Wordsworth...

There will be times when I will go online and read some great poetry, and one of my favorite poets online is Willliam Wordsworth. If you don't know (and I guess you won't know) Wordsworth is a Romantic Poet, and by Romantic, I DO NOT mean he is all lovey-doey. In English Literature, Romantic and Romanticism is a characteristic period in the various form and movement of English Literature.

Here is one of my favorite sonnets:


CALM is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.
Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again.

In simple terms, I think you can tell that Wordsworth is reflecting on the idea of calmness in pastoral England, considering that he lived in Lake Country as he wrote the bulk of his poems, the near idyllic image of clam nature, or horses grazing, must have been a common sight.

What strikes me is that he is able to translate the "calmness" he feels onto paper, and I feel calm even I read his sonnet. That feeling roused principly in the choice of words like "dimly", "blank" and "heal". All these words associated with level of comfort, of emptiness minus the complications and something that ultimately seeks to heal, to dress and recover, possibly the soul.

Beautiful, beautiful poem