The Ballad of East and West -- Rudyard Kipling

Sorry about Sunday's poem - I was terminally deficient.

(Poem #67) The Ballad of East and West Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border-side, And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride: He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day, And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away. Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides: "Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?" Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar: "If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are. At dusk he harries the Abazai -- at dawn he is into Bonair, But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare, So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai. But if he be past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat -- Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat. He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly, Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai, Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back, And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack. He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide. "Ye shoot like a soldier," Kamal said. "Show now if ye can ride." It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dustdevils go, The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe. The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above, But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays with a glove. There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was seen. They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn, The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn. The dun he fell at a water-course -- in a woful heap fell he, And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free. He has knocked the pistol out of his hand -- small room was there to strive, "'Twas only by favour of mine," quoth he, "ye rode so long alive: There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree, But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee. If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low, The little jackals that flee so fast were feasting all in a row: If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high, The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly." Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "Do good to bird and beast, But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast. If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair, -- thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn, -- howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!" Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet. "No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf meet. May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath; What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?" Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of my clan: Take up the mare for my father's gift -- by God, she has carried a man!" The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast; "We be two strong men," said Kamal then, "but she loveth the younger best. So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein, My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain." The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end, "Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he; "will ye take the mate from a friend?" "A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight; "a limb for the risk of a limb. Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!" With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain-crest -- He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest. "Now here is thy master," Kamal said, "who leads a troop of the Guides, And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides. Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed, Thy life is his -- thy fate it is to guard him with thy head. So, thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine, And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line, And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power -- Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur." They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault, They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt: They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod, On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God. The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun, And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one. And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear -- There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer. "Ha' done! ha' done!" said the Colonel's son. "Put up the steel at your sides! Last night ye had struck at a Border thief -- to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!" Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth! -- Rudyard Kipling

Another wonderful poem by Kipling. "At his best he is unforgettable", says
Louis Untermeyer, " standing mountain-high above his host of imitators.",
and this poem is certainly one of his best, a thrilling ballad with
beautifully turned phrases and a powerful, compelling rhythm.

Strangely enough, the first line is frequently seized upon by people who,
having read no more of the poem, leap up and accuse Kipling of racism. (That
he was imbued with the British imperialist mentality, and was one of the
chief proponents of the 'White Man's burden' attitude, is another matter -
he was merely a product of his times, and no more culpable for being its
chief surviving voice. There is certainly no evidence of even that much in
the above poem; quite the opposite in fact.)

m.

The Tyger -- William Blake

... dunno what happened to Sunday's poem. Martin?

(Poem #66) The Tyger Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? And what dread feet? What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? -- William Blake

Another famous poem which is no less wonderful for being popular... this
is one of the earliest poems I remember being entranced by, and to this
day the magic remains as powerful as it was the first time round.

[Overview]

Published in 1794 as one of the Songs of Experience, Blake's "The Tyger"
is a poem about the nature of creation, much as is his earlier poem from
the Songs of Innocence, "The Lamb." However, this poem takes on the
darker side of creation, when its benefits are less obvious than simple
joys. Blake's simplicity in language and construction contradicts the
complexity of his ideas. This poem is meant to be interpreted in
comparison and contrast to "The Lamb," showing the "two contrary states
of the human soul" with respect to creation. It has been said many times
that Blake believed that a person had to pass through an innocent state
of being, like that of the lamb, and also absorb the contrasting
conditions of experience, like those of the tiger, in order to reach a
higher level of consciousness. In any case, Blake's vision of a creative
force in the universe making a balance of innocence and experience is at
the heart of this poem.The poem's speaker is never defined, and so may
be more closely aligned with Blake himself than in his other poems. One
interpretation could be that it is the Bard from the Introduction to the
Songs of Experience walking through the ancient forest and encountering
the beast within himself, or within the material world. The poem
reflects primarily the speaker's response to the tiger, rather than the
tiger's response to the world.It important to remember that Blake lived
in a time that had never heard of popular psychology as we understand it
today. He wrote the mass of his work before the Romantic movement in
English literature. He lived in a world that was in the opening stages
of the Industrial Revolution, and in the midst of political revolutions
all over Europe and in America. As we look at his work we must in some
way forget many of the ideas about creativity, artists, and human nature
that we take for granted today, and reimagine them for the first time
as, perhaps, Blake did himself. It is in this way that Blake's poetry
has the power to astound us with his insight.

