Another well-known poem by William Wordsworth is the ‘Daffodils’. This poem defines the inner beauty of something we just see as flowers.
He feels as if he were wandering ‘lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills’ unrestricted to journey anywhere he likes. This specific line ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ represents an event that took place in Wordsworth’s life and a personal experience. It appears that he is independent, possessing a free spirit and unbound to do what he likes. While roaming as a cloud he ‘saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils’. He could see the daffodils everywhere he looked. ‘Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze’. It felt to him as if the daffodils were really dancing in he breeze waving side to side. Wordsworth's choice of the word ‘breeze’ concedes that the tenderness it implies is fully consistent with the positive mood engendered by the poem. The simple joy evinced by the daffodils reveals the workings of the imagination as it transmutes experience and the emotions arousing into one simple emotion. He then describes the beauty of the flowers in more detail as shining stars ‘that twinkle on the Milky Way’. He alleges to have seen ‘Ten thousand daffodils at a glance’. Next to the daffodils, he saw the waves also dancing but he mentions specifically that the daffodils ‘Out-did the sparkling waves in glee’: ‘I gazed – and gazed – but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought:’ Though he gazed at the beauty for a considerable time he never actually really saw the inner beauty of the dancing daffodils. ‘For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood’. He had all the time in the world to just lie around on a couch and picture the beauty of nature in his mind filling his ‘heart with pleasure’. He assumed that something beautiful in nature always had something to make you feel good about only if you gave time to think about it. Wordsworth's work contains lines implying that immediate ‘visual perception’ involving a sense of discomfort at a time before the mind is able to assimilate new sense impressions. The poem the ‘Daffodils’ is not a straight description of what he had seen. It was years after this experience that Wordsworth had produced this poem. He has pondered over the idea when he was ‘in vacant pensive mood’ and developed into a poem – what he calls, ‘a spontaneous overflow of feelings.
These various poems below have a connection with experience and corruption outlining the events, which take place once you are out of your childhood.
The ‘Garden Of Love’ composed by William Blake is a poem about life and the pursuit of happiness. It is also about the effects that negativity can have on love. During his pleasured times in his childhood he use to enjoy the beauty of nature while playing on the green. But when he returned to that memorable site ‘A chapel was built in the midst’. Blake has used religion to convey the idea that negativity pervades and corrupts all life. Blake, himself despised the Church, as an institution rather than an idea, and used religious symbols to show how structured religion can destroy the love and creator within.
‘The gates of this chapel were shut.’ In inspecting the chapel, the person feels only negativity from a religious house, as the gates are shut ‘And Thou shalt not writ over the door’. Not only has man and machine invaded this place once full of life, but they have also brought with them negative commandments.
Blake uses words that exude life and breath, such as ‘green, love, bore,’ and ‘sweet flowers.’ These are all positive images that support the individual’s search for creativity and love within the natural environment. When he faced towards the place where the land was filled with ‘sweet flowers bore’ now had a completely different look. It was now filled with ‘graves and tomb-stones where flowers should be.’ The gates are kept shut to keep out evil and poor people, and replacing the Garden of Love with a garden of death by substituting tombstones for flowers. Blake uses words that imply darkness and negativity, such as ‘new building, gates, graves, black gowns, and briars.’
‘Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires’. The images of innocence and life that introduced the person finds her place of refuge overgrown with darkness and infected with limitations. What used to be a place flourishing with life and hope is being confined by religion. Blake has used conflicting images showing how negativity is infectious and limits love.
‘The Garden of Love’ is a true verification to how easily negative energy and negative surroundings can wound and infect a positive environment.
‘The garden of love’, if compared to ‘The Nurse’s song’, tells us that we have joy in our lives during our childhood but as soon as we grow out of that phase we suddenly are restricted from certain aspects of life.
