The Haunted Beach

"The Haunted Beach" by Mary Robinson feels like a side tale to "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere." Robinson even uses the term, "Shipwreck'd mariner." Again we has this visual of dead crew members and their spirits on board a ship while they are still sailing. The connection to "Ancyent Marinere" makes me wonder if Robinson and Coleridge knew each other, or if one person used the other poem as inspiration. If "The Haunted Beach" is a type of continuation, are the characters related? Who or what is the fisherman representing? In the other poem, the mariner had been the cursed one, cursed to tell his tale forever, but in Robinson's poem, the fisherman is doomed to "dwell on prospects dreary" for 30 years on that slate of land.

Something else I found interesting was Robinson's use of "green billows" in the last line of almost every stanza. I was not quite sure was "billows" was referring to, because original I imagine the billows being clouds, like "that billowing cloud". Green clouds sounded ominous, so it might have worked, but all I could then picture was a tornado, which did not seem likely with their proximity to the sea. I looked it up and learned that a billow could be "A great swelling wave of the sea, produced generally by a high wind; but often used as merely = Wave, and hence poetically for ‘the sea’" (OED). This definition made more sense. The billows are just incoming waves, crashing on the shore.

The think of the addition of "green" by Robinson in describing the billows created the scene. Most of the last lines say, "Where the green billows play'd." Green could just be the actual color of the sea, but it makes me think of a sickly color. Why green? Why not blue or teal? Maybe green indicates the ills that occurred. the sinking of the ship and the murder.

The Sorrow of Charlotte Smith

At the end of Sonnet III by Charlotte Smith, there are two lines that say, "Ah! songstress sad! that such my lot might be,/ To sigh and sing at liberty- like thee!" Though I am slightly confused at to who wishes they could sing at liberty or who does sing at liberty, I read the lines under my own interpretation anyway.

I take this line as one being spoken by Smith, she is the sad songstress while the nightingale is "thee". This line is slightly in response to her sentiments in Sonnet I: those who suffer most express themselves the best. Throughout that Sonnet however, Smith hints that she wishes the situation were not so. It seems she wishes that there wasn't so much pain and sorrow involved.

I also feel like Smith understands the role of an artist in reference to the audience or those that will see her work. She understands that everyone will interpret her work, discuss why she wrote what she did, try and figure out what she meant by each word and line. That's almost a "hazard of the job." This is what I feel she is referring to in Sonnet III.

Smith writes about the nightingale (we've seen a lot of those) and how it spends it's night lamenting. I feel that she envies the nightingale's ability to sing all night and not be bothered or pestered about meaning. There is a line in Sonnet III that also mentions something being released into the wild, which I thought was about the nightingale's freedom in it's expression. Smith doesn't have the same luxury, the same "liberty"; her words will be picked apart and analyzed to learn the meanings and message. Coincidentally, this is the exact measure I have taken here to prove my own point.

Stars and Skies

In the poems I have read to this point in Lyrical Ballads, the night sky has appeared several times. Wordsworth’s use of starlight in “Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress” reminded me of Coleridge’s use of the moon in “The Nightingale.” I’ll be honest in saying that I was hoping Wordsworth had written “The Nightingale” so I could compare his use of the theme over time, but that clearly didn’t work out.

In his poem Wordsworth writes, “As the soft star of dewy evening tells/What radiant fires were drown’d by day’s malignant pow’r/That only wait the darkness of the night/To chear the wand’ring wretch with hospitable light” (ll 11-14). As we discussed in class, Wordsworth possibly meant that the night sky, the stars and the moon, was a cheerful sight for a “wretch,” a sad or lonely person. I think there is definitely a sense of comfort and encouragement that Wordsworth describes in these lines. The use of “hospitable” makes me think of my grandparents; I may not always see them but for now, I know they are there and supporting me. This is what I think the starlight is for the wretch.

Coleridge’s use of the moon and nighttime is similar. When the speaker in “The Nightingale” takes his fussing son outside, the baby calms down. “And he beholds the moon, and hush’d at once/Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,” writes Coleridge (ll 102-103). The sight of the moon has a paralleled reaction to that of the wretch in Wordsworth poem. The speaker in Coleridge’s poem also mentions a plan to “make him[his son] Nature’s playmate” as though that action would be beneficial for the child (ll 97).

