Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

William Woodsworth

• 1770-1850
• Romantic Age in English literature
• Above average socio-economic status
• To France in 1971
• Annette Vallon and his daughter

William Woodsworth

• Return to England, Anglo-French War
• Mary Hutchinson and five children
• Poet-Laureate in 1843 
• Died in 1850

Romanticism in Literature

• In the mid/late-18th century
• Against the Enlightenment Ideals
• Enlightenment Ideals: reason, individualism,
• scientific thought, skepticism,
• and intellectual interchange

Elements of Romanticism

• Colloquial language
• Intuition over Reason
• Rural over Urban
• Natural, Emotional, Personal themes

Lucy Poems

• Abstract ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing and death
• Persona's love for the idealised character
• Poet never revealed the identity of Lucy
• Lucy's identity is a topic of debate
• Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known is the first poem in the series

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eye I kept
On the descending moon.
.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
'O mercy!' to myself I cried,
'If Lucy should be dead!'
.

Narrator

• Shift in the Setting and Time
• First and last stanzas are set in the future
• Flashback: past tense "befell, looked, moved, reached, dropped"
• Dream/Fantasy: "In one of those sweet dreams I slept" (L17)-anastrophe
• Other examples: L1, L17: emphasis; disrupted sentences, stormy emotions

Moon

• A symbol of the beloved (Lucy)
• Sense of inevitability, predictability
• Motion of the Moon (Lucy's health) and of the Persona
• Tension and Suspense: "Came near, and nearer still."(L16)
• Imagery: "The sinking moon"(L15)

"Fresh as a Rose in June"(L6)

• Colloquial Language
• Common Metaphor
• Short-lived health and beauty
• Transiency of life

Horse

• "With quickening pace my horse drew nigh"(L11)
• My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
• He raised, and never stopped:" (L21-22)
• Punctuation & Enjambment
• Disruption in the rhythm (tension & climax)

Fear of Loss

• "And I will dare to tell...What once to me befell"(L1-3)
• "'O mercy!' to myself I cried, 'If Lucy should be dead!'"(L27-28)
• Symphathetic Mood, Identification with the Persona
• Past Tense
• Private, hidden fear:"my eye I kept On the descending moon" (L19-20)

I told her this: her laughter light
Is ringing in my ears:
And when I think upon that night
My eyes are dim with tears.





.

Sources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_poetry
•  http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.html 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth
• http://www.poemhunter.com/william-wordsworth/biography/
• http://prezi.com/zi2go8pzi31h/strange-fits-of-passion-have-i-known/

Sources

• http://www.eliteskills.com/c/2610
• http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/wordsworth/section2.rhtml
• http://www.docstoc.com/docs/42180190/W-WORDSWORTH-Strange-fits-of-passion-h...