  “And though he prayed, he never loved to pray with holy men, nor in a holy place.”  And one day while he was walking, with his patron Lord, the earth shuddered, opened up a hole, and a wall collapsed almost falling on the two.  A confession is hastily given “of all the heretical and lawless talk which brought this judgment.”  The youth is then punished by being buried alive in this same hole.  The foster-mother then tells us how her husband’s father was working in the cellar next to where the youth had been buried and heard a youthful voice singing “about green fields, how sweet it were on lake or wild savannah, to hunt for food, and be a naked man, and wander up and down at liberty.”  The man takes pity on the youth and digs through the wall and lets him out.  The “poor mad youth” goes to the new world and one night stealed away, “up a great river, great as any sea, and ne’er was heard of more: but ‘tis supposed, he lived and died among the savage men.”

“Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree” was written by Wordsworth about a man who squandered his talent given him by God.  He uses the backdrop of the idyllic scenery of Lake Esthwaite to give us a moralistic tale of a man who was given the talent of genius and “no common soul.” This man “went forth, pure in his heart, against the taint of dissolute tongues, ‘gainst jealousy, and hate, and scorn, against all enemies prepared, all but neglect.”  And when he went out in the world, all prepared to help mankind, they took no notice, and he was hurt.  He retreated back to this spot of rustic solitude and nursed his hurt feelings and pride until his dying day.  Wordsworth ends with a warning to others who may be similarly blessed to be mindful of pride.  It can be very easily disguised as a personal majesty, but be aware that pride is littleness, and if you have “contempt for any living thing,” then you are not using all your potentials, you have not matured.  For the true scholar who fulfills his holy obligation and uses his talents wisely will realize that “true knowledge leads to love” of all living things.  “True dignity abides with him alone who, in the silent hour of inward thought, can still suspect, and still revere himself, in lowliness of heart,” in other words, he is humble.

“The Nightingale” was written by Coleridge and is an ode to the nightingale that reminds me so much of Percy Bysshe Shelley that I cannot but think that this poem influenced him.  The ending contains such a personal and touching scene of Coleridge with his infant son, that I wish to repeat it here.  “…and once when he awoke in most distressful mood (some inward pain had made up that strange thing, an infant’s dream) I hurried with him to our orchard plot, and he beholds the moon, and hush’d at once suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, while his fair eyes that swam with undropt tears did glitter in the yellow moon-beam!”

“The Female Vagrant” is a poem by Wordsworth that wrenches at my heart.  It is a tale of a vagrant woman, and how she came to such dire straits.  It starts so beautiful, she is raised by a good, pious, honest father, who came from honest parents, in a cottage that he owned, with “one field, a flock, and what the neighbouring flood supplied.”  He taught her to pray and read, and read she did, with pleasure all the books she could, including books of her neighbors.  But this tranquil scene was interrupted after twenty years by a new mansion that was built nearby.  The owner did not want to look out upon other people’s cottages, and walk through their fields, so he bought up all he could.  Her father loved the cottage that he built and did not let greed sway him to give up his happy home.  But the manor lord had other ideas and made life difficult for him.  Soon he could not purchase supplies and even access to water was denied.  It is a sad story, and her and aged father must leave her only home she ever knew.  She seeks shelter in a nearby town from and childhood friend that had been sent to live in a town to earn his living as an artisan.  He welcomes and her aged sire, they are married and soon have three little children as the years go by.  Things are looking good, when times turn rough, and soon there is not enough to eat.  Her father dies, and the husband enlists and goes to war.  She, and the three little ones, follow with him across the sea.  It is there she loses her husband to the sword and her babes to the plague.  She awakes on a British ship that is returning.  But this return is filled with even more grief as she is left with nothing “and homeless near a thousand homes I stood, and near a thousand tables pined, and wanted food.”  After a few days, she succumbs to extreme hunger and is taken to a hospital.  Her memory is gone, but slowly she recovers it and her health before she is once more put out on her own.  With no one to turn to she goes out of the city and finds comfort where she least expected it, with vagabonds and thieves.  “My heart is touched to think that men like these, the rude earth’s tenants, were my first relief: and their long holiday that feared not grief, for all belonged to all, and each was chief.”  But this type of life does not sit well with one who was raised liked she was.  “But ill it suited me, in journey dark o’er moor and mountain, midnight theft to hatch; to charm the surly house-dog’s faithful bark, or hang on tiptoe at the lifted latch; the gloomy lantern, and the dim blue match, the black disguise, the warning whistle shrill, and ear still busy on its nightly watch, were not for me, brought up in nothing ill.”  But, what could she do.  No help from any family of her own, or her husband.  “Ill was I then for toil or service fit: with tears whose course no effort could confine, by high-way side forgetful would I sit whole hours, my idle arms in moping sorrow knit.”  She lived on “the mercy of the fields,” even sleeping in them as needs she must.  The worst agony is that which haunts the mind and soul, Coleridge captures that with her confession: “But, what afflicts my peace with keenest ruth is, that I have my inner self abused, foregone the home delight of constant truth, and clear and open soul, so prized in fearless youth.”  She knows how far she has fallen, and this hurts most of all.