Both poems use the nighttime as a crutch for their characters. For the wretch, the starlight is something that they wait for throughout the day, something to be valued. For the speaker and his son, the moon and Nature are desirable, and console the characters.

Memories and Reveries

In Observations on Man, David Hartley writes, “an attentive Person may also observe great Differences in the Kind and Degree of Relish which he has for the Beauties of Nature in Different Periods of his Life.” The sentiment here is that people will perceive of things differently at different stages in their life. The example we used in class was an adult visiting their childhood home and noticing all the changes that have happened, but realizing that those changes happened within the person and in the home. That experience is a pleasure but is also heartbreaking for us.

Personally, when I’ve gone back to my high school, I have found the experience to be conflicting even though it was only four years ago. Some of those feelings are results of the fact that I have changed, both physically and mentally. I look different, my teachers look different. Some walls have changed colors and the lockers look smaller. I’m more mature now but when I walk the halls, I can remember how I felt walking between classes. Though the trip down memory lane is nice, it is also sad because I realize how far removed I am from this place that essentially set me on the path to who I am.

The preface that was read in class about the boatman looking into the water  feels closely related to Hartley’s concept. The person having to search through “murky water” in order to remember distorted memories agrees with Hartley’s insight about our perceptions changing over time. As we get older, the water levels rise and we have more to search through to find our memories. We may misremember those memories or alter them in the current state of mind. Some memories are even lost (in the tide, if you will).

This depiction really struck me and I liked the combination of the two themes. 

Taking Place One Evening

I always find it intriguing when a book tells me to stop reading and go outside. I understand the sentiment that nature is amazing and we learn so much from it, but there is an inherent contradiction in the message.

In “The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the Same Subject” by William Wordsworth, readers are presented with a speaker who is berating the reader or some unknown character. The speaker says, “Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife,/ Come, here the woodland linnet,/ How sweet his music; on my life/ There’s more of wisdom in it” (9-12). The speaker tells the reader to go outside, experience nature and learn from her, but how can the reader know that this is what they should do if they do not read the poem? It seems fruitless because it is ignoring how much we learn from books and newspapers. Wordsworth is either making a statement or responding to a statement in this poem. It is possible that another person told him to stop writing and reading and that he should instead go outside, but it is hard to tell.

Knowing that Wordsworth was experiencing a ‘crisis’ when he returned from France, the line “Sweet is the lore which nature brings;/ Our meddling intellect/ Mishapes the beauteous forms of things;/ -- We murder to dissect” (25-28) leads me to believe that this is an idea Wordsworth himself wanted to say.  I think it was a reaction to happenings he experienced. The part about our intellect and our ever-growing fascination with solving everything makes me think he needed it to stop. He got tired of the excessive analysis of theories, crimes, society, and wars. He wanted people to remember that there is more than “toil and trouble” (2) to be seen; that there may be horrible things happening in the world, and they are pertinent, but there is still so much life to be had as long as people are willing to look for it.

"We Are Seven" and "Simon Lee"

I really like the idea from “Simon Lee” by Wordsworth that spoke about how people treat each other. At the end, the line says that the speaker is mourning that Simon Lee was so grateful. I took this to mean that the speaker was sad that this man was in such a desperate situation and had no help that he could only be grateful. While I didn’t see the same gratefulness theme in “We Are Seven,” also by Wordsworth, I spotted the idea about treatment of others in society.

In “We Are Seven” the speaker is trying to take away a belief from the little girl and undermining her by constantly reminding her that there are only five siblings left. The little girl is adamant about the fact that there are seven of them. Though the speaker likely wasn’t trying to be rude, he was underestimating the girls capacity to cope with grief and understand what happens in death. As a societal problem, this discrediting of children (who are definitely more perceptive than people give them credit for) is what leads to the mistreating of people later in life. I think there is both a belief that people don’t know how to handle situations and a belief that people should “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

I think Wordsworth would have experienced this mal-intention when he was prepping for his travels and putting together his poems. He writes often about industrialization and its effects on society and human treatment but then writes this poem about people who are living these exceedingly simple lives, as though he is focusing on the contrast. The little girl plays with her siblings, sews and visits the graves of her other siblings. They live in Northern Wales along the sea, which, as in "Simon Lee", is rather separated from London. I think Wordsworth does a lot to contrast these ideals, simplicity and machination, as a way to explain society’s interpersonal flaws.

Cold Witches

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.