“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.docVIP

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. William Wordsworth’s poems reflect this view of poetry that he held. His poems seem to carry emotion that has matured from strong, personal feeling into something more universal. His poems often look back and focus on a poignant moment. He spent his whole career reworking his poems, seeing his past in different light after longer periods of time. Like moments, his poems are each unique, yet linked to others, whether by subject, form, or the dominant emotion. Wordsworth enjoyed walking and the independence offered by the outdoors. Nature is included in nearly every poem that he wrote. The reader finds that the glory in many of Wordsworth’s poems is his beautiful descriptions of nature. The description of the moss, “In spikes, in branches, and in stars,/ Green, red, and pearly white”(sec. V), and the weather in “The Thorn” allow the reader to easily picture the mountaintop setting. Lines like “And when the little breezes make/The waters of the pond to shake,” (sec. XIX) draw the reader into the description Wordsworth lays out. In “The Tables Turned” he points out there is something to learn from nature with stanzas including “One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.” (ll. 19-22) These lines not only tell of nature’s wisdom, but also hint that perhaps an adult’s understanding of the world is not always the most correct. This idea is also a theme in “We Are Seven” with the little girl insisting, even persuading the reader, that she is one of seven, not five, children. Although “The Tables Turned” as a whole comes across as a bit tongue in cheek, the reader senses that Wordsworth did believe in the wisdom of the natural world. Especially when the reader reflects on Wordsworth’s extensive use of the natural world in his poetry, it is easy to think that Wordsworth put much value in the