To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
1. Pick out an instance of personification from the above lines.
2. What is the rhyme scheme of the given stanza?
3. How does the poet associate himself with nature?
4. What is the meaning of the phrase "what man has made of man
Answers
Answer:
Lines Written in Early Spring’ was written in April 1798, the year that William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge signalled their arrival on the literary scene with their ground-breaking collection of Romantic poems, Lyrical Ballads. In some ways ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’ can be seen as the precursor to Wordsworth’s more famous ‘Lines’ poem, ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’.
Lines Written in Early Spring
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
‘Lines Written in Early Spring’ is written in quatrains rhyming abab; the metre is iambic tetrameter. And the poem should be read in the context of Wordsworth’s other poems from this time.
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
William WordsworthIn summary, Wordsworth sits in a small woodland grove and listens to the birdsong around him.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
But although happy thoughts are prompted by the birdsong, so are more sombre ones: nature has forged a strong connection between itself and the soul of mankind, but man has repaid the favour by making a mess of his relations with his fellow man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
Wordsworth admires the flowers – the primrose, the blue of the periwinkle, the greenness of the woodland area in which he sits – and the birds which ‘hopped and played’ around him.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
The birds, and the twigs on the trees, seem to exist in a world of pleasure – at least, Wordsworth decides he must tell himself that this is so. This is the way nature is, and nature, in being the work of God, is like this for a reason.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
Wordsworth ends by reasserting his lament about ‘what man has made of man’.
The world of nature, in Wordsworth’s poem, is depicted as cooperative and pleasurable – there is none of the ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ that we get from Tennyson just over half a century later, in the wake of geological discoveries that cast doubt over the heaven-sent view of nature Wordsworth espouses. This is a pre-Darwinian world – although, interestingly, Wordsworth’s friend Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, would publish a book called The Temple of Nature in 1803, just five years after ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’, which proposed a remarkably proto-Darwinian (the other one, that is) view of nature, and contained the couplet: ‘From Hunger’s arms the shafts of Death are hurl’d, / And one great Slaughter-house the warring world!’
But that’s all by the by: the point is that Wordsworth, in ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’, presents the natural world of birds and flowers as one of calm agreement and pleasure, contrasted with the implied failure of mankind to live up to such a model. What precisely ‘man has made of man’ is unstated, and that’s probably for the best: to be explicit about how Wordsworth feels man has failed his fellow man – whether through allowing his fellow humans to starve from poverty and exploitation, or through reverting to savage violence (the poem was written against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars, which followed hot on the heels of the Reign of Terror) – would be to limit the poem and to make it too time-specific. As it stands, the poem becomes timeless through its vagueness.
Concept: To answer the questions given in the stanza
Given: A stanza with some questions
Find: Understand the stanza properly and then answer the questions
Solution: The poem "Lines are written in early spring" is written by William Wordsworth.
Questions and answers :
1)
Ans: The writer has personified the following lines :
In her fair works, did Nature link
The birds around me hop
Every flower enjoys the air it breathes
2)
Ans: The rhyme scheme of the given stanza is "ababccdd".
3)
Ans: The poet says that his soul is connected to nature by his soul.
4)
Ans: The poet says that the human being has become greedy and he cuts trees for the sake of money. It is like humans murder the tree just to gain money. To humans, money is more important than life.
Hence, we now understand the poem and its meanings
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