“Goody Blake and Harry Gill” is noted as a true story and is also by Wordsworth.  Goody Blake was an old, poor woman who lived by herself.  She went out one night in the cold to fetch some wood from Harry Gill’s property.  He had been up all-night waiting, hoping to find the one who had been stealing from him.  He saw her approach, load up, and start away, when he jumped up and confronted her.  She cursed him then that he should never be warm again, and from that day on till the end of his days, he could never get warm and his teeth chattered with a chill as with a constant chill.  The story is an example of a moral tale and how karma will come back and bite you, and in Harry’s case it was a very cold bite!

“Lines written at a small distance from my House and sent by my little Boy to the Person to whom they are addressed” has the longest title of any poem in this book and was written by Wordsworth.  It is the first day of spring and he sends his little boy off with a letter to his sister.  He wants her to forget her chores for the day, rush back home, change into a woodland dress, and without the usual book, go out, and enjoy the great outdoors in a day of idleness.  He says, “One moment now may give us more than fifty years of reason; our minds shall drink at every pore the spirit of the season.”  It is the “first mild day of March” and with his description one can understand why the calendar used to start in March.

“Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman” by Wordsworth tells the story of an old man, and like all men, he used to be young.  Where once he was the proud huntsman sounding the horn, known “four counties round” and able to outrun everyone; he is now lean, sick, short, where he once was tall, missing an eye, his legs are thin and his ankles swollen, he has no children, and his only aid is Ruth, his aged wife, who is just a wee bit stouter.  There is no great tale here, but rather one of a deeper human level.  All old people have a tale to tell, of times when they were younger.  Wordsworth finds this old man trying to remove a stump on his pallid piece of land.  The man scarce has a few months of life left, that is plain enough to see, but he is working on this stump, something, that at the rate he is going, will take an eternity.  He asks if he can give a hand, and it is much appreciated, with one mighty blow from the vigorous man the root is quickly severed.  The old man thanks him: “The tears into his eyes were brought, and thanks and praises seemed to run so fast out of his heart, I thought they never would have done.”

“Anecdote for Fathers” by Wordsworth is a lesson he learned from his five-year-old son about how we teach someone to lie.  He asked his son in idle conversation while they were out one fine day, whether he preferred “Our home by Kilve’s delightful shore, or here at Liswyn farm?”  Carelessly the boy answered he would rather be at Kilve.  Now this was not the answer the father expected, and he asked him why this was so, and the boy responded, “I cannot tell, I do not know.”  Not satisfied, five times the father questioned, hoping to find some other answer, the reason for his liking.  Finally, the boy, with head hung down, states “At Kilve there was no weather-cock, and that’s the reason why.”  Now, the father realizes the mistake he made, teaching his son to lie.  The poem ends in “O dearest, dearest boy! my heart for better lore would seldom yearn, could I but teach the hundredth part of what from thee I learn.”  The father was humbled by this incident and was able to reflect on it, I wish I had been so wise…

