William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth, Seamus Heaney (Editor)

Overview

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty . . .

-- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,

September 3, 1802

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571264810
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	09/15/2011
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	114
File size:	258 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. In 1798 he published the Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge, settling shortly after in Dove Cottage, Grasmere with his sister, Dorothy. He died at Rydal Mount in 1850, shortly before the posthumous publication of that landmark of English Romanticism, The Prelude.
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966 and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations - including Beowulf (1999) - which have established him as one of the leading poets now at work. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. District and Circle (2006) was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008. In 2009 he received the David Cohen Prize for Literature.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was one of the most influential of the Romantic poets. He grew up in the Lake District, and was educated at Cambridge. His friendship with S. T. Coleridge led to their joint project, Lyrical Ballads, which was published in 1798. At the same time, Wordsworth began work on what was to become The Prelude, which was first published three months after his death, in 1850. He became poet laureate in 1843.
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to critical acclaim, followed in 2018 by 100 Poems, a selection of poems from his entire career, chosen by his family.

Table of Contents

	Chronology	ix
	Introduction	xiii
	Further Reading	xxix
	A Note on the Texts	xxxii
	Old Man Travelling	3
	The Ruined Cottage	3
	A Night-Piece	18
	The Old Cumberland Beggar	19
	Lines Written at a Small Distance from my House	24
	Goody Blake and Harry Gill	26
	The Thorn	30
	The Idiot Boy	38
	Lines Written in Early Spring	53
	Anecdote for Fathers	54
	We Are Seven	56
	Expostulation and Reply	59
	The Tables Turned	60
	Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey	61
	The Fountain	66
	The Two April Mornings	68
	'A slumber did my spirit seal'	71
	Song ('She dwelt among th' untrodden ways')	71
	'Strange fits of passion I have known'	72
	Lucy Gray	73
	Nutting	75
	'Three years she grew in sun and shower'	77
	The Brothers	78
	Hart-Leap Well	92
	From Home at Grasmere	99
	From Poems on the Naming of Places	109
	To Joanna	109
	'A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags'	112
	Michael	114
	'I travelled among unknown Men'	128
	To a Sky-Lark	128
	Alice Fell	129
	Beggars	131
	To a Butterfly ('Stay near me')	133
	To the Cuckoo	133
	'My heart leaps up when I behold'	135
	To H. C., Six Years Old	135
	'Among all lovely things my Love had been'	136
	To a Butterfly ('I've watched you')	137
	Resolution and Independence	137
	'Within our happy Castle there dwelt one'	142
	'The world is too much with us'	144
	'With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh'	145
	'Dear Native Brooks your ways have I pursued'	145
	'Great Men have been among us'	146
	'It is not to be thought of that the Flood'	146
	'When I have borne in memory what has tamed'	147
	'England! the time is come when thou shouldst wean'	147
	Composed by the Sea-Side, near Calais	148
	'It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free'	149
	To Toussaint L'Ouverture	149
	Composed in the Valley, near Dover, on the Day of Landing	150
	Composed Upon Westminster Bridge	150
	London, 1802	151
	'Nuns fret not at their Convent's narrow room'	151
	Yarrow Unvisited	152
	'She was a Phantom of delight'	154
	Ode to Duty	155
	Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood	157
	'I wandered lonely as a Cloud'	164
	Stepping Westward	164
	The Solitary Reaper	165
	Elegiac Stanzas	166
	A Complaint	169
	Gipsies	169
	St Paul's	170
	'Surprized by joy - impatient as the Wind'	171
	Yew-Trees	172
	Composed at Cora Linn	173
	Yarrow Visited	175
	To R. B. Haydon, Esq. ('High is our calling, Friend!')	178
	Sequel to the Foregoing [Beggars]	178
	Ode: Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendor and Beauty	180
	The River Duddon: Conclusion	183
	'The unremitting voice of nightly streams'	183
	Airey-Force Valley	184
	Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg	184
	'Glad sight wherever new with old'	186
	At Furness Abbey	186
	'I know an aged Man constrained to dwell'	187
	from The Prelude	188
Book I188
Book II204
Book III218
Book IV224
Book V231
Book VI241
Book VII246
Book VIII252
Book IX259
Book X263
Book XI271
Book XII275
Book XIII278
	Notes	285
	Index of Titles	309
	Index of First Lines	311

Editorial Reviews

"This is the essential Wordsworth anthology of the present, with sound notes and texts that ask all the current questions."—Keith Hanley, University of Notre Dame

"Excellent anthology of Wordsworth's work."—Alan Lin, UCSC

"A beautiful edition. I'll be certain to use this one for my Romanticism course."—Christopher Moylan, New York Institute of Technology

"An excellent text with a new approach—to present Wordsworth as his contemporaries read him."—Leonidas M. Jones, University of Vermont

"The only text for an undergraduate or graduate course which is serious about putting Wordsworth's poetry in its historical context."—Aline Fairweather, Temple University

From the Publisher