The Matthew poems

Last updated

The "Matthew" poems are a series of poems, composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, that describe the character Matthew in Wordsworth's poetry.

Contents

Background

Wordsworth, during his early career, often focused on writing in blank verse. However, in March 1798, he began to write a series of poems in ballad meter, which were later added to the Lyrical Ballads. [1] From October 1798 to February 1799, Wordsworth worked on the "Matthew" poems along with the "Lucy" poems and other poems. During this time, Wordsworth was living at Goslar and was separated from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which caused him to become depressed and feel separation anxiety. [2]

The thematic similarities between the "Lucy" and the "Matthew" poems are so strong that Alan Grob suggests that the two sets of poems should be put "under a single heading as the Goslar lyrics of 1799". [3] The final poem, "Address to the Scholars of the Village School of —" was written in 1800 in two sections, and was later revised for publication in 1842 with the addition of a third section. [4]

The poems

There is some disagreement over which poems make up the "Matthew" poems. William Knight, based on a note by Wordsworth saying that the subject is related to "Matthew", to "The Two April Mornings", and to "The Fountain", believes that "Address to the Scholars of the Village School of —" should be included in the series. [5] In addition, Mary Moorman includes "Expostulation and Reply" and its companion, "The Tables Turned" as part of the series, [6] and states that lines of "Address to the Scholars of the Village School of —" overlaps with the lines of two Matthew poems that were not published while Wordsworth was alive. [7] The three "Matthew" undisputed poems, "Matthew", "The Two April Mornings", and "The Fountain", serve as a dialogue between youth (the narrator) and experience(Matthew). [8]

Matthew

"Matthew" was originally titled "Lines written on a Tablet in a School" until 1820, where it was given the title "Matthew". In 1827 and 1832, it was called by its first line, "If Nature, for a favourite child", but in 1827 returned to being called "Matthew". [9]

The poem asks that when the reader of the tablet, when looking upon the names listed,

Has travelled down to Matthew's name,
Pause with no common sympathy.(lines 1112)

The narrator then explains that

Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
Is silent as a standing pool;
Far from the chimney's merry roar,
And murmur of the village school.
The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs
Of one tired out with fun and madness;
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.(lines 1724)

However, when Matthew would be lost in contemplation,

It seemed as if he drank it up—
He felt with spirit so profound. (lines 2728)

After describing the character of Matthew, the narrator laments:

—Thou soul of God's best earthly mould!
Thou happy Soul! and can it be
That these two words of glittering gold
Are all that must remain of thee? (lines 2932)

The Two April Mornings

"The Two April Mornings" describes a memory of a schoolmaster, Matthew, who remembers on an April morning

A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind. (lines 2324)

On that day, he came to visit his daughter's grave to morn over her death,

And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the church-yard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew. (lines 4144)

She reminded him of his daughter, and

There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine! (lines 5356)

Even with her resemblance, Matthew knows that she could not replace Emma. The poem ends with the narrator admitting that experiencing his own remembrance of the departed: [10]

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,
Methinks, I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand. (lines 5760

The Fountain

"The Fountain" describes the narrator and Matthew noticing a fountain coming from the ground while they sat together. The fountain lightens their moods, and Matthew reveals that the fountain is connected to natural immortality: [11]

'Down to the vale this water steers;
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years,
And flow as now it flows. (lines 2124)

However, Matthew understands the pains of mortality and is filled with memories of the past: [11]

My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard. (lines 2932)

Matthew is quick to point out why this sense of loss that comes from mortality does not lead him down the path of despair: [11]

Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.(lines 3336)

Matthew points out that

My days, my Friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved. (lines 5356)

and the narrator offers himself to his friend:

And, Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee! (lines 6162)

Matthew is quick to decline because he knows that the narrator cannot be a substitute for those who are passed. [12]

