English Literature Elective Paper 1 Section A William...
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English Literature Elective Paper 1 Section A William Wordsworth
2016
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Syllabus: The poems prescribed for detailed study :
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
1. William Wordsworth. The following poems:- Ode on Intimations of
Immortality. Tintern Abbey. Three years she grew. She dwelt
among untrodden ways. Michael. Resolution and Independence.
The World is too much with us. Milton, thou shouldst be living at
this hour. Upon Westminster Bridge.
Content
1. Wordsworth, as a Romantic Poet
2. Text of the Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood
3. Significance and Analysis of the Ode
4. The Sonnet form
5. Text of Sonnet The World Is Too Much With Us
6. Text of Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
7. Text of England, 1802. Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
1. A few characteristics that had been evolving for four
decades are adopted in poetry in a major way during the Romantic
Period. These included shifting :-
a) the focus of faith and belief from God to Man;
b) from objectivity in poetic description to subjectivity
c) from traditionalism to originality
d) from Reason to Emotion
e) introduction of a new imaginative individualism
2. This was an emotional and imaginative literature, breaking
the constraints of reason that had predominated for over a century. The
movement was partly caused by social and moral changes at the time.
It was a part of the wider political movement in Europe that had
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liberated man and mind from the bondage of traditional through the
French Revolution. Earlier the society was viewed as being more
important than the individual because the State was believed to be a
divine creation.
3. The French Revolutionary demand for ‗Equality, Liberty,
Fraternity‘, had shifted the individual to the centre of all human
thought and activity. The writings of Rosseau, Voltaire, Hume,
Gibbon, Paine and Godwin highlighted the importance of the
individual and the concept that State was a creation of human effort
brought about a phenomenal change in socio- political outlook. These
began to be reflected in poetic themes of the Romantic period from
1798 to 1830.
4. Hope itself had been revolutionized in the process.
― Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very Heaven‖
( Lines from Wordsworth‘s ‗The French Revolution‘)
Language was turned in to an instrument of freedom. Literary
writings in the national language gained priority over Latin and Greek.
In England, English became the sole medium of expression and
attempts were made to use the common man‘s simple and easily
understood version of English, in place of the courtly and formalized
version.
5. This shifted the content of poetry from aristocracy to
common folks and of seeing life as a living. This enabled the Romantic
poets to capture the inconsequential passing moments of life. The
publication of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ in 1798 marked the beginning of
the Romantic Period in English Literature. It contained poems such as
‗Lucy Grey‘ ‗ The Idiot Boy‘ ‗ The Peddler‘ ‗The Solitary Reaper‘ and
‗ We are seven‘, where the child‘s happy ignorance, effortlessly
reveals human attitude to death and its inevitability.
6. But the high point of the Lyrical Ballads was
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autobiographical account in ―Lines Written above Tintern Abbey‖ that
traced Wordsworth‘s brooding, impassioned attitude towards Nature. It
marks the transition from the initial ecstatic love of Nature of seeing
‗splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower‘ to a deeper, but
narrower study of his own mind.
7. Even after the loss of the visionary powers of childhood,
the poet thanks the human heart for its tenderness, its joys, and its
fears, as it enables the poet of find strength in what remains behind in
adulthood. For Wordsworth, recollection had the power of converting
aimless drifting of imagination and experience in to moments of
intense joy and creativity. This technique itself was revolutionary in the
power of poetic perception and thinking. For example in ‗The
Daffodils‘ his first sight gives the impression of profusion and
confusion. On reflection it gives way to order and harmony.
