Lyrical BalladsWilliam Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poetry
Book language: English
377 pages
Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a landmark of English Romanticism. It experiments with ordinary language and everyday subjects, exploring nature, memory, and common life. It is worth listening to for its influence on later poetry and for the distinct voices of its two authors.
The first volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published, as an experiment, which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavour to impart.
I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those Poems: I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure: and, on the other hand, I was well aware, that by those who should dislike them they would be read with more than common dislike. The result has differed from my expectation in this only, that I have pleased a greater number, than I ventured to hope I should please.
For the sake of variety, and from a consciousness of my own weakness, I was induced to request the assistance of a Friend, who furnished me with the Poems of the “Ancient Mariner,” the “FosterMother’s Tale,” the “Nightingale,” and the Poem entitled “Love.” I should not, however, have requested this assistance, had I not believed that the Poems of my Friend would in a great measure have the same tendency as my own, and that, though there would be found a difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide.
Several of my Friends are anxious for the success of these Poems from a belief, that, if the views with which they were composed were indeed realized, a class of Poetry would be produced, well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and not unimportant in the multiplicity, and in the quality of its moral relations: and on this account they have advised me to prefix a systematic defence of the theory upon which the poems were written. But I was unwilling to undertake the task, because I knew that on this occasion the Reader
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