Address to the Scholars

Wordsworth's "Address to the Scholars of the Village School of —", which Grob describes as "one of the least familiar of the 'Matthew' poems", was originally a two-part poem with the second titled "Dirge". When it was published in 1842, Wordsworth added a third section, "By the Side of the Grave Some Years After". The poem describes an individual who is devoted to nature but is disconnected from reality: [4]

He loved the sun, but if it rise
Or set, to him where now he lies,
Brings not a moment's care. (lines 2325)

The narrator remembers Matthew in a secular way and is resigned to a life where he could no longer be with Matthew. It is not until the last section that Christian hope is added:

Such solace find we for our loss;
And what beyond this thought we crave
Comes in the promise from the Cross,
Shining upon thy happy grave. (lines 6970)

Identity

On 27 March 1843, Wordsworth wrote to Henry Reed, "The character of the schoolmaster, had like the Wanderer in The Excursion a solid foundation in fact and reality, but like him it was also in some degree a composition: I will not, and need not, call it an invention – it was no such thing." [13] The character Matthew is likely based on Wordsworth's schoolmaster while at Hawkshead, [14] William Taylor, who died in 1786 at the age of 32. [15] However, Moorman argues that the character is most likely based on a "Packman", or peddler that would visit Hawkshead to sell his wares. The "Packman" would sing and tell stories, and, with his traveling, resembled the Wanderer from The Excursion. [16]

Themes

Loss is an important theme in the "Matthew" poems; To Geoffrey Hartman, "radical loss" haunts both the "Lucy" poems and the "Matthew" poems. [17] The "Lucy" poems, written at the same time as "Two April Mornings", share their discussion on separation, but the "Matthew" poems make it clear that a loss cannot truly be replaced. [18] The "Matthew" and "Lucy" poems, which express doubt about the ability of nature to comfort individuals experiencing loss, are thematically unique in Wordsworth's earlier poetry, [19] according to Grob:

the great lyrics written at Goslar, the 'Matthew' poems and the 'Lucy' poems, strongly indicate that even in the earliest phase, those years when Wordsworth spoke most confidently of the Utopian possibilities held out to man by nature, his optimism was tempered by at least momentary misgivings, recognition that there are areas of human experience, vital to our individual happiness, in which man is invariably beset by difficulties and sorrows for which nature could furnish no comforts and surely no solution. [20]

Although there can never be another individual such as Matthew or his daughter, his daughter is able to return to Matthew in his memory, and Matthew is able to return in the memory of the poet. [10] Matthew is able to overcome his feelings of loss through nature, [21] and, to E. D. Hirsch, there is spirit of affirmation in the poems. [22] Matthew serves as a teacher about life and is viewed by the narrator as a source of wisdom. He is capable of rejoicing in nature, but he is also certain of the realities of nature, including death. He is able to mourn without despairing. [23]

Anne Kostelanetz believes that the poems inhibit a "structural irony... which works against the authority of Matthew's statements", [24] and she believes that Matthew "has rejected the very essence of nature—the eternal cycle of joy and vitality, the constant possibility of spontaneous delight in the beauty of being". [25] Similarly, David Ferry views "The Two April Mornings" as Matthew "offered a choice between the living and the dead, and he chooses the dead". [26] However, John Danby disagrees, and believes that Matthew merely does "not wish her mine, to undergo all the risk of loss again". [27] Also, Grob believes that, in "The Two April Mornings", "The most likely explanation... one that receives support from the similar choice made by Matthew in The Fountain" is that "His rejection of the living child is less a free and reasoned judgment than an emotionally compelled and necessary acquiescence in the unalterable laws of human nature." [28]

Critical opinion

Grob believes that the "Matthew" poems are important because they, with the "Lucy" poems, are different than the other poems that Wordsworth wrote between 1797 and 1800 in their treatment of nature and personal loss. In their difference, they suggest "the presence of seeds of discontent even in a period of seemingly assured faith that makes the sequence of developments in the history of Wordsworth's thought a more orderly, evolving pattern than the chronological leaps between stages would seem to imply". [29]