8. In his Reflections on Nature the predominant senses
described are of sight and sound. Natural sounds of beasts and birds,
(‗To the Cuckoo‘) wind and water, ( ―The sounding cataract / Haunted
me like a passion..‖). These were ‗felt in the blood by him‘ but he had
no ear for instrumental music. Other senses of touch, taste, smell and
temperature were absent from his poetry. His landscape is an austere
world ―where bare trees and mountains bare‖ predominate in a ―silence
beyond silence‖. However, he had a sense of space so remarkable that
he almost ‗felt‘ the Earth as a solid sphere. In Wordsworth‘s later
poetry he adopts a loftier style and themes as in the ‗Immortality Ode‘
‗Ode on Duty‘ and ‗Resolution and Independence‘
9. Wordsworth was also a great dreamer – ― Dreams, books,
are each a world‘ that was vivid, bright, happy, glorious, and fresh. The
serene and blessed mood of ‗The Tintern Abbey‘ gave him the
visionary communion with Nature even in ‗lonely rooms‘ ‗ a‘mid the
din / of towns and cities‘. But the death of his brother shifted his
attention from Nature to religion where he sought solace and produced
the ‗ The Excursion‘ and ‗ The Ecclesiastical Sonnets‘
10. In sum, Wordsworth began with the simple lyrics based on
inspiration from Nature and the common man. This love of Nature led
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him towards the love of Man, in general, and to the probing of his own
mind in particular. For this reason his best work The Prelude, the
Sonnets, and Tintern Abbey are more an account of personal
experience captured through introspective moments of poetic
inspiration:
― 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‖
(Lines from Wordsworth‘s ―The Daffodils‖)
Through his theory of poetry that he developed later and his
emotionally inspired early poetry, William Wordsworth widened the
horizon of poetic expression by bringing about a total break away from
the traditional courtly poetry and including the common man as a
subject of his poems. Along with new subject matter he also introduced
a new poetic diction appropriate to the subject, placed his source of
inspiration in Nature rather than in religion or the royal court,
attempting to see ―into the life of things‖. The new trend established by
him remained unchallenged for a century till the beginning of twentieth
century poetry, heralded by T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats.
Exercise 1. The Ode is to be read first. The coloured lines are to be noted for
fuller understanding. They are to be learnt for their placement in the flow of
thoughts, for reference to context question, that is mandatory, to test the
examinee‘s ‗first- hand knowledge‘ of the poems prescribed.
536. Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
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The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
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The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
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Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; 95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal mind,—
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Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
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Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind; 185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, 190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
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And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Exercise 2. Significance and Analysis of the Ode:
1. The ‗Immortality Ode‘ is part of Wordsworth‘s later poetry
where he adopts a loftier style and themes, similar to that
in ‗Ode on Duty‘ and ‗Resolution and Independence‘. His
earlier ‗Lines written above Tintern Abbey‘ had traced
Wordsworth‘s brooding, impassioned attitude towards
Nature. The ‗Immortality Ode marks the transition from his
initial ecstatic love of Nature , of seeing ‗splendour in the
grass, of glory in the flower‘, to a deeper, but narrower
study of his own mind.
2. Even after the loss of the visionary powers of childhood,
in this Ode, the poet thanks the human heart for its
tenderness, its joys, and its fears, as it enables the poet of
find strength in what remains behind in
adulthood.Wordsworth began with the simple lyrics based
on inspiration from Nature and the common man. This love
of Nature led him towards the love of Man, in general, and
to the probing of his own mind in particular.
3. For Wordsworth, ‗recollection‘ had the power of
converting aimless drifting of imagination and experience,
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2016
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in to moments of intense joy and creativity. This technique
itself was revolutionary in the power of poetic perception
and thinking. For example in ‗The Daffodils‘ his first sight
gives the impression of profusion and confusion. On
reflection it gives way to order and harmony.
4. In his Reflections on Nature the predominant senses
described are of sight and sound. Natural sounds of beasts
and birds, (‗To the Cuckoo‘) wind and water, ( ―The
sounding cataract / Haunted me like a passion..‖). These
were ‗felt in the blood by him‘, but he had no ear for
instrumental music. Other senses of touch, taste, smell and
temperature were absent from his poetry. His landscape is
an austere world ―where bare trees and mountains bare‖
predominate in a ―silence beyond silence‖. However, he
had a sense of space so remarkable, that he almost ‗felt‘ the
Earth as a solid sphere.
