Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

As I was reading “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” I could not help but consider my own childhood memories of nature. For the majority of my life I lived in Oakwood, Ohio. While many people loved the variety of architecture, the fantastic schools, or the fact that Oakwood had practically become Stepford, I always loved the explosion of green that covered the community. On a sunny day, you can drive down a street in Oakwood and be completely shaded by the thick canopy of oaks overhead. In the center of Oakwood is a bird and wildflower preserve named Hawking's Swing and I immediately thought of this place when I reading the ballad. Wordsworth has these strong feelings of nostalgia when he visits Tintern Abbey five years later. I went to Hawking’s Swing last summer, and I felt the same way. I was thinking about all the fond childhood memories I had there, while experiencing the place in a different way than before. Wordsworth considers his childhood experiences of Tintern simple and effortless. Now that he is older he views the nature differently, and he has to be a more conscious of what he is seeing and feeling. I think in this ballad, Wordsworth is not only paying homage to the beauty of this area, but he is also being very upfront about his nostalgic attitude towards this place.

The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the Same Subject

The Tables Turned

In contrast to “Expostulation and Reply”, “The Tables Turned” has a tone that is hopeful and exuberant. The speaker in this ballad is calling out to his friends, telling them to drop their books and end their studies. He then describes many situations where nature is able to teach man more about life than any book ever could and that you should “Let Nature be your teacher”. Wordsworth uses the word ‘let” in this ballad and this changes the way Nature can be viewed as the teacher. He isn’t saying that Nature is the sort of teacher that requires work and effort to gain knowledge. Instead, humans just have to be open and ready to receive the wisdom nature has to offer. Humans should not be too analytical in their experience of nature either, “Our meddling intellect/ Mishapes the beauteous forms of things”. I think Wordsworth is trying to explain that the simplest experience of nature teaches us the most about life, and that if we become too investigative in our experience of nature we are missing the knowledge and wisdom nature can offer. A very Romantic sentiment indeed.

The Marinere, Goody Blake, and Simon Lee: More in Common than Just Being Old?

There is a similarity between the Ancient Marinere, Goody Blake, and Simon Lee that I noticed after reading all three ballads. All three are old, wizened people leading difficult and undesirable lives. They all seem to come from a different time when people were closer and more dependent upon nature, and now they seem painfully out of place and alienated. The Marinere walks the earth in his old age, telling his story from his life on the ocean to unsuspecting youth. Goody Blake essentially scavenges and survives only on what she can glean. Simon Lee is considerably past his prime and his family barely survives off of a small public plot of land. All three of them make the young person they encounter less happy than they had been before. The three ballads ending in the young and modern person’s mourning, suffering, and sadness makes me think that these three ballads represent man’s alienation from nature and the sadness that comes from this. The Marinere, Goody Blake, and Simon Lee represent that dying connection to nature. Alienation from nature and the deep sadness that arises from it are both important themes to the Romantics.

Goody Blake and Harry Gill- A True Story

As I read this lyrical ballad, I was immediately reminded of the movie Drag Me to Hell. If you who haven’t seen the film, the general plot follows a slightly more disturbing version of Goody Blake and Harry Gill. Here is the trailer:

Drag Me to Hell

So in both stories there is an attractive young person who is able to help a poor old woman and they decide they won’t. In Harry Gill’s case, Goody Blake prays to God to keep Harry cold for the rest of his life. In Drag Me to Hell Christine Brown does not give Mrs. Ganush an extension on her loans, thus evicting her. Mrs. Ganush attacks Christine in a parking garage until she rips a button of her coat and puts a curse on it. This curse calls upon a demon to (you guessed it) drag her to hell. Both Harry Gill and Christine Brown learn an important lesson about helping those in need, and they suffer because of their selfishness for the rest of their lives. I think it is really fantastic that a film used the same basic story structure as a lyrical ballad from 1798. I suppose the lesson is timeless.

The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere

Rime of the Ancient Mariner Part 1

Rime of the Ancient Mariner Part 2

While searching for other media that was related to The Rime of the Ancyent Mariner, I found a song by Iron Maiden appropriately titled “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” which breaks up different parts of the narrative with different styles of music. Iron Maiden begins with a fast and dynamic power ballad that follows the story of the Mariner until Life-in-Death wins his soul. The next section includes a haunting musical interlude that I can only assume represents the strange events that take place after the Mariner is cursed, and an eerie voice reads the portion of the ballad where the men of the ship all die. The music changes again to a calmer but swiftly moving tune as the Mariner begins to pray and the albatross is removed from his shoulders. The song resumes its musical style used at the beginning to tell the rest of the tale. I think it was really original to represent different portions of the story by using various tempos, volumes, and intensity. The structure they created in this song helped me understand more the strange events of this lyrical ballad. I really would love to hear what they would have produced to tell the story of what happens on the ship after the Mariner was cursed and before the curse is lifted.

Preface

While searching for a picture of William Wordsworth, I came across an infant's t shirt with William Wordsworth's face on it... Am I the only one who thinks it is a little weird?

“Poets… indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation” (Wordsworth 393).

The alliteration used in the phrase “furnish food for fickle tastes” caught my eye and really made me realize that Wordsworth really did have an issue with the poetry that was being produced at the time. In his writing up until this passage Wordsworth has been very tame in his considerations of Poetry. Finally he is using some strong language and forcing the reader to really start paying attention to what he has to say about Poetry and its purpose. I wish Wordsworth had used scathing language like this throughout the entirety of the essay because they were the most interesting parts of The Preface. You can actually feel his frustration when he writes about “frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse”. To be honest, most of this preface was dull and repetitive, but when Wordsworth gets worked up enough to finally say something passionate about poetry it becomes exciting and meaningful. And isn’t that his entire theory about poetry? It should be the product of passion.

In short, I wish Wordsworth would have considered his own theory about poetry being passionate instead of decorative, and applied it to his own prose.