This great thinker lived in times of doubt and despair. He may hold place as the first great modern poet of Europe.
He saw the French Revolution at close range, having walked through France and Switzerland in 1790. Influenced by and gave song to William Godwin's 1793 POLITICAL JUSTICE. With the poems which are diatribes against Slavery. Love Songs.
This collection shows the full arc of Wordsworth's work: From an undistinguished start, to a decade of ferocious bloom (1797-1807) in association with his sister and with Coleridge, to a long gentle but wooden decline, to his death aged 80 years.
He survived more inter vivos obloquy and contempt than any other modern poet has had to endure [xiv]. Many of his poems have been described as both "the best" and "the worst" ever written. He had the "gift to be simple", in an age of ornamentation and imposture.
More than most, Wordsworth clearly writes from the experience of consciousness--that quality of sensing existence, with gratitude and dismay. This is unfortunately, the door to mysticism, which is always personal; the poems are about himself until finally climaxing his career to take to the subject of mankind.
It was the conviction of John Stuart Mill, and Emerson, that the poet to read for redemption from the depths of depression, is Wordsworth. Salvation.