I wandered lonely as a cloud
William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Wordsworth
When you think of nature and poetry, the very first name that pops up (at least for the vast majority of people) is William Wordsworth. Born in the Lake District of England—yes, the one Taylor Swift has a song about—he was the second of five siblings. He faced the tragic loss of his parents at the tender ages of seven and thirteen. Wordsworth was then sent off to a grammar school in Hawkshead by his uncles. He absolutely flourished in his school. He excelled in all his subjects—from literature and linguistics to science and arithmetic—but what piqued his interest the most was nature. He was captivated by the feeling of being immersed in the living, breathing world around him. However, his experience at St John’s College, Cambridge, was quite the opposite of his school life. Wordsworth was neither amused nor interested in the competitive and cut-throat nature of university life. He chose to take a laid-back approach to his academics from then on.
The most significant event of his college years was a walking tour through France in the summer of 1790. The French Revolution was in full swing at the time. Witnessing the fall of the Bastille, he became a devout Republican sympathiser. After earning his degree from Cambridge, he returned to France and began a passionate affair with a Frenchwoman named Annette Vallon. The outbreak of war between England and France prevented him away from witnessing the birth of their child. Stranded in England, he didn’t see his daughter Caroline until she was nine years old. The time in between was spent in praying and desperately wishing for the war to end. These turned out to be some of the darkest years of his life. Despite a degree from Cambridge, Wordsworth hadn’t one penny to his name. He lived in the company of William Godwin—a radical anarchist—who also supported him. Poems written in these times were dedicated to the weary and unfortunate state of the mothers, the beggars, the orphans and all the victims of war.
He emerged from this uncertain and bleak phase of life through the favour of a friend, who reconnected him with his long-lost sister, Dorothy. They two moved to Alfoxden House near Bristol, never to live apart again. Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the first time here. What followed was a historic friendship that would forever alter the course of their lives.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns
Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, better known as ST Coleridge, was a poet and a critic, born and raised in Devonshire, England. His father was the vicar of Ottery and the principal of the local grammar school. He unfortunately passed away when Coleridge was just nine years old. Coleridge completed his bachelors from Jesus College, Cambridge. He cultivated and sharpened his reading and critiquing abilities during college. Coleridge, disillusioned by the violence of the French Revolution, envisioned a small, ideal society based on better principles. After meeting poet Robert Southey, he planned a “pantisocracy” community along Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River with his help. Coleridge left Cambridge, became a public lecturer in Bristol, and in October 1795 married Sara Fricker—partly due to Southey’s belief that he owed her for rejecting other suitors. This idea failed miserably and Southey left shortly afterwards. Coleridge was now stuck in a marriage with a woman he did not really love.
During this time, Coleridge experienced a remarkable intellectual awakening. He began a deep exploration into the nature of the human mind, a journey that was soon shared by William Wordsworth whom he met in 1795. Their friendship and collaboration marked the beginning of one of the most significant and creative eras in English literary history. Coleridge’s vibrant intellect and his conviction in a unifying “life consciousness” present in every individual played a crucial role in lifting Wordsworth out of a period of emotional and creative despair brought on by recent political and personal disillusionments. Inspired by Coleridge’s ideas and energy, Wordsworth was able to adopt a renewed, more profound relationship with nature—an outlook that became central to his poetic voice. This transformation directly influenced his contributions to Lyrical Ballads, the groundbreaking collection they would publish together in 1798, which helped to launch the Romantic movement in English literature.
Lyrical Ballads opened with “The Rhyme of Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge and was closed with “Tintern Abbey” by Wordsworth. It constituted other controversial works like “The Idiot Boy”. The Preface to the second edition (1800) contains Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. The main themes explored in the collection include the beauty and power of nature, the lives and emotions of common people, and the exploration of human psychology and emotion. Wordsworth and Coleridge aimed to depict “incidents and situations from common life” using language that was “really used by men,” thus breaking away from the formal and decorous style of Neoclassical poetry.
The Schism
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
Coleridge wrote two poems titled “Ad Vilmum Axiologum” (lit. “To William Wordsworth”)—one in English and the other in Latin. The title contains a clever bit of Greek wordplay: ἀξία or ἀξίος, meaning “the worth or value of a thing,” combined with λόγων (the genitive plural of λόγος), meaning “word.” Hence, ἀξίο-λόγων: the worth or value of words—or, quite literally, Wordsworth. The English “Ad Vilmum Axiologum” is a measured and respectful response to hearing Wordsworth’s early drafts of “The Prelude.”
What I previously knew about their split was that it stemmed from opposing ideological interests. This is not entirely untrue. For instance, Coleridge and Wordsworth collaborated on “The Three Graves,” a poem intended to be narrated by an old sexton in a country churchyard to a curious traveler intrigued by three graves side by side. Wordsworth was to write the first two parts, with Coleridge contributing the next two. However, after reviewing Wordsworth’s sections, Coleridge felt they did not align with his vision for the piece. The two poets could not agree on how best to portray the story, and the project was ultimately abandoned due to their creative differences. But the real reason behind this seemingly natural unraveling was laced with betrayal according to Coleridge. The reason behind Coleridge’s agony was—Asra (anagram for Sara, often used by Coleridge in his poetry, accounts and diary entries).
The broader context is that Coleridge was deeply unhappy in his marriage. Divorce, at the time, was seemingly impossible due to both personal and legal constraints. Amidst his marital troubles, Coleridge became deeply infatuated with Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s sister-in-law. After an effective separation from his wife, he went to celebrate Christmas at Wordsworth’s place. This visit reignited the love that he had for Sara. One day, soon after, Coleridge caught Wordsworth and Sara together. Devastated, he fled the house and ran to the nearest bar he could find. Under the heavy influence of opium and alcohol, he filled the page with slurred words—full of heartbreak, shock, and betrayal. Coleridge felt wronged not only by the woman he loved, but more painfully, by his dearest friend.
And much it grieved my heart to think
William Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring
What man has made of man
Wordsworth and Coleridge never attempted to reconcile their differences. Though they expressed bitterness toward each other, they eventually moved on in their separate pursuits. Wordsworth’s final years were peaceful, spent with his family and surrounded by nature at Rydal Mount, near Ambleside. During this time, he focused on revising and reflecting on his earlier works.
Coleridge lived a relatively quiet and reclusive life, marked by poor health and a growing dependence on opium, which he had initially taken for pain relief. He resided at Highgate in London, in the home of Dr. James Gillman for the remainder of his life. Despite his physical decline, Coleridge remained intellectually active. He continued writing, engaging in deep philosophical and theological discussions, and completed some of his major prose works, including Biographia Literaria and Aids to Reflection.
In an 1803 letter to Thomas Poole, Coleridge revealed that he had frequently encouraged Wordsworth to move away from ballad writing and towards more philosophical work. Despite these suggestions, Coleridge never openly shared his deeper frustrations with Wordsworth’s poetic style. Although his critical views remained largely unchanged throughout his life, Coleridge’s admiration for Wordsworth resurfaced in his final years. He wrote about his former collaborator with the same deep respect and affection that had marked their early friendship.
Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die
Taylor Swift, the lakes
I don’t belong, and my beloved, neither do you
Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry
I’m setting off, but not without my muse
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