Freedom and Constraint: The Blank Verse of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads

Abstract

In his preface to the 1800 Edition of Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth argued powerfully that the language of poetry is not, and cannot be, distinct from that of common prose. And yet, while Wordsworth’s choice of vocabulary, tone and subject matter in this collection was prosaic to the point of being revolutionary, one primary distinction between poetry and prose was left untouched: the meter. This paper explores the seeming contradiction between Wordsworth’s assertion in his preface and his strict adherence to the laws of poetic meter within the collection. I argue that this contradiction is intentional, and in proposing it, Wordsworth pushes his reader to adopt a characteristically Romantic vision of the state of humanity and its relationship to poetry: in an industrialized society, our state is one of perpetual tension between the essential and the artificial. It is this dynamic tension between freedom and constraint that metric verse is intended to exemplify. By juxtaposing formal meter with pastoral subjects and plain language, Wordsworth engages in a democratization of the verse form, expanding the boundaries of what constitutes a poem. In doing so, he also forces the poetry-consuming class to reach beyond themselves and their positions—to slow their pace and to consider the places, people and things that they see but never notice.