Notes

  1. Moorman 1968 p. 369
  2. Matlak 1978 pp. 46–47
  3. Grob 1973 p. 201
  4. 1 2 Grob 1972 pp. 245–246
  5. Knight 1896 p. 86
  6. Moorman 1968 p. 379
  7. Moorman 1968 p. 429
  8. Grob 1973 p. 193
  9. Knight 1896 p. 88
  10. 1 2 Hartman 1967 p. 270
  11. 1 2 3 Mahoney 1997 p. 108
  12. Mahoney 1997 p. 109
  13. quoted in Knight 1896 p. 87
  14. Abrams 2000 p. 256 note
  15. Knight 1896 pp. 8687
  16. Moorman 1968 pp. 5153
  17. Hartman 1967 p. 285
  18. Hartman 1967 p. 160
  19. Grob 1973 p. 192
  20. Grob 1973 pp. 1011
  21. Hartman 1967 p. 289
  22. Hirsch 1960 p. 84
  23. Mahoney 1997 pp. 108109
  24. Kostelanetz 1966 p. 43
  25. Kostelanetz 1966 p. 47
  26. Ferry 1959 p. 64
  27. Danby 1960 p. 87
  28. Grob 1973 p. 195
  29. Grob 1973 p. 204

Related Research Articles

<i>Kubla Khan</i> Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person on business from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Wordsworth</span> English Romantic poet (1770–1850)

William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud</span> Lyric poem by William Wordsworth

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth. It is one of his most popular, and was inspired by an encounter on 15 April 1802 during a walk with his younger sister Dorothy, when they saw a "long belt" of daffodils on the shore of Ullswater in the English Lake District. Written in 1804, this 24 line lyric was first published in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, and revised in 1815.

<i>Lyrical Ballads</i> Poem collection by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry. The 1800 edition is famous for the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, something that has come to be known as the manifesto of Romanticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Idiot Boy</span>

"The Idiot Boy" is a poem written by William Wordsworth, a representative of the Romantic movement in English literature. The poem was composed in spring 1798 and first published in the same year in Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is considered to be a turning point in the history of English literature and the Romantic movement. The poem investigates such themes as language, intellectual disability, maternity, emotionality, organisation of experience and "transgression of the natural."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode: Intimations of Immortality</span> Poem by William Wordsworth

"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a poem by William Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The poem was completed in two parts, with the first four stanzas written among a series of poems composed in 1802 about childhood. The first part of the poem was completed on 27 March 1802 and a copy was provided to Wordsworth's friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who responded with his own poem, "Dejection: An Ode", in April. The fourth stanza of the ode ends with a question, and Wordsworth was finally able to answer it with seven additional stanzas completed in early 1804. It was first printed as "Ode" in 1807, and it was not until 1815 that it was edited and reworked to the version that is currently known, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">She dwelt among the untrodden ways</span>

"She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" is a three-stanza poem written by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth in 1798 when he was 28 years old. The verse was first printed in Lyrical Ballads, 1800, a volume of Wordsworth's and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poems that marked a climacteric in the English Romantic movement. The poem is the best known of Wordsworth's series of five works which comprise his "Lucy" series, and was a favorite amongst early readers. It was composed both as a meditation on his own feelings of loneliness and loss, and as an ode to the beauty and dignity of an idealized woman who lived unnoticed by all others except by the poet himself. The title line implies Lucy lived unknown and remote, both physically and intellectually. The poet's subject's isolated sensitivity expresses a characteristic aspect of Romantic expectations of the human, and especially of the poet's condition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Lucy poems</span> Five poems written by William Wordsworth

The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) between 1798 and 1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworth's first major publication and a milestone in the early English Romantic movement. In the series, Wordsworth sought to write unaffected English verse infused with abstract ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing, and death.

William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. His early years were dominated by his experience of old Trafford around the Lake District and the English moors. Dorothy Wordsworth, his sister, served as his early companion until their mother's death and their separation when he was sent to school.

