William Wordsworth and the Mortality of the Imagination

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Analysis of Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, The Prelude, The World is Too Much with Us, and London, 1802

One of our greatest fears is the fear of death. Immortality is something any of us would take in a heartbeat, so we do not have to face death. But this is something that we cannot run away from. Mortality is an unpleasant thought that sits in the back of our minds form our day to day lives. Yet, this fear is something that is developed more over time as we grow older. Children believe that the world is such a wonderful place, they fell invincible. They also have wonderful creative skills and imaginations which is often revealed to us when they can play one game for hours at one time. Yet, as a child ages, this imagination and creativity can disappear. This is what William Wordsworth is terrified of. Wordsworth is an English poet as well as his colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the first edition of Lyrical Ballads and it changed everything as mentioned Evelyn Toynton, “In early 1798, Coleridge and a little-known poet named William Wordsworth decided to publish a joint volume of their poems.” (Toynton, Evelyn). William expressed this fear of premature mortality of the imagination in each of his works, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, The Prelude, The World is Too Much with Us, and London, 1802.

Primarily in Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey the mortality of creativeness and imagination is expressed by Wordsworth. This is a poem about the beauty of an old cathedral called Tintern Abbey. He hasn’t been there in five years and he brought his sister along. Even though imagination isn’t immortal, there is a way to reclaim it, “That time is past, / and all its aching joys are ...

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... with Us. Lastly, Wordsworth’s poem London, 1802 also shows his fear of premature mortality of the imagination. All of these works contain his fear of losing imagination and how man should return to nature.

Works Cited

Kirsch, Adam. "STRANGE FITS OF PASSION ; BOOKS." New Yorker, The. 05 Oct. 2005: 92. eLibrary. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

Magnuson, Paul. "The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons & The Wordsworths in 1802." Criticism 4(2001):451. eLibrary. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

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

Richey, William. "The Christian Wordsworth, 1798-1805." ANQ 1(2003):57. eLibrary. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

Toynton, Evelyn. "A DELICIOUS TORMENT: The friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge." Harper's. 01 Jun. 2007: 88. eLibrary. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
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