Background Information

Born- April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District

Family life- Had a father named John Wordsworth who he unfortunately lost at the age of 13, 5 years earlier he lost his mother in other words at the age of 8. William had a sister named Dorothy, who was really neurotic, and domestic problems eventually split those two apart. Dorothy however was a very important person in William’s life. William was able to attend a local school, with the fortunate help of his 2 uncles.

Life- William attended Cambridge University, and published his first piece in 1787. In 1790 William went to France and had an affair with a French girl named Annette Vallon, and then he had a daughter named Anne Caroline. This affair sparked the basis of his poem entitled “Vaudracour and Julia.” Landscapes and nature was something that greatly affected William’s poetry. In 1795 he met a man by the name of Coleridge Wordsworth. William composed his first masterpiece entitled Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge as the opening with “Ancient Mariner.” In 1798 is when he started to write a philosophical autobiographical poem which was completed in 1805, which was published in 1850 in the title The Prelude. In 1798-99 he wrote many poems while his sister and Coleridge lived with him in Germany, he wrote the ‘Lucy’ poems. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. Mary and William cared for William’s sister for the last 20 years of her life. Wordsworth made another collection entitled Poems, In Two Volumes. 1797-1808 is where he produced most of his main work, compared to where his late and middle years work did not get the same reaction or approval, in 1813 his period ended. In Westmoreland he was appointed official distributor of stamps. On April 23, 1850 William died at Rydal Mount, Ambleside, he died without his radical ideas and became a patriotic yet conservative man.

On the Banks of a Rocky Stream

On The Banks Of A Rocky Stream

BEHOLD an emblem of our human mind
Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,
Yet, like to eddying balls of foam
Within this whirlpool, they each other chase
Round and round, and neither find
An outlet nor a resting-place!
Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,
Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.

This is juist another peice of poetry, that really points out how William thinks highly of nature, and how the mind never stops, but peace is found in nature.

William

This poem was created by William following his traditional romantic style in the sense that nature is almost life.

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

The first two lines is where William is realizing that he lives in a vast circle of life, and that even though he may die, nature continues

Then as you continue to read farther, he refers to more of his spiritual life and he says this in the line "The Child is father of the Man"

Then he continues to realize that he should not take life for granted, and continue to seek comfort in nature.