[Construction]

"The Tyger" contains six four-line stanzas, and uses pairs of rhyming
couplets to create a sense of rhythm and continuity. The notable
exception occurs in lines 3 and 4 and 23 and 24, where "eye" is
imperfectly paired, ironically enough, with "symmetry."The majority of
lines in this lyric contain exactly seven syllables, alternating between
stressed and unstressed syllables:

     Tyger! / Tyger! / burning / bright . . .

This pattern has sometimes been identified as trochaic tetrameter — four
("tetra") sets of trochees, or pairs of stressed and unstressed
syllables — even though the final trochee lacks the unstressed syllable.
There are several exceptions to this rhythm, most notably lines 4, 20,
and 24, which are eight-syllable lines of iambic tetrameter, or four
pairs of syllables that follow the pattern unstress/stress, called an
iamb. This addition of an unstressed syllable at the beginning of each
of these lines gives them extra emphasis.

[Criticism]

"The Tyger" has long been recognized as one of Blake's finest poems; in
his 1863 Life of William Blake, biographer Alexander Gilchrist relates
that the poem "happens to have been quoted often enough ... to have made
its strange old Hebrew-like grandeur, its Oriental latitude yet force of
eloquence, comparatively familiar" and that essayist and critic Charles
Lamb wrote of Blake: "I have heard of his poems, but have never seen
them. There is one to a tiger ... which is glorious!" In his 1906 work
William Blake: A Critical Essay, British poet and critic Algernon
Charles Swinburne similarly calls the lyric "a poem beyond praise for
its fervent beauty and vigour of music."Many critics have focused on the
symbolism in "The Tyger," frequently contrasting it with the language,
images, and questions of origin presented by its "innocent" counterpart,
"The Lamb." E. D. Hirsch, Jr., for instance, notes that while "The
Tyger" satirizes the lyrics found in "The Lamb" that is not the poem's
primary function. As the critic asserts in his Innocence and Experience:
An Introduction to Blake, in combining tones of terror and awe at a
being that could create the tiger as well as the lamb, the poet
"celebrates the divinity and beauty of the creation and its
transcendance of human good and evil without relinquishing the Keatsian
awareness that 'the miseries of the world Are misery.'" Hazard Adams
believes that the poem demonstrates that "creation in art is for Blake
the renewal of visionary truth." He explains in his 1963 study William
Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems that while the tiger may be
terrifying, it presents an intensity of vision that should be welcomed
with "a gaiety which can find a place in the divine plan for both the
tears and spears of the stars, ... and for both the tiger and the
lamb."While 'The Tyger' can be read in a variety of ways, Mark Schorer
asserts in William Blake: The Politics of Vision that "the juxtaposition
of lamb and tiger points not merely to the opposition of innocence and
experience, but to the resolution of the paradox they present." As the
lamb is subjected to the travails of the world, "innocence is converted
to exprience. It does not rest there. Energy can be curbed but it cannot
be destroyed, and when it reaches the limits of its endurance, it bursts
forth in revolutionary wrath." Jerome J. McGann, however, asserts in a
1973 essay that the poem defies specific interpretation: "As with so
many of Blake's lyrics, part of the poem's strategy is to resist
attempts to imprint meaning upon it. "The Tyger" tempts us to a
cognitive apprehension but in the end exhausts our efforts." As a
result, the critic concludes, "the extreme diversity of opinion among
critics of Blake about the meaning of particular poems and passages of
poems is perhaps the most eloquent testimony we have to the success of
his work."

For a very detailed, line-by-line analysis of the poem, do visit
http://www.gale.com/gale/poetry/tyger.html

thomas.