“We are Seven” by Wordsworth presents a tale of an eight-year-old cottage girl who is one of seven children.  “Seven are we, and two of us ay Conway dwell, and two are gone to sea.  Two of us in the church-yard lie, my sister and my brother, and in the church-yard cottage, I dwell near them with my mother.”  The narrator then insists that “That ye are only five.”  They banter back and forth and finally the narrator gives up, for it is just “throwing words away; for still the little Maid would have her will, and said, “Nay, we are seven!””  I am reminded of Matthew 18:3 where Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  And when in Luke 20:38 “and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

“The Thorn” by Wordsworth consists of twenty-three stanzas.  It is a tale of Martha Ray, who was engaged to Stephen Ray, and on their wedding day, he married another.  The had already been familiar with each other and she was with child.  She was filled with madness and some sensibility may have returned to her when her baby was born, but alas, it died, whether from its mother’s hands or natural causes, we do not know.  The child is buried off of the path on a side of a hill near an old thorn that no longer grows and is overgrown with lichen and moss so much it looks like a stone.  Nearby this is a small pond of two feet by three feet, the narrator has measured it.  And next to it is a mound of such slight build that is the alleged grave of an Martha’s infant child.  Wordsworth slowly builds up the story, waxing more and more of this forlorn spot that “is like an infant’s grave in size.”  We are told of the locals whispering of such supernatural phenomena as, “I’ve heard the scarlet moss is red with drops of that poor infant’s blood; but kill a new-born infant thus! I do not think she could.  Some say if the pond you go, and fix on it a steady view, the shadow of a babe you trace, a baby and a baby’s face, and that it looks at you; whene’er you look on it, ‘tis plain the baby looks at you again.”  And even more when some went up to dig up the mound and look for infant bones “the beauteous hill of moss before their eyes began to stir; and for full fifty yards around, the grass it shook upon the ground,” scaring away those that dared disturb the little mound.

In “The Last of the Flock” by Wordsworth, the narrator encounters a man along the highway holding a dead lamb and crying.  The narrator asks him what in the world could be the matter for a grown man to cry as such.  The man starts his tale and tells how he had a healthy flock of sheep full fifty strong and ten children in the home.  There came a time when he was in need and to the parish he went.  They asked him how they could lend him assistance and take away from the poor who are in such dire need to help a rich man such as he.  They told him he must sell a sheep to make ends meet.  Now he really loved these sheep so much that parting with them was so heart breaking.  And as times did not improve he had to keep selling one by one till eventually only this one little lamb was left.  He had just found it lifeless on a rock.  Did the parish let him down by not helping when he needed it most and now he has no means of providing for his ten children?  Did the loss of sheep in “They dwindled, Sir, sad sight to see! From ten to five, from five to three, a lamb, a weather, and a ewe; and then at last from three to two; and of my fifty, yesterday I had but only one, and here it lies upon my arm, Alas! and I have none; To-day I fetched it from the rock; it is the last of all my flock,” refer to just sheep, or also his ten children?  I wondered about that term “weather” and I found out that a wether is a castrated male sheep.  Therefore, he had no way to grow his flock with the final three.

“The Dungeon” by Coleridge questions the use of the dungeon as a curative for moral maladies.  He argues that the uncomfortable, dismal, solitary, “circled with evil” surroundings will deform the very essence of the soul.  Instead he calls for “sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, till he relent, and can no more endure to be a jarring and a dissonant thing, amid this general dance and minstrelsy; but, bursting into tears, wins back his way, his angry spirit healed and harmonized by the benignant touch of love and beauty.”  This argument is based on the foundation of whether or not human beings are inherently good or evil.  The question becomes, if we are left to our own devices and natures idyllic beauty will we become naturally more good so that we are in harmony with nature or are we inherently corrupt and need some higher power to lift us up and make us better than what we are.

“The Mad Mother” by Wordsworth is about a young woman with an infant child who has been abandoned by the father.  She is quite mad, but, her maternal instincts still keep her on the verge of sanity as we hear her exclaim, “Suck, little babe, oh suck again!  It cools my blood; it cools my brain; thy lips I feel them, baby! they draw from my heart the pain away.”  The mother fears that her own son may also be mad as she states, “Where art thou gone my own dear child?  What wicked looks are those I see?  Alas! alas! that look so wild, it never, never, came from me: If thou art mad, my pretty lad, then I must be for ever sad.”  I could not help while reading this of thinking of Martha Ray from the poem “Thorn.”

