First Entry January 26th-Concerning "Lines Written in Early Spring"

         When first delving into Lines Written in Early Spring, I immediately noted that the season early spring itself must be a beautiful time to write poetry about nature in the English countryside.   Wordsworth himself describes the scene where he actually wrote the poem, recalling, “It was a chosen resort of mine.  The brook fell down a sloping rock so as to make a waterfall considerable for that country, and across the pool below had fallen a tree…from which rose perpendicularly, boughs in search of the light intercepted by the deep shade above. The boughs bore leaves of green that for want of sunshine had faded into almost lily-white”( The Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth, Cambridge Edition, 1904). I actually retrieved this quotation from the website: http://bestword.ca/William_Wordsworth_Lines_Written_in_Early_Spring_Analysis.html

            This scene is so overwhelmingly beautiful that it inspires Wordsworth to write a poem about it. I believe he was inspired by the colors, smells, and sounds he sensed around the lily-white leaves and reaching boughs of the fallen tree. As cheerful as this scene may seem, it is also the same place where Wordsworth evokes his pensive side. His heart becomes grieved as he develops, “that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind”(Lyrical Ballads 2003, pg. 72). Perhaps what triggered this mood was the irony that the tree had to die in order for its true living beauty to develop. The boughs earn their unique shape by ‘searching’ for the unreachable light above, and the leaves reveal their flower-like beauty only after fading from lack of sunshine.

            The sad conclusion that Wordsworth eventually comes to is that what man has made of himself as a whole is woeful in comparison to what nature has made of itself. Nature, even in death, has a certain process, normality, and beauty to it. Wordsworth writes, “birds around me hopp’d and play’d: Their thoughts I cannot measure, But the least motion which they made, It seem’d a thrill of pleasure”(Lyrical Ballads 2003, pg. 72). All around him in the grove, nature reveals its unbound and overpowering beauty. The thrill of pleasure that these birds exude translate to Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that we now read as his poetry (Lyrical Ballads 2003, pg. 407).