In this paper I am going to compare two poems from
different authors. One poem is called I wandered Lonely As a Cloud: The
Daffodils, written by William Wordsworth; and the other poem is called Mariana,
written by Alfred Tennyson..
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
William Wordsworth was a defining member of the
English Romantic Movement. Like other Romantics, Wordsworth´s personality and
poetry were deeply influenced by his love of nature, especially by the sights
and scenes of the
Wordsworth,
William 1888. Complete poetical works.
< http: www.bartleby.com/1457>
Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in the country of
joint
publication of Lyrical Ballads.
Wordsworth was England´s Poet Laureate from 1843 until
his death in 1850. He received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838
from
“William Wordsworth”.
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth
Wordsworth belongs to Romanticism.
The Romantic
Movement
The last quarter of the 18th century was a
time of social and political turbulence, with revolutions in the
In poetry, the Romantic movement emphasized the
creative expression of the individual and the need to find and formulate new
forms of expression.
The Romantics, with the partial exception of Byron, rejected
the poetic ideals of the eighteenth century.
Additionally, the Romantic movement marked a shift in the
use of language. Attempting to express the "language of the common
man", Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic poets focused on employing poetic
language for a wider audience, countering the mimetic, tightly constrained
Neo-Classic poems.
Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement
that originated around the middle of the 18th century in
“The Romantic Movement”.Wikipedia:
The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry#The_Romantic_movement
ALFRED TENNYSON, 1ST
BARON TENNYSON (6 August 1809- 6 October 1892)
He was poet Laureate of the
“Alfred
Tennyson”. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson
He was born in Somersby in
He
also had a lifelong fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a
mild form of epilepsy, which was then thought a shameful disease. His father
and brother Arthur made their cases worse by excessive drinking. His brother
Edward had to be confined in a mental institution after 1833, and he himself
spent a few weeks under doctors´ care in
In
1827 Tennyson escaped the troubled atmosphere of his home when he followed his
two older brothers to
Tennyson, Alfred. Biographical
Materials. A brief biography
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennyov.html
Tennyson
belongs to Victorianism.
Victorianism : the term “Victorianism”, which
literally describes things and events in the reign of Queen
Victorian and Victorianism. George P. Landow, Professor
of English and Art History.
In a
lecture on 13 December
The
Victorians invented the modern idea of invention – the notion that one can
create solutions to problems, that man can create new means of bettering
himself and his environment.
In ideology,
politics, and society, the Victorians created astonishing innovation and
change: democracy, feminism, unionization of workers, socialism, Marxism and
other modern movements took form.
In a
lecture of the same day, Dr Vicente Fores stated, “the artists, writer,
painter...of Victorian era are more conscious of their responsability. What
effect has their production in society? They have a social responsability of
their art.
Social Class
Different
social classes can be distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power,
authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life-styles, life-span,
education, religion, and culture. Early in the nineteenth century the labels
“working classes” and “middle classes” were already coming into common usage.
In the
lecture of the same day, “appearance of middle class and the spreading of
middle class is something that define Victorian age”.
The
working classes, however, remained shut out from the political process, and
became increasingly hostile not only to the aristocracy but to the middle
classes as well. As the Industrial Revolution progressed there was further
social stratification. Capitalists, for example, employed industrial workers
who were one component of the working classes. This basic hierarchical structure,
comprising the “upper classes”, the “middle classes”, the “working classes”.
Social Class. David Coy, Associate Professor of
English.
POEMS
The
first poem called The Daffodils,
was written in 1804. It is a poem inspired by an April 15, 1802 event in which
Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy came across a “long belt” of daffodils. It
was first published in 1807, and a revised version was released in
The
inspiration for the poem may have been a walk he took with his sister Dorothy
around
“ I
never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and
about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for
weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they
verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so
gay ever changing. (“Wordsworth, Dorothy. The
"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D 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;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
The second poem
called Mariana, was written in 1830. It is a poem which is
included in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830). This collection were received
into a fully politized literary scene (Tennyson 12). The year 1830, when Tennyson published Poems,
Chiefly Lyrical, and the two years followed, saw revolutionary movements in
many European countries and major upheavals in
The subtitle is Mariana
of the Moated Grange.The subtitle first appears in William Shakespeare´s dark comedy Measure
for Measure and is the inspiration for the poem. In Shakespeare's work,
Mariana waits in a grange for her lover, who has deserted her. At the end of
Shakespeare's work, Mariana is re-united. However, there is no happy ending in
Tennyson's work.
“Mariana”
WITH
blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all.
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'My life is
dreary,
He
cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would
that I were dead!'
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, 'The night is
dreary,
He
cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would
that I were dead!'
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'The day is
dreary,
He
cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would
that I were dead!'
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, 'My life is
dreary,
He
cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would
that I were dead!'
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, 'The night is
dreary,
He
cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would
that I were dead!'
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call'd her from without.
She only said, 'My life is
dreary,
He
cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary,
aweary,'
I would
that I were dead!'
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, 'I am very
dreary,
He will
not come,' she said;
She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,
O God,
that I were dead!
