The Idiot Boy

This week's poem was The Idiot Boy. It is one of longest poems we have read this year, but it tells a very simple narrative. The narrative is about Betty and her retarded son, Johnny, trying to help out their neighbor, Susan, who has become very ill. A doctor was needed to tend to Susan and Betty had no one to send except Johnny. So she sends him off to get the doctor, but he does not return for four or five hours. Betty then becomes worried and goes off looking for Johnny. She goes to the doctor and he tells her that Johnny did not come by. Betty later finds Johnny sitting on the horse gazing at a waterfall.

In one of the footnotes of the poem, we read about how people criticized the mother in the story. The critics said her maternal fondness created "a certain degree of disgust and contempt." I can see where people can dislike the mother because of maternal fondness, but I dislike the mother for another reason. The title of the poem is The Idiot Boy and is in relation to Johnny. I personally think the title should have been about the idiot mother. to clarify, Betty goes looking for her son after he is missing for a long time. That is understandable because she is a mother and worried. So where does she go? She goes to the doctor's house and ask if he has seen her son. After hearing his response she then leaves to look for her son. So what is wrong? Her friend Susan is still sick and needed a doctor. The very same doctor that Betty just went to go see about her own son. She could have told the doctor about Susan and have him go to tend to her while she continued looking for her son. But, she forgets her main goal that night after after getting distracted with her new goal.

Frost at Midnight

Frost at Midnight is a blank verse poem written by Samuel Coleridge, and follows his train of thought one idle night while holding his young son in his arm. The poem tells of a very calm night where it is so calm that it becomes distracting after awhile. Coleridge then is reminded of past memories because it is so quiet. He starts to reminisce about his childhood when he would daydream while in school. Coleridge would daydream about his birthplace and the church bells.

This effect that the quiet has on Coleridge is similar to the effect that being out in nature and sitting on a rock had on Wordsworth. The quietness then can be seen as a therapeutic device like nature. Each setting can invoke a different sense in a person. For Coleridge, the quietness brings back memories from his childhood. I can see how Coleridge feels the way he does, because the calmness and tranquility also invokes a deep passion in me. During times of quietness like the one described in the poem, my mind is at ease and I am able to reflect on many different aspects of life.

Next, Coleridge is holding his infant son in the poem. He wishes that his son grow up with an upbringing that is in touch with nature like his friend, Wordsworth. This goes back to the idea that nature can teach a person. Coleridge is the father of this infant and is seen as the influential figure in the child's life. To teach his son the important lessons of life, Coleridge in a way wants to hand him off to the greatest teacher, nature. Coleridge just wants his son to have the best experience that he himself did not experience as a child. And nature can teach the child the appreciation that Coleridge now feels.  

Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree

"Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" by Wordsworth tells the story of a man who goes through a change in his v life. When the man was young, he "went forth, pure in his heart, against the taint of dissolute tongues, 'gainst jealousy, and hate, and scorn, against all enemies prepared." He was a man pure in heart when he was younger, but was not aware of what the real world was like. Once he saw all of these values that he disagrees with in his society, the man decides to separate himself from it and essentially becomes a hermit. He goes and lives in nature in solitude.

While in nature, the man experiences a feeling of "morbid pleasure" from the beauty around him in nature. His heart could not "sustain the beauty" and "the beauty still more beauteous." After seeing his surroundings, the man in my opinion becomes a little self-obsessed. He does not truly appreciate nature still in my opinion. I think he feels this great feeling because he is away from everyone else in he world he feels as though he is better because of it. But because he isolates himself, he is unable to have relationships with other people. So he is unable to feel all of the true emotions that come with nature and so he dies.

The last part of the poem tells the moral of the story which is that we need to use nature for it's correct purpose, appreciating it with our imagination and learning from it. In the end we will become a better person from it. The man in the poem used nature as a way to see how much better he was than everybody else. As a result, he did not use his imagination and see the true beauty of everything. This kind of goes along with all of the other poems that we have read that involve an isolated person such as the mariner and Harry Gill.

The Haunted Beach by Mary Robinson

"The Haunted Beach" by Mary Robinson was the poem that we had to read for this week. This poem goes back to the poems we read before reading sonnets. The difference with this poem is that you can immediately feel the Gothic influence while reading the first couple of lines. To emphasize, the poem starts out by describing the setting as a lonely beach with a single hut. There seems to be nothing else around. It is like a setting for a horror story. There is this hut and there is even mention of a cliff so i kind of saw the hut being on this high up cliff. Next, sea birds are hovering overhead and they are mentioned as craving. When I read this, the image of crows hovering over a person before they died popped into my head. Other scary aspects of this poem include the "moaning" wind mentioned at the beginning of the third stanza and of course the dead body found in the hut.

One part that confused me was the mentioning of the Spectres. At first I did not know what they were and assumed they were normal people who were spectators. After looking up spectres in the dictionary, I found out that they are ghost and this fit into the poem even better. The ghost gives the poem that supernatural element that can be found in Gothic poetry.

