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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artistic attempt beautiful Ben Jonson 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 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 Peter Bell Ph.D phrases poems poet poet's poetic diction Pope Pope's 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 tion verb versification vocabulary Warton William Wordsworth words Wordsworth and Coleridge worth writing written
Popular passages
Page 33 - Show'd us that France had something to admire. Not but the Tragic spirit was our own, And full in Shakespear, fair in Otway shone: But Otway fail'd to polish or refine, And fluent Shakespear scarce effac'da line.
Page 36 - 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 127 - 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 157 - THERE is a Thorn — it looks so old, In truth, you'd find it hard to say How it could ever have been young, It looks so old and grey. Not higher than a two years...
Page vii - ... the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents, and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew drops.
Page 116 - Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge, or rather, I should say, banish elaborateness; for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart, and carries into daylight its own modest buds and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers of expression. I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.
Page 69 - When up the lonely brooks on rainy days Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes Have glanced upon him distant a few steps, In size a giant, stalking through thick fog, His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped Beyond the boundary line of some hillshadow, His form hath flashed upon me, glorified By the deep radiance of the setting sun...
Page 85 - DURING the last year of my residence at Cambridge, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication entitled "Descriptive Sketches"; and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced.
Page xii - I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavour to impart.
Page 173 - IF from the public way you turn your steps Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll, You will suppose that with an upright path Your feet must struggle ; in such bold ascent The pastoral Mountains front you, face to face. But, courage ! for around that boisterous Brook The mountains have all opened out themselves, And made a hidden valley of their own. No habitation can be seen ; but they Who journey thither find themselves alone With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites That overhead...