Home Thoughts From Abroad -- Robert Browning

(Poem #65) Home Thoughts From Abroad Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! -- Robert Browning

About time we had some Browning, methinks :) I wouldn't call his poetry
'great', but it's often beautiful, and never less than enjoyable. While
noted mostly for his longer pieces, Browning has written a number of short
poems of surprising beauty. The one above is a nice example - it captures
the feel of the English countryide perfectly, and has some wonderfully
lyrical phrases. I like the somewhat irregular rhyme scheme and metre too -
they lend the poem a 'natural' air that fits in well with the imagery. If
'Song' was an etching, 'Home Thoughts' is a watercolour; at once vivid and
muted, detailed and impressionistic. (I'm just waiting for the flood of
emails[1] telling me I know even less about art than I do about poetry, but
you get the picture[2].) Someone remind me not to post at 6am again <g>.

[1] hi thomas :)
[2] no pun intended. honest.

Biographical Notes:

Robert Browning, 1812 - 1889

  English poet and dramatist, whose most ambitious work was The Ring and the
  Book (1868-69): a verse narrative in ten parts based on a real murder
  trial conducted in Florence.

  Tennyson had no admirer more generous than Robert Browning. At the end of
  their lives the reputation of these fellow-poets was about equal but
  divergent. Tennyson was the people's poet, Browning the poet of esoterics,
  real or aspiring.

  Browning was, he himself confesses, a "supremely passionate, unluckily
  precocious" youngster. [...] Pauline, his first published poem, he wrote
  at twenty-one, and afterwards rejected. It recounts something of his
  novitiate as a poet; for, like the greatest, he early knew himself elect
  to poetry, and resolved "to look and learn / Mankind, its cares, hopes,
  fears, its woes and joys."

  Late in life, in his Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their
  Day, he recalls men whose books and ideas and music had held a leading
  part in his formative years. But the dominant infuence early and late was
  the poetry of Shelley, especially m its idealism and its straining for a
  vision of the perfect beyond the imperfect. His feeling for Shelley
  dictated Memorabilia.

  Somehow young Browning suffered little of the misery of body and soul so
  often the lot of young poets... A certain cheerful buoyancy about him, a
  balance between his abundant physical and spiritual health saved him and
  his poetry, as it had saved Fielding and Scott. It lay at the base of his
  life-long optimism, and was so constant that he exhibits no marked
  "phases" of development, but is much the same Browning to the end. His
  work accordingly defies sharp classification.

  If any one event marked a change in his work, it was his famous marriage
  with Elizabeth Barrett in 1846. Everyone knows the romantic story of the
  dreary household in that "long, unlovely" Wimpole Street, the narrow
  father ruling his large household with a hand that had ruled slaves in the
  West Indies, slowly forcing his daughter into invalidism, part imaginary,
  part real; and how, like a miracle, the hearty, sanguine young Robert,
  first attracted by her poetry, had sought her out loved her at once,
  inspired her with the purpose of recovery, married her secretly, and bore
  her off, pet spaniel and all, in triumph to Italy. He was thirty-four, she
  was forty.

  When his wife died Browning was forty-nine. In profound grief he left his
  beloved Italy as a home forever. How deeply he felt his loss, and what
  intimations it gave him, one may guess from his Prospice and such other
  poems in the volume, Dramatis Personae of 1864, as Abt Vogler and Rabbi
  Ben Ezra. Ever since his suppressed Pauline he had been averse to
  autobiographical revelations in his poetry; but the courage and
  characteristic balance and faith which sustained him through the
  twenty-seven years in which his wife was a memory shine cloudless in one
  of his last poems, the Epilogue to Asolando.

