Wordsworth's Poems of 1807 and the Haunting Cry of Alice Fell

Abstract

Originally delivered at 2007 Wordsworth Summer Conference in Grasmere, UK, occasion of this essay is bicentenary of Wordsworth's Poems in Two Volumes, published by Longman in May, 1807. With 115 poems, twice length of Lyrical Ballads, 1800, Wordsworth was concerned, as he wrote Sir George Beaumont, with his reader's response: There is no forming a true estimate of a Vol. of by reading them all together; one stands in way of other (MY 95). Nonetheless, he told Sir Walter Scott he had confidence in these small pieces (MY 06). Although collection as a whole is available in several editions, scholarly Cornell volume edited by Jared Curtis, paperback edited by Alun R. Jones, and Woodstock facsimile produced by Jonathan Wordsworth, are mostly anthologized and known separately, out of collection in which they were first published. Wordsworth organized into eight groups. creating mini-hooks or reading Millions, that foreshadow classification system he developed in 1815. His best known poem, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, sits unobtrusively in Poems of 1807 in middle of section on Moods of My Own Mind. Although Daffodil poem, as Word-sworths called it, bewildered some early critics, it has become one of most memorized of all time (Jones 31; Woof), it now has a second life for You Tube generation in a rap video produced by Cumbria Tourism in honour of two-hundred year anniversary of its publication (which can be found on website golakcs.co.uk). This witty take on poem, with its Beatrix Potter-esque hip-hop squirrel, shows way that music of poetic line, and its visual counteipart in host of dancing Daffodils (4), could appeal readers in 1807 or 2007. This performance shows sense of play among contemporary Wordsworthians, versatility of musical form, and intrinsic power and attraction of poem itself, rhyme, rhythm, and dreamy narrator. In one of three celandine in 1807 collection, Wordsworth explained that he would not sing of a distant star or an Egyptian pyramid, but of humble things beside him. From ''Birds, and Butterflies, and Flowers in Green Linnet (17) impassioned social protest in sonnets, key Wordsworth's perspective on world and on nature appears in very last lines of Intimations Ode, the flower and human heart with which collection concludes. Fell poem that precedes Resolution and Independence in collection is one of ''small poems of humble life, a meanest flower conveying thoughts too deep for tears. When poem was republished in 1815 edition, Wordsworth added a subtitle, calling it Fell; or Poverty. An exceptional poem on its own, Fell has attracted contemporary scholars for its relevance issues of class and gender. In 1801, along with a copy of Lyrical Ballads, 1800, Wordsworth explained Charles James Fox, humanitarian and Member of Parliament, that he wrote Michael and Brothers to shew that men who do not wear fine cloaths can feel (EY 315), which applies Leech-gatherer and others in 1807 collection. But in Fell Wordsworth shows that girls who do not wear fine clothes can feci deeply too. When narrator meets Alice, she is crying because her cloak is tangled--ruined beyond repair--in wheels of a coach. The poem ends with narrator paying for Alice have a new cloak. Despite this good resolution, sound of Alice's crying haunts reader long after it was heard no more (32), as Wordsworth was haunted by Solitary Reaper, Wordsworthian encounters between a middle-class speaker and those who are poor and live on margins reveal what Gary Harrison calls human face of poverty (60), one of Wordsworth's greatest achievements. …