Question

Mention some images that the poet has made use of in this poem

Answer 1

Discussing prose written by poets, Joseph Brodsky has remarked, “the tradition of dividing literature into poetry and prose dates from the beginnings of prose, since it was only in prose that such a distinction could be made.” This insight is worth bearing in mind when considering the various prose works of the poet William Wordsworth. For Wordsworth poetic composition was a primary mode of expression; prose was secondary. Wordsworth seems to have written prose mostly in order to find a structure for his poetic beliefs and political enthusiasms. Over the course of a prolific poetic career, in fact, Wordsworth produced little prose, though he did compose two works of lasting general interest, one on poetics—“Preface to Lyrical Ballads”—and the other on the landscape of his native region—his tourist handbook, A Guide through the District of the Lakes, which retains more than a local interest as geographical background to his poems and biography. Wordsworth is not, of course, remembered as a prose writer but as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature. Yet recently, certain critics, as part of a revisionist critique of older interpretations of Wordsworth’s verse, have turned to his political essays for evidence, especially concerning the poet's rejection of his youthful radicalism. Wordsworth's political writings, especially “A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff,” The Convention of Cintra (1809), and Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland (1818), while historically significant, are of primary interest as background for the poetry: for Wordsworth, poetics always determined politics.