Things to Consider:

• French Revolution and English counterrevolutionary measures
• Industrial Revolution and its Consequences
• Use of Language
• Choice of Subject

• Describe Wordsworth's view of the French Revolution during its early stages.
• Describe Wordsworth's relationship with Coleridge.

• Explain Wordsworth's concept of "spots of time."
  

Preface to Lyrical Ballads  (1802):
144:

• What is a lyrical ballad ?
  

• What is Wordsworth's purpose in writing this Preface?
  

• What does Wordsworth mean by "the language really used by men" (146)?

147:

• Explain:  "All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (147).
• What, according to Wordsworth, is a poet? (See also 151)
  

• What exactly is "emotion recollected in tranquility" (155)?

• In what ways does this poem exemplify the ideas Wordsworth presents in his Preface?
  

• Why has Wordsworth selected scenes from "low and rustic life" as his subject?
• Explain:  "In that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature" (146).

147:

• Explain:  "From their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions" (147).
• How is the language of the lower ranks "more permanent" and "far more philosophical" than that conventionally used by poets?
• What is a man "possessed of more than usual organic sensibility" (147)?
• Explain:  "Our thoughts . . . are indeed the representatives of our past feelings" (147).
• Explain:  "The feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation and not the action and situation to the feeling" (147).

• Why, according to Wordsworth, has he sought to avoid the following devices?
• personification of abstract ideas
• poetic diction
• falsehood of description

• What are "prosaisms"?

• Explain:  "There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition" (150-51).

152:

• If the language of real men is the absolute standard, why would a poet need to modify it, as Wordsworth suggests?
• What one restriction, according to Wordsworth, does the poet face?

152-53:

• Explain:  "We have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure" (152-53).

• Explain:  "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge" (153).
• Explain:  "The poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time" (153).

154:

• Explain:  "Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man" (154).
• Explain what Wordsworth says about differences in "kind" and in "degree" (146).

155:

• Why will "painful feeling . . . always be found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper passions" (155)?

156:

• Explain:  "We not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particular way in which we have been accustomed to be pleased" (156).

• What is the occasion for the composition of this poem?
• What is the origin of the "wreaths of smoke" Wordsworth describes (17)?

141:

• Explain lines 22-31.
• What does it mean to become a "living soul" (46)?
• What does it mean to "see into the life of things" (49)?

• Explain lines 65-84.
  

• Explain lines 93-102.
• What is "the mighty world / Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create, / And what perceive" (105-7)?

143:

• Explain:  "In thy voice I catch / The language of my former heart" (116-17).
• Explain:  "Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her" (122-23).
• What future does Wordsworth foresee for his sister and her appreciation of nature? How does this relate back to him?

• Explain:  "In this moment there is life and food / For future years" (64-65).
• Explain:  "More like a man / Flying from something he dreads, than one / Who sought the thing he loved" (70-72).

142:

• Explain:  "The sounding cataract / Haunted me like a passion" (77-78).
• Explain lines 78-83.
• Why are all the "aching joys" (84) of the past all gone?
• Explain lines 88-93.

• Explain:  "I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature" (188).

• How does this poem compare with "Tintern Abbey"?
  

• Describe the rhyme scheme.

• What does “trailing clouds of glory” (64) refer to? [cf. Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard": "The paths of glory lead but to the grave" (36).]
• What are “Shades of the prison-house” (67)?

• What are “obstinate questionings/ Of sense and outward things” (141-42)?

• What are “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears” (203)?
• cf. Romans 8.26 (RSV):
• “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”
• (KJV): Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.