ANALYSIS
Daffodils is a typical poem of the Romantic
Movement and incorporates the ideas and aspects that are essential in Romantic
poetry.
THEMES
The theme of the poem is Wordsworth celebrating Nature´s beauty. The
plot is extremely simple, depicting the poet´s wandering and his discovery of a
field of daffodils by a lake, the memory of which pleases him and comforts him
when he is lonely, bored, or restless. The key of the poem is joy.
The poem is one of the last remaining genuinely popular poems. From it,
one gains an image of Wordsworth as someone sustained and cheered by the
flowers he finds when he is walking among the dales and hills. In other words,
Wordsworth´s natural world seems to be restricted to the country – implicity
denying that urban life is “natural”—and, secondly, Wordsworth is seen as
emotionally nourished by attractive, rural objects.
Nature in this context means, roughly speaking, the non-urban or rural
and this meaning of the word now predominates. When celebrating Wordsworth as a
nature poet, it is easy to assume he is no more than a spokesperson for rural
values or for the National Trust, the society established in the late nineteenth
century for the preservation of the finest of the English landscape, amongst
the founders of which were many admirers of his poetry. It is easy, in other
words, to forget that in Wordsworth´s day “Nature” was a term continuously
employed in profound theological, philosophical, and political debates. Nature
could be seen as brutal or as a harmonious system reflecting the perfect order
of its creator or as the world of the heart not the head – as a realm of
intuitions and affections which counterbalanced the overly strict dictates of
reason.
Tennyson, Alfred. The
Daffodils are happy flowers. They are the first flower of spring and
seeing them brings joy to many people. William Wordsworth is considered a poet
of nature and a topographic or landscape poet. Wordsworth´s “Daffodils” has a
meaning and structure in which different techniques such as figurative
language, imagery, and personification are used to successfully express his joy
and feelings of glee in the vision of the daffodils dancing in the breeze.
Mariana is obviously related to the symbolist
project. The poem is about isolation. Mariana is a woman who is lamenting
repeteadly: “My life is dreary, he cometh not, she said; “ I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead. Her loneliness encourages her to wish he own death.
Mariana is a poem about the misery of one woman who is waiting for a lover who
never comes.
STRUCTURE
The first stanza, the first sentence “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, has
image of “cloud” which is a metaphor for himself and describes something that
is considered peaceful. Both, he and the cloud are aspects of the world, which
is subject to the laws of nature but they can still retain their freedom in
spite of this. Through nature, a mood is instantly created in the first line.
The atmosphere established in this poem is very peaceful and the use of nature
creates a tranquil yet joyful setting. The imagery of nature and the
peacefulness that is created is accomplished through the many metaphors,
similes and descriptive language that he uses.
Describing the
daffodils the poet mentions only one colour: golden; but the whole poem
implicitly suggests a wealth of colours: white = clouds; green = hills, vales,
trees; blue = lake; silver = star; silver-white = milky way
In the beginning line is not describing Mariana, but it is
setting of the mood of the poem with a description of her surroundings. In the
first stanza, the author is describing an abandoned grange, in which the
“flower-plots” are covered by moss.
In the poem Daffodils, the word “daffodils” is the most important
in the poem. Here, the author personifies the daffodils as dancers (line 6),
and compares them to the stars, which reflect the beauty and consistency of
nature (line 7 and 8).
In Mariana, the second stanza says that the woman is crying all
day. We know this because of the words “even” ,and the word “morn” .These words
are contractions of the words “evening” and “morning”
According to James. J. Sherry, sweet heaven in line 3 ”is not the view
of Mariana´s consciousness. There is within the poem another perspective on the
landscape, and this undercuts the identification of self with non-self. The
consciouness of Mariana is disturbed in relation with the landscape, but not by
a fundamentally different mode of seeing. The deconstructive reading is there,
perhaps, for the reader determined to read gaps and incoherences rather than
for achieved effects, but the poem hardly insists upon it.
In line 1 and 2 “her tears fell... her tear fells..” we find an anaphora.
It is the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of
successive clauses.
In Daffodils, in the second stanza, we find the use of simile in
line 1 and 2. this line creates an image of the wind blowing the tops of random
daffodils up and down, so they appear to glint momentarily as their faces catch
the sun.
In the third stanza of Mariana, we see an enumeration of animal
vocabulary: night-fowl crow, cock, oxen. According to Dwight Culler , grange
“is described by the poetic speaker, only the refrain being put into Mariana´s
mouth, one has the impression that the entire poem is spoken by Mariana.
The fourth stanza has the word “poplar”, which is a symbol. On one
level, the symbol of “poplar tree” has different meanings. For example, in the
fourth and fifth stanzas, the poplar can be interpreted as a sort of phallic
symbol. On another level, the poplar is an important image from classical
mithology.
In the sixth stanza we find an alliteration in line 6-8 of the word
“old”. An alliteration is a repetition of consonants in nearby words.
In the last stanza of Daffodils, line 1 and 2, could easily be a
way to describe a meditative state where the forces of the universe and our connection
with the ceaseless movement.
