Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads

Introduction

The lyrical ballad is a collaboration of two great poets namely William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was first published in 1789 and is considered to start the Romantic Movement era in English literature. Most of the poems in the lyrical ballad are written by William Wordsworth and Coleridge only wrote four of them. Out of the four three poems where the eventual success related to Coleridge and many reader today know Coleridge by these great poems such as The rime of the ancient mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel.

A second edition of the lyrical ballad was also published after eleven years of the first publication. The important aspect of the lyrical ballad was that it was not based on the common high class English literature that poets used at that time. One of the reasons of the collaboration of both poets was to provide the average, normal English readers the poems in an everyday language. William Wordsworth and Coleridge emphasized on the vitality of the voice of the poor that is used to show the expressions of their life. By the usage of a normal language a wider approach would be given in describing the human emotions in the poetries.

Discussion

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Lyrical ballad starts with the poem written by Coleridge “Rime of the ancient Mariner” and ends with a poem by William Wordsworth. There are a total of 23 poems in the lyrical ballads among which most of them are written by William Wordsworth and some by Coleridge. The poem rime of the ancient mariner is one of the best written poems by Coleridge in English literature. However, William Wordsworth was a bit of against the poem. This is because Wordsworth hoped that their collaboration of lyrical ballad would be to change the topic and theme of their poetry from the traditional subjects and to overcome the high end English language used at that times. (Wordsworth, Coleridge, 1798)

Mainly the lyrical ballads was based on Wordsworth, however some poem of Coleridge that were included made the volume relevant for both and was a very important asset to both of the poets. In the poems Williams wordsworth was mainly regarded to enlight the readers to see the human nature In terms of his writings and as an experiment from the original type of poems written by him. The lyrical ballads show the significance of the human mind and the link the mind has with the nature. It also shows a need for a more free and direct environment of expression.

In the poem Coleridge has added one to that gallery of typical figures created by poets and writers of imaginative prose who impersonate a particular class of men or a particular order of ideas. The Mariner represents the glamour attaching to the old man who, having from his youth sailed the seas, returns to spend his old age among his fellows on shore, and is naturally and justly regarded by them as the depositary of mysterious knowledge respecting ...