“The Idiot Boy” by Wordsworth is an attempt to capture the love of a mother for a child that has decreased mental capabilities.  The mother, Betty Foy, loves her child Johnny and does not realize his limited capabilities and puts him in a potentially very dangerous situation.  Her friend, Susan Gale, is very sick and needs a doctor.  There is no one else to send, so Betty sends her son Johnny on a pony to town after dark to get the doctor.  The lad starts out but has no clue where he is going and why.  He just lets the pony wander where it will.  Hours and hours go by and Betty gets worried for her little boy.  She goes out to look for him, reaches the doctors house, and is so frantic asking about her little boy, she forgets to even mention Susan being sick.  The doctor states I have not seen your boy and goes back in and off to bed.  Now Betty is in a state, she thinks the worse, she thinks her son is dead and may have drowned or worse.  She gets so despondent she even contemplates drowning herself.  But then she thinks of the pony and how it likes the meadow so much, suppose he went there.  She finds her little Johnny safe and sound.  Meanwhile, Susan is very distressed, she over comes her ills to get up and find Betty and Johnny.  The worry seemed to cure her, and one wonders just how bad she really was.  There is a happy reunion as they all start home.  Betty marvels at the thought of what great adventures her little boy went through on this long night wandering around.  He tells her simply, “The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, and the sun did shine so cold.”

“Old Man Traveling” by Wordsworth is about an old man walking along, almost stoically.  The poem describes him without pain, quiet, subdued, patient, mild composure, and peaceful.  Then, when the narrator asks him where he is headed and why, he responds, “Sir! I am going many miles to take a last leave of my son, a mariner, who from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth, and there is dying in an hospital.”  And the poet shows us how we really might not know someone, like the old adage, don’t judge a book by its cover.  For this old man was actually deep in thought over the coming loss of his son.  Perhaps he was contemplating their last words together.

“The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman” by Wordsworth is a tale of a Northern Indian woman left behind by her companions.  It may be hard for us to understand as we do not live a nomadic life.  This is a culture that is different from ours.  The woman is sick and unable to continue with her companions.  They take away her child and leave her with food, water, firewood, and animal skins.  She is left with the understanding that if she recovers, she can join them again or perhaps another group may come by and she will be able to join with them.  But if not, she will surely die.  She tries to catch up, but fails, wolves has stole her food, and she succumbs to the cold.  Her last wish was that she could have at least seen her child one more time and then pass on.

“The Convict” by Wordsworth deals with the same issues as Coleridge’s “Dungeon” that I described above.

The final poem is “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” or usually referred to as simply “Tintern Abbey.”  It is by Wordsworth and is a reflection on how his early forays into these rustic areas provided resources long after he left them.  I liken it to he collected wonderful treasures of silver, gold, and gems while he frolicked and played in his younger days.  These treasures, of sublime natural beauty aided him as he encountered life’s vicissitudes.  It reminds me of his poem “Daffodils.”

This completes my look at “Lyrical Ballads.”  I enjoyed the book and hope to read many of the poems again and again.  However, even if I do not, I know they will be there with me as I go through life, and I can always take a quiet moment to pause and reflect on these poetic treasures from Coleridge and Wordsworth.

[1] Basil Willey, Wordsworth, William, in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica 15^th Ed. Macropaedia Bk. 19, (1983) 929-32

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] John Bernard Beer, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, in The New Encyclopaedia Brittanica 15^th Ed. Macropaedia Bk. 4, (1983) 837-42

[8] Ibid.

[9] Brian John, “Warwick J.B. Owen 1916-2002,” Royal Society of Canada, accessed April 6, 2018, http://rsc-src.ca/en/search-fellows.

[10] William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth and Coleridge Lyrical Ballads 1798 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), Introduction vii.

[11] Ibid. 3