To a Nightingale

Charlotte Smith’s sonnet “To a Nightingale” has a distinctly somber and gloomy feeling. I couldn’t help but be a little sad after reading it the first time. But I think my initial feeling of sadness was due to some of the words Smith chose to use. Upon closer observation, I realized this sonnet is sad for a different reason. “To a Nightingale” uses words like melancholy, tender woe, martyr, disastrous love, and mournful melody. These words initially made me feel sad because they have distressing connotations, but the last line Smith says that she is sad because she cannot “sigh and sing at liberty”. This statement is much more depressing than the fact that she describes a poor melancholy bird with sweet sorrow. I think Smith projecting her own sadness onto the nightingale’s song. She was creating the sadness she was feeling into the sounds she heard. This reminded me of the Aeolian harp we have discussed in class. Smith’s experience of nature was affected by her own feelings and because she was sad, nature seemed sad too.

Sonnet Form

Wordworth’s use of the English sonnet conventions affect the way it is interpreted. The first quatrain sets the scene and immediately we understand that Helen Williams crying brings about a response in Wordsworth that is strong and involuntary. Just the sight of her tears causes Wordsworth to have an extra-sensory experience; he can actually feel his blood in his veins and his heart can hardly handle it. The second quatrain continues to describe his bodily response, and Wordsworth returns to his normal physical state. The third quatrain reflects upon this tear of Helen Williams. He compares it to a star that is always in the sky, regardless of whether or not he can see it. The couplet at the end stands out with its irregular rhyme scheme. It ends on a hopeful note. But what if this sonnet was broken up with the conventions of the Italian sonnet? Like this:

She wept.--Life's purple tide began to flow

In languid streams through every thrilling vein;

Dim were my swimming eyes--my pulse beat slow,

And my full heart was swell'd to dear delicious pain.

Life left my loaded heart, and closing eye;

A sigh recall'd the wanderer to my breast;

Dear was the pause of life, and dear the sigh

That call'd the wanderer home, and home to rest.

That tear proclaims--in thee each virtue dwells,

And bright will shine in misery's midnight hour;

As the soft star of dewy evening tells

What radiant fires were drown'd by day's malignant pow'r,

That only wait the darkness of the night

To cheer the wand'ring wretch with hospitable light.

The first octet captures all of Wordsworth’s responses to the tear. The sestet contains all of Wordsworth’s musing of the tear and its comparison to the evening star. I know that the rhyme scheme does not follow Italian sonnet conventions, but I think the breaking of the lines makes more sense. The eight and six line divisions separate the ideas in a way that make more sense to me.

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.