Assessment:

  Though not a national poet like Tennyson, Browning became the unwitting,
  and at heart unwilling, father of such a cult in his lifetime as never
  bored another English poet. Browning societies sprang up on both sides of
  the water, graciously accepted by the poet, while he protested that he
  himself was "no Browningite." This cult is not hard to explain. The poet's
  optimism and energy attracted many a mind weary of the forlorn struggle
  against defeat of spirit. His difficulty and supposed subtlety flattered
  the aspirations of blue-stockings, would-be esoterics, and other aspirants
  to "culture." It appealed to the multitude who do not value what they get
  too easily, but enjoy the exercise of earning it, and prize it more when
  won. In America Browning's energy and cheerful relish for everything made
  him a Victorian favorite.

  But now that the cult has subsided, even his advocates find themselves
  slipping into the habit of noting his failings--what he is not rather than
  what he is: he is no stylist, they admit, he is not clear, he is not
  tuneful, he is no reasoner, no philosopher, to some he is hardly
  civilized. Yet no poet, not even Homer, was ever more nearly omnivorous in
  his poetic appetite. Everything stirred poetic excitement in him till his
  great brain was stuffed and overflowing: insects, animals, flowers, every
  object touched with human life---books, walls, clothes, textures, marbles,
  houses, pictures, musical instruments, arms, drugs, and drinking-cups.

  Every poet is tortured with the necessity of fitting matter to form. With
  Browning the matter so abounds and crowds for utterance that it strains,
  distorts, and overflows the form. His language like his mind becomes
  congested, and weak but useful members--articles, conjunctions, relative
  pronouns, copu-las-are crowded out, and sentences get crushed to mere
  absolute phrases. And not content with one word or phrase for one thing,
  his very abundance repeats it, once, twice, thrice, in synonymous words,
  phrases, sentences, accumulating like the kennings in Old English poetry.

        -- Excerpted from
        <http://britishliterature.com/era/victoria-brownings.html>; again,
        do go and read the whole thing.

m.

Instant Fish -- Peter Porter

(Poem #64) Instant Fish Instant Fish by Phidias! Add water and they swim. -- Peter Porter

Note: Phidias was a Greek sculptor whose statues were so realistic that
they seemed to be alive.

Porter's take on Phidias is amazingly self-referential; like the fish
being described, the poem expands and takes on layers of meaning in the
mind of the reader. In just 9 short words, Porter manages to invoke the
ideas of life as art and art as life, the meaning of representation, the
role of the viewer, even the effects of time...

(Lest anyone think that I'm reading too much into what is actually a
piece of nonsense, let me add that I thought of many of the above issues
when I first read that poem; later (much later), I read a book of
criticism which had Porter say the same things about this poem. So
there. <g>)

thomas.

Daffodils -- William Wordsworth

(Poem #63) Daffodils 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. -- William Wordsworth

Well, it was only a matter of time before this one showed up <g>. It's
certainly one of the most famous poems around[1] - however, there is a
distressingly common attitude that anything so simple, accessible and
popular can't have much poetic merit.

[1] in fact, it topped a recent British poll of best-loved poems - see the
comment to The Listeners (Poem #2)

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth - in fact, Wordsworth
himself said it best:

  The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments.
  They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language
  of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to
  the purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and
  inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this
  book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with
  feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for poetry,
  and will be induced to enquire by what species of courtesy these attempts
  can be permitted to assume that title. It is desirable that such readers,
  for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary word Poetry, a word of
  very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of their gratification ...

        -- Preface To Lyrical Ballads (1798)
        <http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/criticism/lyrb1_il.html>

Notes:
1. Wordsworth made use of the description in his sister's diary, as well as
   of his memory of the daffodils in Gowbarrow Park, by Ullswater. Cf. Dorothy
   Wordsworth's Journal, April 15, 1802: "I never saw daffodils so beautiful.
   They grew among the mossy stones . . .; some rested their heads upon these
   stones, as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and
   danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon
   them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing."

2. 'They flash upon that inward eye... ': Wordsworth said that these were
   the two best lines in the poem and that they were composed by his wife.