5. His theory of poetry, developed in the ‗Immortality Ode‘
and other later poems, he blends Nature and religion , to
provide solace ―In the soothing thoughts that spring / Out
of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death,
/In years that bring the philosophical mind.‖ This was in
contrast to his emotionally inspired early poetry.
6. With his two phases of poetic inspiration, William
Wordsworth widened the horizon of poetic expression
through new common subjects, and new poetic diction,
appropriate to the new subjects. In place of the royal court
and religion, his inspiration from Nature allowed him to
see ―into the life of things.‖
( 429 words)
Exercise 3. The Sonnet form and prescribed Sonnets:
What is a Sonnet?
1) The Sonnet, is a poetic form of fourteen lines , that had
reached England from Italy in the 16th century. The greatest
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Italian sonneteer was Petrarch in the 14th century, who created
the Italian Sonnet form. It had an eight line of an ‗octave‘ and
six line ‗sestet‘. The rhyme scheme for the octave was fixed at
abba, abba. For the sestet it was cde,cde. , but variation was
allowed only in the sestet .
2) In England, the Italian Sonnet was modified. The first
twelve lines could be in three quatrains of four lines each,
ending with a couplet. Alternatively, the octave could be
followed by a quatrain and a concluding couplet. This form
was called the Elizabethan Sonnet.
3) Edmund Spenser, Sidney, William Shakespeare were the
greatest exponents of the Elizabethan sonnet. There was
greater flexibility of the rhyme scheme in the Elizabethan
sonnet and Spenser used his own scheme, leaving the ending
couplet to stand alone with its own idea. Most sonnets were
written as love poems to woo real ladies. For example,
Spenser wrote ‗Amoretti‘ meaning ‗Little love‘ or ‗infant
cupid‘ to woo Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. All
the sonnets of Shakespeare are addressed to the ‗Dark Lady‘
with whom he was in love, and whose identity was never
revealed.
4) As Shakespeare wrote during the period when England as a
nation had defied the Roman Catholic Church and established
the Protestant Church of England, he adopted the English
version of the sonnet form that subsequently came to be known
as the Shakespearean Sonnet in English literature.
5) Milton was the poet representing the re-establishment of the
monarchy after the demise of Cromwell, Lord Protector of
England. He therefore, brought back the classical Italian
Sonnet form of Petrarch, that had an Octave and a Sestet. This
came to be known as the Miltonic Sonnet in English literature.
6) Please note that only the classical Italian sonnet form of
Petrarch existed in European countries, and Shakespearean or
the Elizabethan sonnet form exists only in English Literature.
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Two Sonnets prescribed for Paper 1
The World Is Too Much With Us
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I‘d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
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Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 5
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: 10
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
GREAT men have been among us; hands that penn'd
And tongues that utter'd wisdom—better none:
The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington,
Young Vane, and others who call'd Milton friend.
These moralists could act and comprehend: 5
They knew how genuine glory was put on;
Taught us how rightfully a nation shone
In splendour: what strength was, that would not bend
But in magnanimous meekness. France, 'tis strange,
Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then. 10
Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change!
No single volume paramount, no code,
No master spirit, no determined road;
But equally a want of books and men!
524. England, 1802
ii
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IT is not to be thought of that
the flood
Of British freedom, which, to
the open sea
Of the world's praise, from
dark antiquity
Hath flow'd, 'with pomp of
waters, unwithstood,'
Roused though it be full often
to a mood
5
Which spurns the check of
salutary bands,—
That this most famous stream
in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and
to good
Be lost forever. In our halls is
hung
Armoury of the invincible
Knights of old:
10
We must be free or die, who
speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the
faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.—In
everything we are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have
titles manifold.
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