‘A poison tree’ is another amazing poem illustrated by William Blake. This is one of his most interesting poems, memorable for its bitter feel and creepy act of deceit. Blake wants to impart a moral lesson here, pointing of course to the experience we gain in our human existence at the cost of our innocence. With this poem, he suggests that holding a grudge can be fatal to the self as well as the object of wrath. Blake warns that remaining silent about our anger only hinders personal and spiritual growth, making us bitter, and that a grudge left unchecked becomes dangerous, even murderous.
In the first stanza, Blake comments on the need to confront a problem if peace and happiness are to prevail. When the speaker tells his ‘wrath’, it ends, but when he tells it not, his anger grows. Blake has used the idea of a tree to represent his anger. The speaker-repressed anger germinates and becomes the one obsession in his life. In the first couplet, Blake conveys the image of a plant being uprooted, nipping in the bud a misunderstanding between the speaker and his friend. The speaker holds back from admitting anger to his ‘foe’ in the following couplet, allowing it to fester within.
The second stanza depicts the speaker’s behavior towards his internalized wrath, as he tends to it like a beloved plant. His anger becomes a living entity that he waters and suns with ‘tears’ and ‘wiles’ making it to grow both night and day, hinting at his unfolding scheme against his foe. In describing his considerate care towards this ‘wrath’, the speaker reveals his unnatural obsession with getting revenge, while pointing slowly to the emerging anger as a force of its own that slowly consumes the speaker.
In the third stanza, ‘an apple bright’, fruit stands at once as an indication of danger and a tormenting temptation for the speaker’s unsuspecting foe. The devious speaker brags about reading his foe’s mind, ‘And my foe beheld it shine and he knew that it was mine’, implying the ease with which he could fool his enemy by taking advantage of his foe’s natural curiosity and greediness.
The last four lines in the fourth stanza powerfully sweep the reader into the poem’s climax. Under veil of night, envy and curiosity get the better of the foe, sneaking into the garden as darkness envelopes. The foe falls for the hoax, deceptive in his own right as he stealthily slips into the speaker’s garden to steal the shiny object. The final image conveyed in the last couplet is of the foe lying ‘outstretched beneath the tree’. The speaker is ‘glad [to] see’ his foe dead, apparently from ingesting the poison apple. The speaker seems satisfied that his scheme of deception has worked, getting rid of his source of wrath by poisoning it with his unchecked anger and desire for revenge.
‘A Poison Tree’ suggests to me a ‘prisoner’s confession’ without actually naming or describing the crime itself. The speaker takes the time to brag about how he implemented his plan, without admitting his crime. Thus this poem’s impact lies in the dangers that can arise from allowing one’s anger to grow unchecked and take over our minds, hearts, and souls, like a wild plant in the garden of our experience. Blake has used a part of nature, a plant, to describe his feelings of anger and how it is used to betray its enemy.
Jerusalem is another amazing poem written by Blake in which he proposes the Brotherhood of Man as the only solution to the world's problems. The first two stanzas of the poem are made to seem as if Blake is asking you questions, for which you receive answers in the last two stanzas.
Blake has used a strong phrase ‘And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green?’ saying that was there ever a time when our god walked these lands as now it is filled with factories giving out black smoke and can see people who have been blinded from the world as they work for long hours. Blake refers to god as ‘the countenance divine’ wondering if he ever looked ‘upon our clouded hills?’ and if there ever was a true religion called ‘Jerusalem built here among these dark satanic mills’? Blake’s idea of this poem was to involve god in every question to make it seem as if god was the main title of the poem. Blake is using magical weapons ‘my bow of burning gold’, ‘arrows of desire’, ‘my spear’, and ‘my chariot of fire’ to arm himself to fight till the end to bring Jerusalem back. He asks for the ‘clouds to unfold’ as the country has been covered in clouds of pollution and darkness. He is prepared to go and fight for his country for is be a ‘mental fight’ and will not give up until ‘Jerusalem’ has returned in to ‘England’s green and pleasant land’.
