Carefully Read the Poem Simon Lee by William Wordsworth

Simon leeward the Old Huntsman is a poem which occurs in Lyrical Ballads and was write in 1798, belonging, thus, temporally to the Romantic period (1780-1830). Romantic writing is comm only identified with many key ele custodyts, which c at a timern imagination, nature, symbolism and myth (although at that place have been writers of this period who were non as mainstream). William Wordsworth has been characterised as a introductory author of Romantic Poe cause in that his work is highly machine-accessible to the nonion of Nature and plenty of reference is made to it.Approaching a piece of literary work, however, from this perspective is very restraining, therefore, in this essay we will attempt a social or historical kind of approach. We shall try to read the idealistic lecture found in the poem as social or historical discourse finished the poetic techniques utilize by the writer. In some other words, we will analyse the way mixed elements of poetic form and language com bine to create meaning and effects. Simon lee is about an grey-headed huntsman who, while was once strong and active, instantly strives to fight his dec confinesd health and strength.The poem recounts an actual encounter of the poet with this old man. It seems to be a hybrid of lyric and narrative (a lyrical ballad). Lyric in that we have a prototypic-person expression of emotion and concentration upon the operations and feelings of an individual at a particular moment, while narrative, since there is a narrator and another(prenominal) character, whom the former encounters and, later, describes. There ar 12 stanzas of eight lines from each one with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDED that causes the lines to flow smoothly.The first stanza of the poem introduces us with Simon and sets the jut show In the sweet shire of Cardigan. It is obvious from the beginning that Wordsworth is dealing with a matter from common livelihood, since every indorser is familiar with and can picture a sweet shire, the equivalent way the notion of pleasant is light-colored to grasp. Furthermore, a series of modest, plain adjectives that evoke sadness are utilise to describe Simon old man, a little man, who once was tall making it clear that the hero of the poem is just a humble, ordinary old man.Nature, Wordsworth argued, can save people from the alienation, frustration and trifle of contemporary urban life. It seems to me that by choosing to start the poem placing the referees in a rural area away from urban life, he seeks to evoke feelings contradictory to the ones mentioned above, those that are for him connected with away-from-nature settings. The second stanza is, I consider, somewhat tragic, since two whole contradictory adjectives- poor and merry- are used to describe this same person only in two contrary periods of his life in the past and present.In this way, the winding down of Simons life over the years becomes even more intense to the reader. The rhyming coupl e has he/ see in Lines 1 and 3 of the second stanza is known as poetic inversion. Wordsworth has inverted the word order for the sake of the sound moxie of the verse as well as of the rhythm, both of which would have been different if he had used he has. Perhaps any other picking would have made the rhyme pattern less unfussy than it is now, and complication is what he has tried to avoid throughout the whole poem.The easy rhymes merry/ crimson tree, sound/round, sick/thick, door/poor are too justified by this theory. The metaphor like a cherry is directly derived from the diction of Nature and can be easily apprehend and pictured by the majority of the common population-especially in rural areas. In the fourth stanza the retrospection stops and Simon is no longer in the flush of his life. He is no longer healthy, rather he is poor old Simon lee again, who has no son, has no child, he only has an aged woman and they both live upon the village common.Simon Lee is again transfor med into the old man that was presented to us in the first stanza and the poetic inversion of village common usages to leave an echo of the commonplaceness of everything that surrounds this man, for once more. For the following four stanzas this picture of his is highlighted through words such as lean, sick, thin, dry, weak, the weakest in the village or the image of his ankles, which are swoln and thick. By these means, the reader is forced to sympathise with the hero, who is totally helpless.Even more, the repetition (which could also be characterised as alliteration) of the phrase he has no in Line 5 of the fourth stanza reinforces the sense of loneliness and misery that is created. The same effect is also achieved by the alliteration that occurs between the words sole -survivor in Line 8 of the third stanza. What is strikingly noticeable is that there is a pause at the end of almost each line, either a comma, a semi-colon, a full-stop or an exclamation mark, with occasional e xceptions in some lines in an inconsistent pattern.This stylistic device, known as enjambment, suggests that these particular(a) lines actually run on however, on account of the actual line ending itself (with no punctuation mark) the reader is made to pause for a while and think. In other words, he can read each line slowly. This works to relieve any sense of suspense or tension within the poem. Or we can say that the writer initially aims at reproducing classical qualities of balance, harmony and proportion, while the variations noticed may function to indicate the disturbance that has occurred to the above.Suddenly, in the ninth octave Wordsworth writes directly to the reader My gentle reader- and asks him to expect no action the poem is not climactic and the poet is addressing this fact (It is no tale). Through the phrase I perceive he reveals his insight into the readers reactions ( I m afraid that you expect some tale will be think) and he establishes that there is no resolu tion or climax to be expected. He is also implying the readers blindness of the tale already told by Simons aging body the fact that he is scummy while he realises that struggling against a decaying organism is hopeless.At this purport it might be useful to think of the readers whom this poem was originally created to address. On the one hand, Wordsworth has chosen to include the common people of rural life in his range of audience, and therefore is using their own language. In the acquaint to his Lyrical Ballads of 1802 he argues that the language of poetry ought to be language of men. As he says, this is because the rural poor convey their feelings and notions in sincere and unelaborated expressions (Wu, Romanticism,1994 p. 252). Their habits do not transplant as they are not affected by fashion, so their language is more sincere.On the other hand, by the phrase my gentle reader, we could also say that he is addressing the readers belonging to the upper-class of society the e ducated people who would expect a more elaborated language and this poem to actually be furthermost less profound that it really is. To those people who cannot see that it functions to be symbolic, barely who only see the words and the events without the meaning lying below these. Wordsworth had lived through the Revolutionary period and was against the early ideas, which is why he had the reputation of a radical.He was influenced by the democratic ideas of the period. It seems that through this poem he seeks to change the social circumstances of the time. He seeks for a more democratic convey and he attempts to pass this notion through the use of simple, unelaborated language, which is considered as uncorrupted. Lets not forget that it was written in a period of remarkable social and political change. Therefore, in one sense, he conducted his own social revolution, influenced by the social mount within which he created poetry.He was against the received idea of poetic language being as refined and eloquent as to be useable only to those with an education. We might, thus, say that by addressing his reader in these two stanzas he is being ironic towards this class of society. At the conclusion of the poem, where the only action so far has been the decay of life, this single blow in the 12th stanza seems to be releasing a sense of freedom from this natural police force and the writers tone suggests this victory over aging and decay.Simons response to this comes with The tears into his eyes and thanks and praises , conveying a channelise from negative to positive from pity to admiration, since attention now passes from Simons outbound decay to the endless activity and openness of his heart. The writer is overwhelmed by this gratitude show towards him and suggests that kindness within ones heart may get the hang any physical decay that comes with aging and bring about this ghostlike survival that equals physical vigour of youthful.