150 C A I T L I N O U T T E R S O N The Impossible Balance In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth outlines and formalizes Romantic poetry. His stated purpose is to follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature (62). In the Preface, Wordsworth names the features he wants to add to established poetic structures, including the use of common situations, language, a certain coloring of imagination, and contemplative thought (59). He argues that good poetic language only differs from good prose in the use of meter, but also writes that though all good Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, good poets are required to bring something else forward for our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts (62). Instead of remaining sure of how much poets need to bring forward, Wordsworth later edited his Preface from merely adopting the conversational language of the lower classes to only permitting a selection of the purified language (Parrish 11). These diverse poetic tenets could be considered as falling on an artistic spectrum between the deliberate craft of lyrical poetry and the natural overflow of feeling that interested Wordsworth. However, these disparate elements do not always fit well together. Because Wordsworth struggles within his own poetry to balance all those aspects of poetic art he outlines in the Preface, he is unable to create a single, defining Romantic poem and instead distributes his ideas into different poems. In The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman, Wordsworth relates common influxes of feeling that transcend any situation, but is hampered by the demands of his chosen poetic structure. He uses a traditional ballad format and rhyme structure to anchor his poem, and writes the poem completely from the Native American woman s point of view instead of describing the event as an observer. Wordsworth s short note before the
CORE JOURNAL XXI 151 poem explains how, in America, the spectacle of an abandoned, dying Native American woman would be thought unremarkable; this explanation allows readers to empathize with the woman s plight (LB 253-4). Wordsworth couples this ability to feel the same emotions as the dying woman with the ballad format, using rhyming couplets and a rhythmic meter. Even though he was criticized for supposedly not valuing poetic structure, Wordsworth felt strongly about meter. He believed it allowed the poet to discuss truths with many hundreds of people who would never have heard of it, had it not been narrated as a ballad, and in a more impressive metre than is usual in ballads and he shows this appreciation in The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman (83-4). Wordsworth uses enjambment and pauses on a line to alter the traditional ballad structure, thus keeping the woman s speech from sounding stilted. However, even with alterations made to the ballad format, the rhythm and rhymes seem excessive. He successfully portrays the woman s thoughts and acceptance of her imminent death, but his rhyming couplets betray the spontaneity of her thoughts, not allowing Wordsworth to completely create the illusion of a sudden overflow of human emotion in the poem. In Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth leaves behind the narrative for looser meditative structure to closely follow the arc of his mental processes, not including common conversation in the process. Tintern Abbey is descriptive without telling a dramatic story, and does not include any encounters with common people or dialogue that are often featured in Wordsworth s ballads. However, the flow is more conversational and relaxed than the ballads, due to its uneven rhythm and irregular stanzas. The natural writing does not mean that Wordsworth abandons meter and the poetic art. One understands Wordsworth s opinions on the interchangeability of good prose and poetry upon reading his wonderfully eloquent descriptions of the countryside scene. The careful way the meter and diction roll off the tongue reflects the tranquil landscape Wordsworth describes, proving his poetic artistry and adding another dimension to the poem. Wordsworth also does not allow himself simply
152 CAITLIN OUTTERSON to write anything down. The internal rhymes, alliteration, and references to previous parts of the poem show his thoughtfulness in composing it. Wordsworth treated this free-flowing creative process as a matter of conscious artistry (Parrish 5). Nonetheless, he was unable to find a way to work a dialogue or conversation into a contemplative poem such as Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth found it more difficult to combine the two styles than he originally thought in Old Man Travelling, ultimately removing a portion of the poem to portray a more contemplative style. First published in his Lyrical Ballads in 1798, the poem focuses on an old vagrant a common figure on English country roads. To emphasize the vagrant s position as a natural component of the scene in the poem, Wordsworth cleverly plays upon the dual meanings of nature. The beggar s soul is peaceful and contained, but he is also as necessary as the hedgerow birds to the lonely road scene. However, in a later version of the poem, more aptly titled, Animal Tranquility and Decay, Wordsworth removes the dialogue between the narrator and the vagrant. Prose-like speech or narration assumes a starring role in many of his other poems such as The Brothers or Goody Blake and Harry Gill, which are common conversations in verse, but these features are abandoned in this case because of the sudden, unwelcome shift the dialogue brings. In Animal Tranquility, Wordsworth recognizes that the dialogue feels off at the end, drawing attention from the meditation on the beggar s distinct composure. Wordsworth rightly edits the speech out to emphasize the imaginative coloring and description of the rest of the poem. In doing so, he signals to the reader that holding all of his components of Romantic poetry in the same poem may be more difficult than it first appeared to be. But finally, although he can only include common speech implicitly, Wordsworth does successfully combine most of his poetic tenets into a single poem, The Solitary Reaper. In this poem, the narrator encounters the singing solitary Highland Lass while walking through the countryside. This poem is a ballad with regular stanzas, but to avoid simplistic rhythm,
CORE JOURNAL XXI 153 Country Claire, Ireland, by Molly Kelly Wordsworth alternates between rhyming couplets and an ABAB structure within a single stanza. Like Tintern Abbey, the rhythm and beautiful rhymes reflect the theme of the poem in the girl s unheard song. His colorful imagination emerges in the second stanza when he says that No Nightingale did ever chaunt / More welcome notes than her even in exotic locations like Arabia or the Hebrides. The parallel drawn between the girl in the field and the nightingale, Romantic symbol of poetic inspiration, is a powerfully imaginative comparison. This stanza contains more poetic pre-thought and modification and less apparent spontaneity than when the narrator later writes, I listened motionless and still / And, as I mounted up the hill. In the third stanza, the narrator plaintively asks after the meaning of the song with rhythm and rhyme, mixing a spontaneous, questioning, stream-of-consciousness format and a rhyming ballad. Here, the mix of styles is interesting, not problematic. The only theme from Wordsworth s Preface missing is common speech. However, even though Wordsworth cannot include it outright, common language is implicitly evident
154 CAITLIN OUTTERSON throughout the entire poem. The Highland girl sings a mysterious song the entire time the poet walks by her field. Although he could not find a way to put in the actual song in her common and incomprehensible dialect, Wordsworth managed to fit it into the poem subliminally. Only by using this clever device is Wordsworth able to attempt to combine all of his poetic tenets in the same poem. With all of his different ideas for his poetry in the Preface, Wordsworth clearly has a difficult time choosing what parts he wants to include in each of his poems. His concepts of spontaneous feeling, poetic meter, and structure have been viewed by many critics as being in opposition with each other. But Wordsworth often successfully reconciles those ideas in his poetry, struggling perhaps a little more with the integration of common language, as shown by his revisions of several poems, the Preface, and the varying types of poems he wrote under his experimental umbrella. Nevertheless, including all of his tenets together in one poem proved to be a challenge he was unable to meet completely without crafty devices. Thus, although he tried many combinations, the original elucidator of Romantic poetry was never able to compose a single, defining Romantic poem, trapped by his numerous ideas. Works Referenced Parrish, Stephen Maxfield. The Art of the Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. Ed. Michael Mason. London: Longman, 1992. -----. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. New York: Crowell, 1888.