William Wordsworth// Brooke Bradley

I love the style and the content of this poem. Reading this poem invoked a great deal of emotion for me. It definitely feels like a poem from the era of Romanticism. This is when authors and writers would focus on the beauty of nature and man’s emotional reaction to this beauty. William Wordsworth is doing an excellent job of this while also capturing concepts that are relatable to most people. One of these concepts I gleamed from the poem was the tendency to run away and towards something else versus running intentionally towards something because you love it. In lines 72-73, He writes this, “Wherever nature led: more like a man/ Flying from something that he dreads, than one/ Who sought the thing he loved” (Wordsworth). The way that I understand this is now that he is grown, he returns to the banks of Wye, not because he is running away from something, but because he truly loves this place. This is such a beautiful concept. I am sure most people experience the need to be away from something, and I think this can hinder the level of appreciation we have for the refuge we have.

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