"We are Seven" is a poem written by William Wordsworth and published in his Lyrical Ballads. It describes a discussion between an adult poetic speaker and a "little cottage girl" about the number of brothers and sisters who dwell with her. The poem turns on the question of whether to account two dead siblings as part of the family.

"Lucy Gray" is a poem written by William Wordsworth in 1799 and published in his Lyrical Ballads. It describes the death of a young girl named Lucy Gray, who went out one evening into a storm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I travelled among unknown men</span>

"I travelled among unknown men" is a love poem completed in April 1801 by the English poet William Wordsworth and originally intended for the Lyrical Ballads anthology, but it was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807. The third poem of Wordsworth's "Lucy series", "I travelled..." was composed after the poet had spent time living in Germany in 1798. Due to acute homesickness, the lyrics promise that once returned to England, he will never live abroad again. The poet states he now loves England "more and more". Wordsworth realizes that he did not know how much he loved England until he lived abroad and uses this insight as an analogy to understand his unrequited feelings for his beloved, Lucy.

"Three years she grew in sun and shower" is a poem composed in 1798 by the English poet William Wordsworth, and first published in the Lyrical Ballads collection which was co-written with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As one of the five poems that make up the "Lucy series," the work describes the relationship between Lucy and nature using words and sentiments. The author creates an impression of the indifference of nature as the poem progresses. The care with which Nature had sculpted Lucy, and then casually let her "race" end, reflects Wordsworth's view of the harsh reality of life. Although Nature is indifferent, it also cares for Lucy enough to both sculpt and mould her into its own. Wordsworth valued connections to nature above all else. The poem thus contains both epithalamic and elegiac characteristics; the marriage described is between Lucy and nature, while her human lover is left to mourn in the knowledge that death has separated her from mankind, and she will forever now be with nature.

Lines on an Autumnal Evening was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1793. The poem, rewritten throughout Coleridge's life, discusses nature and love. As Coleridge developed and aged, the object of the poem changed to be various women that Coleridge had feelings toward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conversation poems</span> Poems composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The conversation poems are a group of at least eight poems composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) between 1795 and 1807. Each details a particular life experience which led to the poet's examination of nature and the role of poetry. They describe virtuous conduct and man's obligation to God, nature and society, and ask as if there is a place for simple appreciation of nature without having to actively dedicate one's life to altruism.

The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in April 1798. Originally included in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, which he published with William Wordsworth, the poem disputes the traditional idea that nightingales are connected to the idea of melancholy. Instead, the nightingale represents to Coleridge the experience of nature. Midway through the poem, the narrator stops discussing the nightingale in order to describe a mysterious female and a gothic scene. After the narrator is returned to his original train of thought by the nightingale's song, he recalls a moment when he took his crying son out to see the Moon, which immediately filled the child with joy. Critics have found the poem either decent with little complaint or as one of his better poems containing beautiful lines.

"Dejection: An Ode" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1802 and was published the same year in The Morning Post, a London daily newspaper. The poem in its original form was written to Sara Hutchinson, a woman who was not his wife, and discusses his feelings of love for her. The various versions of the poem describe Coleridge's inability to write poetry and living in a state of paralysis, but published editions remove his personal feelings and mention of Hutchinson.

" Theme of A slumber did my spirit seal" is a poem that was written by William Wordsworth in 1798 and first published in volume II of the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. It is part of a series of poems written about a mysterious woman named Lucy, whom scholars have not been able to identify and are not sure whether she was real or fictional. Although the name Lucy is not directly mentioned in the poem, scholars nevertheless believe it to be part of the "Lucy poems" due to the poem's placement in Lyrical Ballads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poor Susan</span> 1797 poem by William Wordsworth

"Poor Susan" is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth composed at Alfoxden in 1797. It was first published in the collection Lyrical Ballads in 1798. It is written in anapestic tetrameter.

<i>Peter Bell</i> (Wordsworth) Poem by William Wordsworth

Peter Bell: A Tale in Verse is a long narrative poem by William Wordsworth, written in 1798, but not published until 1819.

References