These two poems below are written by two different poets but on the same objective. The poems are to do with a city called London, which have been written, from two different perspectives.
The poem ‘lines composed upon Westminster Bridge’ illustrated by William Wordsworth in which he appreciates the beauty of London and demonstrating it as ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’ from a far distance. He describes London being ‘fair’. It’s characteristic of his love for solitude that it is set in the early morning when there is no bustle and noise. He is in astonishment at the scenic beauty of the morning sun radiating from London’s great ‘architectural marvels’. Blake’s choice of the words: ‘dull,’ ‘soul,’ and ‘majesty’ in the following lines, ‘Dull would he be of soul who could not pass by A sight so touching in its majesty. The word ‘majesty’ portrays ‘This City’ as anointed by God to represent his kingdom on Earth. Dead in spirit would one be if he or she was not moved or appreciated by its beauty.
He makes one visualize that mighty scene so perfect, that it encompasses you. ‘All bright and glittering in the smokeless air’. From reading this poem, one can feel nothing but tranquil, picturing yourself there, looking at ‘the beauty of the morning’ quiet, ‘asleep,’ and ‘bare.’ The word ‘lie’ at the end of the sixth line conveys that the ‘ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples’ seem to recline and are conscious of their marvel. He incorporates nature into the scene with the line, ‘Open unto the fields, and the sky.’ In a city, one of the last things a reader would think about would be trees, plants and brush. He sets a very peaceful tone demonstrating nature co-existing with man. Wordsworth is so overcome by this perfection, that he cries out to God - thanking and praising Him for allowing him to be a witness to such a sight. The river is moving at its own pace - not being forced nor stopped. The ‘houses,’ where the inhabitants live, the life in the city, seem to be suspended in time. Wordsworth’s ending simply reinforces the stillness, silence and the angelic perfection of London at morning sunrise.
The poem ‘London’ illustrated by William Blake has a entirely opposite view on London as it was written while witnessed in the streets unlike Wordsworth’s poem which was written from a far distance. While ‘I wandered’ in Wordsworth's poem is set in the past tense, implying a division between past and present, ‘London’ begins with the verb set in the present tense. This implies that the poem concerns timeless realities unbounded by references to any particular incident or time.
Blake's ‘London’, presents a dismal picture of London as a symbol of fallen humanity. The poem reveals the most negative sense of ‘to wander’; namely it associated with the fall and its consequence, for it focuses attention on Man's almost total loss of moral freedom and on acts of violence typified by the murder. Particular Irony attaches to the fact that the ‘free’ city of ‘London’ that had enjoyed the privileges and "liberties" vested in its charter, should symbolize such mental and spiritual bondage. As a born Londoner, Blake had every opportunity of roaming through the streets of London, yet it is doubtful that he should ever have experienced an occasion when every face he saw betrayed ‘marks of woe’. The poem contains hints that judgement will be visited on London not as a result of a purely external event but of what is already stirring in London itself. The speaker hears or sees representatives of professions which do society's dirty work in various ways, whether chimney sweeping, soldiery or
Prostitution. Though the point is not so clearly made as in Auguries of Innocence, the victims of oppression will prove the instruments of their oppressors' undoing. The chimney-sweeper's cry reproaches the Church for its blindness to social injustice. The hapless soldier's sigh threatens violence to the Palace where war plans are forged. The poem's reference to ‘the youthful harlot's curse’ alludes to the often involuntary inveigling of young girls into prostitution, an institution that Blake believed was the inevitable consequence of marriages enforced by law.
The journeys and excursions described in William Blake's poetry are of a quite different order from those encountered in Wordsworth's poetry. Blake's poetry does not depict natural scenes in the familiar or realistic mode. Blake's eye perceived what the poet understood as the spiritual realities that underlie the world of common experience.
Reference:
- ‘A choice of poets’ edited by DR. David Edwards