A Poet (William Wordsworth)

William Wordsworth lived a life plagued with instability and hardship. The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth in Cumberland, part of the Lake District in England.His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who would become a poet and enjoy nature with William and Dorothy until he died in an 1809 shipwreck, and Christopher, the youngest, who would become an academician. Their father was a legal representative of an English noble and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. William Wordsworth and his siblings had little involvement with their father even until his death in 1783.

William's father, though uninvolved with most family affairs, taught him the poems of Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser. His father also allowed William access to his personal library.As well as spending his time reading in his father's mansion in Cockermouth, he would stay at his maternal grandparents home in Penrith, Cumberland. At Penrith, Wordsworth was exposed to the beauty of nature and was influenced by his experience with the landscape. He was further turned toward nature by the harsh treatment he received at the hands of his relatives. In particular, Wordsworth could not get along with his grandparents and his uncle, and his hostility with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide.

After the death of his mother, in 1778, William's elder brothersent him to Hawkshead Grammar School and his sister, Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire; she and William would not meet again for another nine years. Although Hawkshead was Wordsworth's first serious experience with education, he had been taught to read by his mother and had attended a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth. After the Cockermouth school, he was sent to a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families. It was at the school that Wordsworth was to meet the Mary Hutchinson who would be his future wife.

In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their child, Caroline. Because of lack of money and Britain's tensions with France, he returned alone to England the next year. The circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raise doubts as to his wish to marry Annette, but he supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life. During this period, he wrote his acclaimed "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," recalling his seaside walk with his daughter, whom he had not seen for ten years. The occurring lines reveal his deep love for both child and mother. War between France and Britain prevented him from seeing Annette and Caroline again for several years. There are strong suggestions that Wordsworth may have been depressed and emotionally unsettled in the mid-1790s due to this seperation
With peace again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, visited Annette and Caroline in France and arrived at a mutually agreeable settlement regarding Wordsworth's obligations to support them.

In 1802, after returning from his trip to France with Dorothy to visit Annette and Caroline Wordsworth married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy continued to live with the couple. The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased him:
John Wordsworth
Dora Wordsworth (predeceased)
Thomas Wordsworth (predeceased)
Catherine Wordsworth (predeceased)
William "Willy" Wordsworth

Despite all this conflict and turmoil, Wordsworth rose to become Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and wrote many stirring and moving poems. He is also credited with launching the Romantic Age in English Literature. He died on April 23rd, 1950 from a lung infection.

Here are some of the poems he composed:

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

To the Cuckoo

O blithe newcomer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed birth! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place,
That is fit home for Thee!

To a Skylark

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

To the last point of vision, and beyond,
Mount, daring warbler! -that love-prompted strain,
('Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond),
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:
Yet mightst thou seem, proud privilege! to sing
All independent of the leafy Spring.

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine,
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

These poems show how Wordsworth triumphed over adversity to write poems which are amazingly optimistic for his situation and which will be remembered forever more. Hope you appreciate them.