        -- Representative Poetry Online

Biography and Assessment:

  Wordsworth was born in the Lake District of northern England[...]The
  natural scenery of the English lakes could terrify as well as nurture, as
  Wordsworth would later testify in the line "I grew up fostered alike by
  beauty and by fear," but its generally benign aspect gave the growing boy
  the confidence he articulated in one of his first important poems, "Lines
  Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey . . . ," namely, "that Nature
  never did betray the heart that loved her."
  [...]
  Wordsworth moved on in 1787 to St. John's College, Cambridge. Repelled by
  the competitive pressures there, he elected to idle his way through the
  university, persuaded that he "was not for that hour, nor for that place."
  The most important thing he did in his college years was to devote his
  summer vacation in 1790 to a long walking tour through revolutionary
  France. There he was caught up in the passionate enthusiasm that followed
  the fall of the Bastille, and became an ardent republican sympathizer.
  [...]
  The three or four years that followed his return to England were the
  darkest of Wordsworth's life. Unprepared for any profession, rootless,
  virtually penniless, bitterly hostile to his own country's opposition to
  the French, he knocked about London in the company of radicals like
  William Godwin and learned to feel a profound sympathy for the abandoned
  mothers, beggars, children, vagrants, and victims of England's wars who
  began to march through the sombre poems he began writing at this time.
  This dark period ended in 1795, when a friend's legacy made possible
  Wordsworth's reunion with his beloved sister Dorothy--the two were never
  again to live apart--and their move in 1797 to Alfoxden House, near
  Bristol. There Wordsworth became friends with a fellow poet, Samuel Taylor
  Coleridge, and they formed a partnership that would change both poets'
  lives and alter the course of English poetry.

  [...]

  Through all these years Wordsworth was assailed by vicious and tireless
  critical attacks by contemptuous reviewers; no great poet has ever had to
  endure worse. But finally, with the publication of The River Duddon in
  1820, the tide began to turn, and by the mid-1830s his reputation had been
  established with both critics and the reading public.

  Wordsworth's last years were given over partly to "tinkering" his poems,
  as the family called his compulsive and persistent habit of revising his
  earlier poems through edition after edition. The Prelude, for instance,
  went through four distinct manuscript versions (1798-99, 1805-06, 1818-20,
  and 1832-39) and was published only after the poet's death in 1850. Most
  readers find the earliest versions of The Prelude and other heavily
  revised poems to be the best, but flashes of brilliance can appear in
  revisions added when the poet was in his seventies.

  Wordsworth succeeded his friend Robert Southey as Britain's poet laureate
  in 1843 and held that post until his own death in 1850. Thereafter his
  influence was felt throughout the rest of the 19th century, though he was
  honoured more for his smaller poems, as singled out by the Victorian
  critic Matthew Arnold, than for his masterpiece, The Prelude. In the 20th
  century his reputation was strengthened both by recognition of his
  importance in the Romantic movement and by an appreciation of the darker
  elements in his personality and verse.

  William Wordsworth was the central figure in the English Romantic
  revolution in poetry. His contribution to it was threefold. First, he
  formulated in his poems and his essays a new attitude toward nature. This
  was more than a matter of introducing nature imagery into his verse; it
  amounted to a fresh view of the organic relation between man and the
  natural world, and it culminated in metaphors of a wedding between nature
  and the human mind, and beyond that, in the sweeping metaphor of nature as
  emblematic of the mind of God, a mind that "feeds upon infinity" and
  "broods over the dark abyss." Second, Wordsworth probed deeply into his
  own sensibility as he traced, in his finest poem, The Prelude, the "growth
  of a poet's mind." The Prelude was in fact the first long autobiographical
  poem. Writing it in a drawn-out process of self-exploration, Wordsworth
  worked his way toward a modern psychological understanding of his own
  nature, and thus more broadly of human nature. Third, Wordsworth placed
  poetry at the centre of human experience; in impassioned rhetoric he
  pronounced poetry to be nothing less than "the first and last of all
  knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man," and he then went on to
  create some of the greatest English poetry of his century. It is probably
  safe to say that by the late 20th century he stood in critical estimation
  where Coleridge and Arnold had originally placed him, next to John
  Milton--who stands, of course, next to William Shakespeare.

        -- EB

m.