SMP #18 Lines Written in Early Spring by William Wordsworth

The Troubadour Podcast

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What does contemplation look like and how can we know it when we are doing it? This will be one of the themes to be explored on this episode.

On this Sunday Morning Poetry I'll be reading not only the Lines poem but a passage from Wordsworth's The Prelude and a poem from Robert Burns. We will learn much about a pivotal shift in the early Wordsworth's philosophy and poetry. It is the shift that made Romanticism... Well... Romanticism.

In Lyrical Ballads there are several poems by Wordsworth with the title simply "lines" and then a subtitle like (written in early spring) or (left upon a yew tree...). The most famous of these, and the most famous of all Wordsworth's poetry is the finale of the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, Lines (written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wy during a tour, July 13th, 1798).

These "lines" poems have at their core a certain way of contemplation reality. It is one that has changed English writing and thinking ever since. And it is a way of contemplation that will make your life worth living.