Wordsworth's Theory of Poetic Diction: A Study of the Historical and Personal Background of the Lyrical BalladsYale University Press, 1917 - 191 pages |
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Page xv
... experience , and converted to the substance of a pecu- liar and powerful nature — a nature unusually sensitive , and yet inflexible even to crudeness and awkwardness . Hence , since he always speaks from his own position , and does not ...
... experience , and converted to the substance of a pecu- liar and powerful nature — a nature unusually sensitive , and yet inflexible even to crudeness and awkwardness . Hence , since he always speaks from his own position , and does not ...
Page 9
... experience . What could What could be more sensible than Ascham's remarks on the style of the Latin classics ? He reminds his countrymen that the excellence of Cicero's language was not something peculiar to himself — a literary ...
... experience . What could What could be more sensible than Ascham's remarks on the style of the Latin classics ? He reminds his countrymen that the excellence of Cicero's language was not something peculiar to himself — a literary ...
Page 12
... experience as a ' daily orator among the common people , ' on the other hand , tended to maintain a wholesome relation between poetry and prose . The peculiar vitality of the Elizabethan classicism , crude as it was - this sense of a ...
... experience as a ' daily orator among the common people , ' on the other hand , tended to maintain a wholesome relation between poetry and prose . The peculiar vitality of the Elizabethan classicism , crude as it was - this sense of a ...
Page 36
... experience that nature and truth , though never so low and vulgar , are yet pleasing when openly and without artifice represented ; insomuch that it would be diverting to me to read the very letters of an infant , could it write its ...
... experience that nature and truth , though never so low and vulgar , are yet pleasing when openly and without artifice represented ; insomuch that it would be diverting to me to read the very letters of an infant , could it write its ...
Page 37
... experience of which he himself was a proper judge , the badness of the thought or the lack of thought was made only more pernicious by that polished grace with which he uttered it . Nothing could be more different , for instance , than ...
... experience of which he himself was a proper judge , the badness of the thought or the lack of thought was made only more pernicious by that polished grace with which he uttered it . Nothing could be more different , for instance , than ...
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Common terms and phrases
artistic attempt beautiful Ben Jonson Blake and Harry blank verse character characteristic Chaucer criticism Descriptive Sketches Dryden early edited with Introduction effort eighteenth century Elizabethan emotion English English poetry Essay example expression fancy feeling Glossary grammar Gregory Smith Hawkshead heroic couplet Ibid ideal ideas Idiot Boy illustrated imagery images imagination imitation Jonson Lamb language of poetry later Latin Legouis cites lines literary literature lower and middle Lyrical Ballads Mad Mother metre Milton mind natural original Oxford edition passion peculiar periphrastic Ph.D phrases poems poet's poetic diction Pope Preface Prelude prose reader real language remarks repetition result rhyme rustic Samuel Taylor Coleridge says seems Shakespeare Simon Lee simplicity Southey speak speech Spenser stanza style suggested syntax taste theory of poetic things Thorn thought Tintern Abbey tion verb versification vocabulary Warton William Wordsworth words Wordsworth and Coleridge worth writing written
Popular passages
Page 170 - Their thoughts I cannot measure : — But the least motion which they made, It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air ; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man...
Page 122 - Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement Sermoni propriora. - HOR. ' Low was our pretty Cot: our tallest Rose Peep'd at the chamber-window. We could hear At silent noon, and eve, and early morn, The Sea's faint murmur.
Page 131 - The principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect...
Page 152 - Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again? Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending; — I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
Page 52 - See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings: Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground, Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes, 115 His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes, The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, His painted wings and breast that flames with gold ? Nor yet, when moist Arcturus clouds the sky The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny.
Page 38 - But true expression, like the' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon ; It gilds all objects, but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable ; A vile conceit in pompous words...
Page 19 - I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution, which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo. to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue...
Page 147 - One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things : — We murder to dissect.
Page 134 - DURING the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.
Page 102 - And, so refused, might in opinion stand His rivals, winning cheap the high repute Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice Forbidding; and at once with him they rose. Their rising all at once was as the sound Of thunder heard remote.