Something else i noticed while reading the poem is that at the end of every stanza, except for the very last one, Mary Robinson mentions the green billows. This is in reference to the waves crashing up against the shore.With her use of the green billows, I was constantly reminded of the waves and could not only picture them while reading, but i could hear them crashing. This help put set the entire mood as being eerie.

Another observation i saw was that of the Shipwreck'd Mariner. It is a coincidence because earlier we read a poem by Wordsworth called, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Obviously this poem is written by Mary Robinson, but it is in the same book as the other poem. So it would not surprise me if she wrote this poem with the Mariner in mind. Or it might have just been a coincidence and Wordsworth put this poem in his book because it can tie into his other poem. Overall, I really enjoyed this poem.

Charlotte Smith Sonnets

For this week's reading, we read four sonnets by Charlotte Smith. Because they were sonnets, this week's reading was pretty short like last week's. My favorite sonnet from the four that we read had to be the fourth one. The sonnet is titled, "To the Moon." This sonnet was my favorite because it evoked a clear image in my head while I was reading it. To emphasize,while reading the first part of the sonnet I clearly saw a moon on a warm night shining in the sky. Then after reading the third line, I saw myself standing next to a stream and could see the reflection of the moon bouncing off of the stream with clouds going by in the sky. Because of my love of nature and tranquility, I was able to see myself vividly. Nights like the one described in the first part of the sonnet are some of my favorite moments because of the feeling of calmness and relaxation that can come over you when in that situation. Charlotte Smith even talks about how it brings the calm upon a person in the sixth line.

The next part of the poem goes into a reflective stage because the person is thinking about how the souls of people go to the moon after death. People who have lived and suffered in life have all gone up to the moon where it is more serene. I can see this being rational to some people. To clarify, most of us are taught that people go to heaven after they die. We do not know exactly where heaven is but from what we learned as kids, heaven is upwards. In a literal sense, heaven could be up in the moon. It just depends on a person's interpretation of heaven. I know this is highly unlikely and Charlotte Smith is just using this as a metaphor. Her description of the moon as a place for the souls to reach a serene place is interesting though. In all I really enjoyed this poem.

"Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress"

This week's readings were different from what we have read so far in that they were sonnets. A sonnet is fourteen line poem with a specific rhyme scheme and structure. The rhyming scheme is called a Shakespearean rhyme scheme and the rhyming scheme goes a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. Also, Shakespearean sonnets are supposed to have ten syllables in each line. This is according to Wikipedia.

But looking over the "Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress," I noticed that there are a couple lines that go over the ten syllable limit. For instance the fourth line, "And my full heart was swell'd to dear delicious pain," seems as though it is twelve syllables. Also, line twelve seems as though it takes up about twelve or thirteen syllables. This is very curious to me because I do not know why some of these lines go over ten syllables if it is supposed to be a sonnet. My counting may have been off when it came to counting the syllables or Wordsworth wanted it to be different. My definition that I found of a sonnet might have been wrong or outdated, but it is very curious to me the reason behind this poem.

The rhyming scheme aside, the poem tells the story of Miss Williams weeping when she hears a tale of distress. Wordsworth uses great analogies to describe the emotion and action of the story. To emphasize, the first two lines of the poem exemplify this idea. "Life's purple tide began to flow in languid streams through every thrilling vein," is the line that caught my attention. An interpretation of this line could be that blood is flowing through the veins in her body fluidly. "Swimming eyes" in the next line refers to how her eyes got really watery. There are many other examples of this throughout the poem. Wordsworth pretty much describes everything in this kind of manner. It is very creative because if he were to do it straightforward, it would not really evoke any emotion in my opinion. When reading, you cant helpe but think about nature with his analogies.

"Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

"Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" helps to build on the idea of the grandeur of nature that we have seen in a few of the more recent poems. To emphasize, the poem is about Wordsworth describing the feelings and emotions he gets when he thinks back to his visit this place a few miles away from Tintern Abbey. He describes the objects that he remembers as being beautiful and picturesque. Additionally the objects in nature evoke emotions in him that are pleasing.

Nature once again is seen as very important because it helps to relieve the stress from the real world. The beauty and tranquility of the scene in nature has such great power that Wordsworth still has feelings and emotions after all the years of being away from it. All he does is think about it and the feelings he once felt for the scene still returns to him. This shows the power that nature can have over a person because it moves Wordsworth to be be a better person. Also, the feelings are so strong that Wordsworth feels he will still have this connection with nature and the scene until the day he dies. It goes back to the last couple of poems we read where nature's powers is also the main message of the poem. In those poems, nature has another role of being the greatest teacher. Meanwhile in this poem, nature is seen as a the best therapeutic device.

This poem was different from some of the more recent poems we have read because of its structure and rhyming scheme. First, there is no rhyming scheme to the poem. It is more of  a free-flowing thought that is being spoken by Wordsworth. Because of this, the poem has a more natural feel to it like everyday conversation. Next, there are no short little four line stanzas like most of the poem. Instead, there are about five long paragraphs. This does not give it the look of the normal poem that I am used to, but it shows how poetry comes in many different shapes and sizes. But in the end, it still delivers its message effectively.