Work record
Poems, in Two Volumes
William WordsworthPoems, in Two Volumes by William Wordsworth (1807)Poems, in Two Volumes, published by Longman in April 1807, is the collection in which William Wordsworth gathered the shorter poems of his greatest decade, written mostly between 1802 and 1807 at Dove Cottage in Grasmere.1807 · 19th Century · Poetry · English
Abstract
Background. These pieces date from the poet's most productive years at Dove Cottage, after his marriage and during the uneasy truce and renewed war with France. He gathered them into two slim books published in London in the spring of 1807.
Content. Short songs to flowers and birds sit beside a stern prayer for moral discipline. A run of fourteen-line poems records the city at dawn, an evening by the sea with his young daughter, a lament that commerce has numbed us to nature, and calls to an England that needs the virtue of its old republican poet. The second book adds a Scottish harvest girl's song, a rainbow, a field of daffodils, and ends with a long ode on the lost radiance of early life.
Form. Lyrics in many stanza forms, Petrarchan sonnets and one great irregular ode.
Themes. Joy in nature, duty, patriotism, memory and the soul's heavenly origin. The political sonnets show a poet who believed that liberty depends on plain living and high thinking, while the closing ode finds in fading childhood vision a sign of the soul's origin beyond this world.
Reception. Francis Jeffrey ridiculed its simplicity, yet later readers placed it at the centre of English Romantic lyric.
For students. Select the sonnets, the daffodils, the rainbow, the Solitary Reaper and the Ode for grades 9-12.
Key figures
- William Wordsworth: Poet and author of the collection
- Dorothy Wordsworth: His sister and companion on walks and tours
- John Milton: Invoked in London, 1802
Summary
Poems, in Two Volumes, published by Longman in April 1807, is the collection in which William Wordsworth gathered the shorter poems of his greatest decade, written mostly between 1802 and 1807 at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. Many readers consider it his finest single book. The first volume opens with short lyrics such as To the Daisy and the Character of the Happy Warrior, and includes the Ode to Duty, in which the poet, once content to follow impulse, asks the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God for a steadier law. It also contains Poems Composed during a Tour, Chiefly on Foot, and a series of sonnets, among them Composed upon Westminster Bridge, the sonnet beginning It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The world is too much with us, with its complaint that getting and spending we lay waste our powers, and London, 1802, which begins Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour. These political sonnets, written during and after the Peace of Amiens, call England back to the moral strength of its seventeenth-century poets and patriots. The second volume includes poems from a tour of Scotland, notably The Solitary Reaper, about a Highland girl singing as she works in the field, and a group called Moods of My Own Mind, containing My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky, To the Cuckoo and I wandered lonely as a cloud. The book closes with the Ode later titled Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, a great meditation on the fading of the visionary gleam of childhood, in which our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting and we come trailing clouds of glory from God, who is our home. The volume was harshly reviewed, especially by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, who mocked its simplicity, but its sonnets and lyrics are now among the most widely taught poems in English. For students it shows Wordsworth at his most varied: patriotic, devotional, playful and profound.
Virtues in this work
- Piety: The Ode to Duty and the Ode look to God as the soul's source and law.
- Temperance: The sonnets rebuke getting and spending.
Plot or Argument
- Volume I: lyrics and Ode to Duty
Short lyrics, the Character of the Happy Warrior and the prayer of the Ode to Duty.
- Volume I: sonnets
Westminster Bridge, It is a beauteous evening, The world is too much with us and the political sonnets including London, 1802.
- Volume II: Scotland
Poems from the Scottish tour, including The Solitary Reaper.
- Volume II: Moods of My Own Mind
My heart leaps up, To the Cuckoo and I wandered lonely as a cloud.
- The Ode
The closing meditation on childhood vision, loss and immortality.
Lessons
Nature and the soul
Wordsworth finds in daffodils, rainbows and a singing girl a joy that nourishes the inner life.