In the last stanza of Mariana, the chorus changes. Now it is
not “my life” but “I am”. Now it is not “she said” but “she wept”, and the last line is “Oh God, that I were dead!”. The refrain of
the poem functions like an incantation, which contributes to the atmosphere of
enchantment. It is not the grange, but the person, who has been abandoned. The
woman´s mind has been abandoned. This is an example of the “pathetic fallacy”,
coined by the writer John Ruskin in the nineteenth century. This phrase refers
to our tendency to attribute our emotional and psychological states to the
natural world. Tennyson here also uses this method to create emotional force.
In the poem of Daffodils, we have images of nature, including a
field of daffodils, posses human qualities in the poem. These natural images
express Wordsworth´s self-reflections. We can see natural images such as clouds
(line 1 of the poem), hills (line 2), lake (line 5), trees (line 5), stars
(line 7), and breeze (line 6).
The lake, the breeze and the stars are associated with “self-joy” and contented solitude. The word
“dance” is in every stanzas. Dance the cosmic creative energy that transforms
space into time, is the rhythm of the universe.
In Mariana, Tennyson uses Keatsian descriptions of the natural
world to describe a woman´s state of mind. He conveys via his natural setting
the consciousness of a woman waiting vainly for her lover, and her increasing
hopelessness.
VERSIFICATION
The poem of Daffodils presents a perfect structure. It is divided
into four stanzas which corresponds to the various moods of the poet. In
Daffodils, the four six line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet
rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.
Mariana takes the form of seven twelve-line
stanzas, each of which is divided into three four-line rhyme units according to
the pattern ABABCDDCEFEF.
All the poems´s lines fall into iambic tetrameter, with the exception of
the trimeter of the tenth and twelfth lines.
The stanzas are repetitive. The last four lines are always the same with
a slight variation in the last stanza.
The first, fourth and sixth stanzas can be grouped together, not only
because they all share the exact same refrain, but also because they are only
stanzas that take place in the daytime.
BOTH STYLES
- Tennyson used
a wide range of subject matter, ranging from medieval legends to classical
myths and from domestic situations to observations of nature, as source
material for his poetry. The influence of John Keats and other Romantic poets
published before and during his childhood is evident from the richness of his
imagery and descriptive writing. He also handled rhythm masterfully.
- The dominant twentieth-century ideas about Literature would lead us to
suppose that Tennyson´s poetry would have relatively little to do with imperial
expansion or electoral reform.
- The beauty of atmosphere in which Tennyson continues to cast around
his work, molding it in the blue mystery of twlight. This atmosphere produces
an almost unfailing illusion of mirage of loveliness.
- Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes. Tennyson
wrote a number of phrases that have become commonplaces of the English
language, including: “nature, red in tooth and claw”, “better to have loved and
lost”, “theirs not to reason why/ theirs but to do and die”, and “My strength is as the strength of ten/
Because my heart is pure”. He is the second most frequently quoted writer in
the English language, after Shakespeare.
- Tennyson will be important to readers today because of the enduring
profundity of his writings.
- Wordsworth´s poetry is
inmortal because his words are for us. His heart sang of the beauty that he
saw. He found beauty in everything he wrote about. He writes that we should
find our joy in nature.
- The author did not write by using lofty, eloquent language.
- He finds no need to embellish his phrases for sophistication. He uses
common language, simply words.
- Nature did not need to be invented or built up in his poems because it
was itself more wonderful than anything could ever be imagined.
- As Wordsworth worked to revive the powers he felt as a child, he
plunged into his past. As a result, he was able to free himself of the time´s
poetic conventions and use pure language to compose testaments of the wonders
of the world around us.
- Wordsworth´s poetry is about the “sense sublime”/ Of something far
more deeply interfused”, but much of it is immediately and overtly about
mountains and lakes, about clouds and weather and growing things. This
immediately attractive aspect of the poetry eventually became the primary
identifier of “Wordsworth” – Wordsworth
the “Nature poet”.
- He was obsessed with ensuring that nothing was lost from his past: “ I
look into past times as prophets look / Into futurity”.
BIBLIOGRAFIA
-
Gill Stephen. The
-
Tennyson Alfred, Sinfield
Alan, Blackwell Basil. Reading Literature.
-
The penguin poetry library;
Wordsworth. Poems. Selected by W. E. Williams.
-
Wordworth. Selected Poetry
and Prose. Routledge English texts. Edited by Philip Hobsbaum.
-
Lionel Trilling and Harold
Bloom. Victorian Prose and Poetry.
-
Wordsworth,
William 1888. Complete poetical works.
< http: www.bartleby.com/1457>
-
“William
Wordsworth”. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth
-
“The
Romantic Movement”.Wikipedia:
The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry#The_Romantic_movement
- “Alfred Tennyson”. Wikipedia: The Free
Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson
- Tennyson, Alfred. Biographical
Materials. A brief biography
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennyov.html
-
Victorian and Victorianism.
George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History.
-
Social Class.
David Coy, Associate Professor of English.