《英语诗歌欣赏》小论文范文
北岛的诗-秋风
Enjoying English Poetry Course Essay
Student’s Name: Class
Number:
Date: 20151221
Wordsworth’s
View on Nature
Based on the Reading of I
Wandered Lonely as
a Cloud
Che Hongyu
Wordsworth was a British poet
in the 19 century and the poet laureate since
th
1843 till his death in 1850. He was born
and grew up in the English Lake District and
the beautiful scenery of his hometown nurtured
his deep love for nature and his
purpose of
praising nature in his work. He called himself
“Prophet of Nature” in The
Prelude, and
claimed that prophets of nature “will speak a
lasting inspiration,
sanctified by reason,
blest by faith: what we have loved, others will
love and we will
teach them how” (Wordsworth,
1979: 482), by which he means he, as a nature
worshipper, will write about his love for
nature in his work and show the readers what
he loves about nature, so as to teach them how
to love nature and evoke their love for
nature.
This essay will analyze the poem
I wandered Lonely as a Cloud from the
aspects
of writing background, metrical patterns, figures
of speech and images so as
to examine William
Wordsworth’s view on nature.
I Wandered Lonely
as a Cloud was written in 1804 and believed to be
one of
the most beautiful poems written on
nature. The poet wrote this poem based on his
experience on April 15
th
, 1802. That
day, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy
Wordsworth were walking in the Lake District,
to quote Dorothy in Grasmere
Journals, “It was
a threatening misty morning-but mild. We set off
after dinner…The
wind was furious & we thought
we must have returned…We first rested in the large
Boat-house, then under a furze Bush…The
wind seized our breath the Lake was rough.
We
rested again in the Water Millock Lane…We got over
into a field to avoid some
cows…When we were
in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few
daffodils
close to the water side” (Abrams,
2000: 391). It was clear that that day was a windy
one, Wordsworth and his sister set off for a
walk after dinner but was frustrated by
furious wind. They rested in the Boathouse,
under a bush, and in the Water Millock
Lane
and they walked on against the wind and when they
arrived at the woods, they
saw the daffodils.
The daffodils were beautiful and vast, “there was
a long belt of
them along the shore, about the
breadth of a country turnpike road (Abrams, 2000:
391)”. They did not expect to see such
beautiful daffodils in such a multitude on such
a rough day. “I never saw daffodils so
beautiful they grew among the mossy stones
about & about them, some rested their heads
upon these stones as on a pillow for
weariness
& the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if
they verily laughed
with the wind that blew
upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever
glancing
ever changing (Abrams, 2000: 391)”.
The daffodils are not only beautiful but also
cheerful, such natural beauty cheered up the
two travelers on such a windy cold day.
Two
years later, Wordsworth wrote the poem I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud to praise
nature.
Obviously, the theme of the poem is “nature is
beautiful and wise” as shown in
daffodils. To
show the beauty and charm of daffodils, the poet
creates a musically
beautiful poem. This poem
was written in iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme
scheme of
ababcc. All the four stanzas follow
the same metrical pattern, and the whole poem is
actually an ode to daffodils of the Horatian
type. Tetrameter, shorter than pentameter,
creates a cheerful rhythm and the use of
traditional iambic meter ensures the soothing
effect of musicality of the poem. The long
vowels of au, i:, ai, ei, a: also create a
comforting, calming effect on the readers,
beautifully soothing. The repetition of the
lateral l sound adds to this loving and
peaceful effect. The poet’s use of the euphony
shows how much he wants to show and convey to
the readers the beauty of daffodils,
which is
also the beauty of nature.
Apart from the
musical beauty, the poet uses various figures of
speech and
images to further show the beauty
and cheerfulness of the daffodils. At the
beginning
of the poem, the speaker was seen as
a lonely wanderer in the hill, who was compared
to “a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and
hills”. But the appearance of the
daffodils
greatly changed his melancholy mood. He did not
see just one or two
daffodils, but a
great many, “a crowd, a host, of golden
daffodils”, “continuous as the
stars…on the
milky way”, “they stretched in never-ending line”,
“ten thousand saw I
at a glance”. The images
of “crowd”, “host”, “never-ending line” showed the
non-loneliness of the flowers which instantly
impressed the speaker. The daffodils are
not
only impressive in number, but also extremely
cheerful, happy and inspiring. The
kinesthetic
images of “fluttering”, “dancing’, “shine and
twinkle”, “tossing their
heads in spritely
dance” depicted vivid pictures of this “jocund”
company.
Nature is beautiful, as shown in the
poem, but not only so. Nature teaches
people
about the wisdom of life too. The daffodils are
blooming in the rough wind,
dancing, shining,
fluttering against the bad weather, which tells
the speaker a truth
about nature: nature is
naturally merry. The wind is rough, that is what
the wind is;
this does not stop the daffodils
from remaining happy and celebrating life. The
speaker was influenced by the cheerfulness of
nature and forgot his loneliness. Even
upon
retrospection, when the speaker was “in vacant or
in pensive mood”, the wisdom
taught by
nature’s beauty still came back to him, “they
flash upon that inward
eyeWhich is the bliss
of solitude” and this inspired him and worked a
wonder on him,
and he became happy.
To
conclude, Wordsworth loves nature and believes
nature is not only
beautiful, but also wise.
He, as a poet, takes “praising nature” as his
mission and tries
to be the “prophet of
nature”. He uses the persona to express his faith
in and love for
nature in this poem. He
believes if people try to appreciate nature’s
beauty, take in
nature’s wisdom, humbly accept
nature’s nurturing, people will be wise and happy.
Note: All the quotations of the poem
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
are
from《
英语诗歌欣
赏》，
蒲度戎主编，2008，重庆：重庆大学出版社。
References
1. Abrams, M. H., 2000,
The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
7
th
edition, volume 2. New
York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc.
2. Wordsworth, W.,
1979, The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. New York: W.
W. Norton & Company,
Inc.
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