The Comparison and Contrast of I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud & The Preservation of Flowers

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Recommended: Treatment of nature in poetry

‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and ‘The Preservation of Flowers’: two notable poems, two very different styles of writing. This essay will look at their contrasts and similarities, from relevant formal aspects, to the deeper meanings hidden between the lines. We will look at both writers use of: rhyme scheme, sound patterning, word choice, figurative language and punctuation. The essay will also touch a little on the backgrounds of the writers: themselves, and their inspiration, with the intention of gaining a greater understanding of both texts.

The structure and form of both poems is evidently dissimilar. Wordsworth’s poem follows a clear rhyme scheme: ABABCC; and contains four stanzas of six lines each. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third, the second with the fourth and the stanza concludes with a rhyming couplet.

Bird’s sixteen line- narrative verse does not follow any formal rhyme scheme. She describes full rhyme as being “too strident”E1 for her personal taste. Choosing instead: to use consonance and near rhymes. Despite this seemingly unconventional style with which the poem is written, it does follow an iambic pentameter, with every line containing five stressed syllables, except line 13 which contains six.

‘Cer-tain cus-to-mers, he slips an ex-tra rose’13.

This is a very clever play on words, using the term ‘extra rose’ to mirror the extra syllable in the line. This patently demonstrates Bird’s astute understanding of structure and form. She explains –

“There's a poetry joke in there too - each line has five stresses, but the 'extra rose' line has six stresses. An extra rose, an extra stress.”E2.

This again presents another parallel to Wordsworth’s lyric, where the meter is not u...

... middle of paper ...

... he has a point. Contrary to this statement however, there remains the reality: that without dissection and close analysis, the true meanings encoded within these two texts, might remain perpetually esoteric.

Bibliography

.T Furniss & M Bath.

1996. Reading Poetry: an introduction. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

.Preface to Lyrical Ballads, in Wordsworth (1968) Lyrical ballads, pp. 241-72, 246. ‘Organic sensibility’ refers to the responsiveness of the senses.

See ‘The Tables Turned’, in Wordsworth (1968) The Lyrical Ballads, pp. 105-6.

.Internet 1 http://www.enotes.com/william-wordsworth/q-and-a/what-elements-nature-daffodils-poem-144087

.Internet 2 http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/poetry/index.asp?pageid=101

.Internet 3 http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2337.html

.Internet4 http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

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