Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Wordsworth opens his essay by acknowledging the recent publication of his collection of poems Lyrical Ballads. He had anticipated, correctly, that the book would divide the public into those who loved the poems and those who hated them; his only surprise has been that even more people have liked the book than he had hoped.

Wordsworth’s friends are anxious for the book’s success and hope it will foster a new school of poetry. They have advised Wordsworth to write a “systematic defence” of his poetic methods. Wordsworth was at first reluctant to do so: He doesn’t think it possible to convince someone rationally to like a particular style of poetry, and expounding fully on his views would be beyond the scope of a preface. At the same time, he is conscious of the “impropriety” of “abruptly obtruding upon the Public” (2) poems so different from the norm without some introduction.

The poems aimed to depict incidents and situations from everyday life in language used by people every day, yet the subjects would be imbued with “a certain colouring of imagination” (3) so that ordinary things are presented in an unusual light. Throughout the poems, Wordsworth tried to see his subjects in light of the essential facts of human nature. He concentrated on subjects from rural life because he believes human passions are expressed more freely, honestly, and naturally in the country than in the city. What’s more, human emotions in the countryside are tied to “the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (3).

Wordsworth admits that some of his contemporaries have written poetry along the lines he advocates but filled with a “triviality and meanness” (3) that are a “defect” in poetry. Wordsworth argues that his poems are free from this defect because they each have a “worthy purpose” (4). This “worthy purpose” consists of bringing moral edification to the reader, and it comes from the poet reflecting “long and deeply” about his life experiences.

The poems emphasize feeling over “action and situation” (4). Wordsworth considers this emphasis important because it counteracts the contemporary vogue for cheap, sensationalistic literature reflecting a thirst for “gross and violent stimulants” (4)—a change in taste brought about by industrialization and urbanization.

Next, Wordsworth discusses various aspects of the poems’ style. In contrast to other esteemed poets of the day, he has avoided using “personifications of abstract ideas” because he wants to “keep the Reader in the company of flesh and blood” (5) by using common language. Wordsworth has thus sought to fit the poems to their “respective importance” and avoid “falsehood of description” (6) that comes from using clichéd poetic turns of phrase.

This leads Wordsworth to discuss the distinction between poetry and prose. In his view, the gap between them is not so wide as often believed. A good poem will often contain lines that, despite having meter and rhyme, do not differ at all from good prose. Likewise, many lines of prose have a built-in rhythm that resembles poetry. Wordsworth illustrates this point by quoting a poem by Thomas Gray in which several lines, while adhering to the poem’s meter, resemble prose in their plainness of diction. From this, Wordsworth argues that “the language of Prose may yet be well adapted to Poetry” and that “the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both” (7).

The discussion now leads to the basic question: What is a poet? Based on what he has said thus far, Wordsworth concludes that the poet is at heart a human being speaking to human beings—but a human being “endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness” (8) and in general a greater understanding of human nature than others possess.

At the same time, the poet must recognize that no matter how powerful their command of language and the depth of feeling they express in their poetry, it pales beside the language and the experiences and emotions of real life. What the poet produces is a “shadow” of the experiences of real life, guided by a “mechanical” technique that seeks to reproduce reality in artistic form.

At heart, poetry is truth expressed through emotion, presenting “the image of man and nature” (9). This being the case, the poet must seek to portray things as they are and not try to embellish them with artificial finery. The poet will seek to bring their emotions close to those of the persons they are describing. To do otherwise would be to deny their responsibility to reality and truth, treating poetry as “a matter of amusement and idle pleasure” (9).

Wordsworth turns to the role that pleasure plays in poetry and art. Poetry must depict emotion in a way that produces pleasure in the reader. To say this is not to degrade poetry but rather to acknowledge “the beauty of the universe” and the “dignity of man,” which operates by “the grand elementary principle of pleasure” (10). Even when a poem depicts something painful, it must be presented in a pleasurable way to excite sympathy.

Wordsworth goes further and argues that all knowledge—whether artistic or scientific—comes to us through the medium of pleasure. Both the poet and the scientist enjoy their search for knowledge. While the scientist seeks truth in a remote and external way, the poet finds truth in common human things—yet the sense of wonder that accompanies scientific discovery is also poetic in nature. As they depict the world around them with its “infinite complexity of pain and pleasure” (10), the poet is excited to a sympathy that ensures that the pleasure outweighs the pain.

Because poetry is connected with ordinary life, and “Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men” (12), the language of poetry should be that of everyday life rather than having a vocabulary exclusive to poets.

Wordsworth restates his conviction that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (13). He proceeds to outline how the poet creates poetry from their experience of life. While in a state of tranquility, the poet recollects an emotion. They continue to contemplate the emotion until the tranquility disappears and they start to feel something of the emotion itself. Now they are ready to compose their poem. During the process of writing, the emotion is “qualified by various pleasures,” so that “the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment” (13). This is nature’s way of allowing the poet to compose something pleasurable for the reader while preserving themselves from being consumed by powerful emotions. The poet should learn from this and make sure that their poetry has “an overbalance of pleasure” (13), no matter how painful or powerful the emotions portrayed may be.

The “complex feeling of delight” (13) that a poem produces comes from the musical quality of the meter, the familiarity of the language seen in a new light by being set in regular rhythm, and our recollection of the pleasure we received from similar works. This unique pleasure means that we tend to return more repeatedly to a poem than to a piece of prose on the same subject.

Wordsworth believes that, if the prescriptions outlined in the essay are followed, they will result in a “genuine poetry” that will “interest mankind permanently” by virtue of “the multiplicity and quality of its moral relations” (14). Wordsworth stresses that he does not wish to deny readers the pleasure they may receive from other kinds of poetry; he only wants to propose a different style.