- Choose one nature lyric. What does the poet see, and what does it give him?
- What is the inward eye?
- How does Psalm 19 compare?
The world too much with us
The sonnet warns that getting and spending dulls our hearts to wonder.
- What does getting and spending mean today?
- Why does the speaker wish to be a pagan?
- How would a Christian answer his complaint?
Childhood and immortality
The Ode says we come from God trailing clouds of glory, and the light fades as we grow.
- What is lost as the child grows?
- What consolation does the last stanza offer?
- How does Matthew 18:3 shed light on the poem?
Context
Written mostly 1802-1807 at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, during the war with Napoleonic France and the brief Peace of Amiens (1802-03); Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson in 1802 and lost his brother John at sea in 1805.
Composition
Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, London, in April 1807, in two small volumes. This text joins Gutenberg #8774 and #8824.
Reception
Reviews were largely hostile, but within a generation the sonnets and the Ode were acknowledged masterpieces.
Comparisons
- Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth's earlier experiment with Coleridge.
- Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
The great blank-verse meditation that anticipates the Ode.
- God's Grandeur
Hopkins's sonnet answers the world is too much with us with God's grandeur.
- Paradise Lost
London, 1802 calls on Milton as a model of English virtue.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:”
Frequently cited
“Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee:”
Frequently cited
“My heart leaps up when I behold A Rainbow in the sky:”
Frequently cited
“But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home;”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- The Ode to Duty's change of heart.
- The Petrarchan sonnets and their turns.
- The political sonnets of 1802.
- The Moods of My Own Mind group.
- The Ode's movement from loss to consolation.
Key terms and names
- Petrarchan sonnet
- Fourteen lines divided into an octave and a sestet with a turn between.
- Ode
- A long, serious lyric addressed to or meditating on a subject.
- Peace of Amiens
- The 1802-03 truce between Britain and France.
- Dove Cottage
- Wordsworth's home at Grasmere, 1799-1808.
- Visionary gleam
- Wordsworth's phrase in the Ode for the light of childhood perception.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension Name three poems in the collection and their subjects.
- Comprehension What does the speaker ask for in the Ode to Duty?
- Interpretation Why does Wordsworth call on Milton in London, 1802?
- Interpretation What does The world is too much with us say we have lost?
- Interpretation How does the Ode console the reader for the loss of childhood vision?
- Big Question Does growing up mean losing wonder?
Faith Connections
- Matthew 18:3 (Scripture)
Except ye become as little children: compare the Ode's reverence for childhood.
- Psalm 19:1 (Scripture)
The heavens declare the glory of God: the rainbow and daffodils.
- Matthew 6:19-21 (Scripture)
Lay not up treasures upon earth: the warning against getting and spending.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: Ordinary sights in nature and memory nourish the soul; worldliness and national decline dull it; the light of childhood fades, but faith and remembered joy bring a deeper consolation; therefore poetry recalls us to the springs of moral and spiritual life.
Rhetorical device: sonnet. Wordsworth revived the Miltonic sonnet as a form for private wonder and public rebuke.
Debate: Resolved: that the world is too much with us.
Memory Work
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home;
Writing Prompts
Essay: How does Poems, in Two Volumes show both the private and the public Wordsworth?
Comparison with Lyrical Ballads: Compare the 1807 lyrics with the 1798 ballads in style and subject.
Creative Prompts
- Poetry
Write a sonnet about something that is too much with us today.
- Essay
How does the Ode use childhood to speak about God and the soul?
- Classroom
Each student memorises one short lyric or sonnet from the collection and recites it.
Further Reading
- Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The 1798 volume.
- Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge's assessment of Wordsworth's strengths and defects.
Verification notes
Text joins Gutenberg #8774 and #8824 (1807 first edition, Distributed Proofreaders). Wordsworth's own footnotes are retained. The Ode is untitled in 1807 apart from its epigraph; the Intimations title dates from 1815.
No verification flags recorded.