Wordsworth’s poem, “Goody Blake and Harry Gill: A True Story” has three major aspects about it that struck me upon reading. The first was the flow of the stanzas. The narrative style and rhymes really eased my understanding of the poem. The contrast from other style’s we’ve seen so far from Lyrical Ballads was evident. Though the narrative style has been used before, the syntax in this poem is different and clearer.
The second aspect that struck me is the idea of karma and penance. The last two lines say, “No think, ye farmers all, I pray,/Of Goody Blake and Harry Gill.” This strikes me as a warning to other farmers that Harry Gill’s actions, that of stopping Goody Blake from stealing his wood, even though she was freezing and needed it, directly resulted in his curse. It warns farmers both to not act impulsively and assume the worst about people, and that their actions have consequences.
The third idea that was apparent was the connection to Coleridge’s poems. In “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” we see themes of penance and supernatural being reality. This is also in Wordsworth’s poem. We have the so-called witch and the curse that she places on Harry Gill. As she curses him, though she prays to God, we are given an image of the moon, “the cold, cold moon” that seemingly was what she was praying to. As mentioned above, the penance also reoccurs in this poem. As the mariner was cursed to tell his tale for the rest of time, Harry Gill was cursed to be cold for the rest of his life.
Well observed. I wonder whether you could have taken your second and third points and combined them into a response about penance, maybe using your comparison to "The Rime" to make a point about Harry Gill's penance? I got the feeling the first paragraph, while true, was more a kind of introduction to what you really had to say, here.
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