Wordsworth’s “Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known”

868 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay william wordsworths contribution to romanticism

STRANGE FITS OF PASSION I HAVE KNOWN is a semiautobiographical poem by romantic poet William Wordsworth. Written in seventeen eighty nine, the poem depicts the image of a moonlight ride throughout the countryside to his lover’s, Lucy, cottage. During the trip, Wordsworth explores the sentiment driven feelings that accompany the (his) sensation of love. The poem is written in ballad form; Wordsworth purposely wrote his poetry in a simple and direct manner to contrast the elevated language of other poets of this period in an effort to bring forth the emotions of the reader. As a result, the poem becomes relatable allowing all readers to identify with the state of Wordsworth feelings in one way or another. The seven stanza poem has an ABAB rhyme scheme and is an iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, respectively - the first and third lines of each stanza have four emphasized syllables while the second and fourth lines have only three. This rhythmic structure gives the reader a feeling of the pace at which Wordsworth is moving on this Journey.

This particular poem is classified in a series of five poems by Wordsworth called “Lucy poems” which explored the ideals of beauty, love and death. Lucy Gray was believed to be loosely based on Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy, though there is speculation among literary scholars that “The one certainty is that she [the women in STRANGE FITS OF PASSION I HAVE KNOWN] is not the girl of Wordsworth's Lucy Gray” This is apparent in line one as he implies the women is his lover.

In the first stanza Wordsworth attempts to describe his “strange fits of passion” (line one), which would generally be difficult to define or understand in any ordinary context. Wordsworth addresses this problem in line two a...

... middle of paper ...

... Criticism Synopsis Online Education. n.d. 30 Jan 2011 .

Hayden, John O. William Wordsworth: Selected Poems. Penguin Classics, 1994.

SparkNotes Editors. SparkNotes: Wordsworth’s Poetry: "Strange fits of passion have I known". n.d. 30 Jan 2011 .

Wikipedia contributors. Strange fits of passion have I known - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 27 May 2010. 30 Jan 2011 .

—. The Lucy poems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 8 Jan 2011. 30 Jan 2011 .

Wordsworth, William. "Strange fits of passion have I known." Wordsworth, William. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8. Norton, W. W. & Company, 2006.

Show More
Related

  • Time and Tide: Kenneth Slessor's 'Five Bells'

    1728 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?

    Read More

  • American Poets: Biography of E. E. Cummings

    1546 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... Works Cited Everett, Nicholas. From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamilton.

    Read More

  • Love In The Sonnet By Edna St. Vincent Millay

    973 Words  | 2 Pages

    In romantic words, the poet expresses how much she does think of love. She state it clear that she will not trade love for peace in times of anguish.

    Read More

  • Cold Mountain Essay

    3131 Words  | 7 Pages

    (ll. 19-24) Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This small

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth's Nuns Fret Not

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    By concurring to the Italian sonnet’s rules and exploiting the room he was left to utilize, not only does Wordsworth create a poem that is both coherent and clever, he leaves the reader with a sense of communion, that he isn’t alone in the world. A brief moment of solace is sometimes all one asks for, and “Nuns Fret Not” has shown us how it’s obtained.

    Read More

  • Friendship in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Written on the banks of the Lye, this beautiful lyric has been said by critic Robert Chinchilla to “pose the question of friendship in a way more central, more profound, than any other poem of Wordsworth’s since ‘The Aeolian Harp’ of 1799” (245). Wordsworth is writing the poem to his sister Rebecca as a way of healing their former estrangement.

    Read More

  • Comparing Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and William Wordsworth’s The Thorn

    1707 Words  | 4 Pages

    Wordsworth, William. “The Thorn.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. 2B. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Longman, 1999. 319-325.

    Read More

  • Analyzing The Idiot Boy

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stephen Gill, editor. The Oxford Authors: William Wordsworth, pp. 67-80. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

    Read More

  • Close critical analysis of Coleridges Frost at Midnight

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    Wolfson, S. & Manning, P. 2003. The Longman Anthology of English Literature Vol 2: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. London: Longman.

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth and the Mortality of the Imagination

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    Peters, John G. “Wordsworth’s TINTERN ABBEY” The Explicator(Washington) , Winter 2003, Vol. 61, Iss. 2, pg. 77 : eLibrary. Web 05 Mar 2002

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth's Lucy Gray

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Wordsworth. “Lucy Gray.” English Romantic Poetry .Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1996. 33 – 4.

    Read More

  • Comparison of the Use of Nature by Shelley and Wordsworth

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    When a man becomes old and has nothing to look forward to he will always look back, back to what are called the good old days. These days were full of young innocence, and no worries. Wordsworth describes these childhood days by saying that "A single Field which I have looked upon, / Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"(190) Another example of how Wordsworth uses nature as a way of dwelling on his past childhood experiences is when he writes "O joy! That in our embers / Is something that doth live, / That nature yet remembers / What was so fugitive!" (192) Here an ember represents our fading years through life and nature is remembering the childhood that has escaped over the years. As far as Wordsworth and his moods go I think he is very touched by nature. I can picture him seeing life and feeling it in every flower, ant, and piece of grass that crosses his path. The emotion he feels is strongly suggested in this line "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." (193) Not only is this showi...

    Read More

  • The Role of Nature in the poetry of William Wordsworth

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself. In William Wordsworth’s poem, Resolution and Independence, Wordsworth describes the moods of the poem through the description of nature. The first appearance of the speaker, himself, is shown in (line 15); where he classifies himself as a traveler who has been seduced, as he states, “The pleasant season did my heart employ” (line 19). We see the traveler as a bright and joyful person as Wordsworth’s characteristics of nature as a means of description continues throughout the poem.

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth's Use of Nature

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jones, John. The Egotistical Sublime, A History of Wordsworth’s Imagination. London: Chatto & Windus, 1960.

    Read More

  • Wordsworth’s Romantic Style Present in Tintern Abbey

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Poetry of William Wordsworth." SIRS Renaissance 20 May 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 06 February 2010.

    Read More

More about Wordsworth’s “Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known”

Open Document