The rich description of the scenery around the yew-tree, the bland, barren rock surrounding, but with the glorious view far away, reflects the man’s life. The lonely set of the yew tree held particular appeal, as “these gloomy boughs/ Had charms for him and here he loved to sit… Fixing a downward eye, he a many hour/ A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here/ An emblem of his own unfruitful life” (14-15, 20-22). He was “by genius nurs’d/ And big with lofty views, he to the world went forth… against all enemies prepared/ All but neglect” (6-11) which leads him to fall into a life of seclusion. The second, main stanza tells the tale of a gifted man, “…one who own’d/ No common soul” (5-6) who squandered his life because the world didn’t receive him as he expected it to. The poem is intrinsically defined by its setting, and the opening stanza describes the scene as a place that “…shall lul thy mind/ By one soft impulse from vacancy,” (lines 6-7), a scene of contemplation and introspection.
The poem opens with an immediate appeal to the reader – addressed as the Traveller – to sit and rest as the scene tells its tale. The poem’s ultimate message is to not submit to defeatism, to carry on through failure.
Wordsworth’s “Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree” is a cautionary tale of a nameless man, who lives out his life in solitude and quiet. Analysis of “Lines upon a Seat in a Yew-tree” by William Wordsworth
0 kommentar(er)
