I Travelled among Unknown Men
Table of Contents
I travelled among unknown Men,
In Lands beyond the Sea;
Nor England! did 1 know till then
What love I bore to thee.
’Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did 1 feel
The joy of my desire;
And She I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings shewed-thy nights
concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed!
Wordsworth’s
“I travelled among unknown men” appears at first to be a
tribute to a woman he loved and a poem of patriotism. It is initially unclear
how Lucy and England are similar beyond being things that are ultimately
important to him. Through further interpretations, it becomes evident that
Wordsworth used specific tools such as personification and images of nature to
connect the two beyond the reader’s first reaction. After the reader realizes
how Lucy and England are tied together, the feelings of loss that Wordsworth’s
“melancholy” experience of travel related to his feelings towards the death of
Lucy as a travel experience and not just a deportation from his life. This poem
is in turn not a statement about life and love, but a statement about death as
a permanent journey.
In the first two stanzas, Wordsworth chooses not to
mention Lucy in an effort to put emphasis on the importance of his love and
devotion to England. He resolves to have not understood “what love [he] bore
to [England]” (4) until he left England to travel to other lands. He describes
his travelling adventures as a “melancholy dream” (5) and promises to not “quit
[England’s] shore/A second time” (6-7). In making this promise, he is
recognizing not only the importance that his travel played in his love for
England but also, he is realizing that in his path of travel, he is given a
second chance; Lucy’s travel away from England is permanent.
Wordsworth also uses tactics of personification throughout the poem. He chooses to personify England and describe feelings of human love and devotion towards it. Personifying England makes it easier for the reader to connect the country to Lucy since it already seems so human. Wordsworth also decides to describe his travels abroad by the people he encountered rather than the landscapes themselves. In doing this, he is conveying to the reader the importance of a personal connection with people in his life. Travelling in a foreign territory “among unknown men” would undoubtedly create feelings of unfamiliarity and a sense of feeling lost until he returned home to England.
In these observations, the reader must also realize
that Lucy herself has travelled in a sense. Once the reader realizes that both
Wordsworth and Lucy have left England in their own ways, this poem becomes not
a poem declaring timeless love, but a description of what death must be like.
This can be interpreted in two ways, depending on the reader’s experience with
other Wordsworth poetry.
A reader who is not familiar with other works may interpret Lucy’s death would be a horrible experience and a departure from her home. Wordsworth left England only temporarily and feels as if his journey was a miserable experience that left him in an altered state of consciousness, much like a “melancholy dream” (5). He can return to England and renew his faith and love for it; feelings of happiness are brought back to his life once he returns. Lucy has permanently travelled away from England. She will never be able to return and regain feelings of happiness and hope.
The reader is then forced to question if this melancholy altered state Wordsworth temporarily found himself in while travelling is the fate of Lucy permanently because her travels will never bring her back. However, a reader who is more familiar with Wordsworth’s works and his style would know that as a romantic poet, his poetry places emphasis on the natural world, imagination and religion, among other themes. Wordsworth would believe that Heaven is home and Earth is just a temporary stop along a person’s journey in life.
He claims that
from “trailing clouds of glory do [humans] come/From God, who is our
home:/Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” (Ode 64-66) and refers to Heaven as
“that imperial palace” (Ode 83). Wordsworth is placing Heaven as the holiest
and happiest place where our immortal souls will live. Knowing this, the reader
would be able to conclude that Lucy is, in fact, going home, to Heaven, and will
be happier there.
Wordsworth makes a promise to his country:
Nor will
I quit thy shore/A the second time; for still I seem/To love thee more and more”
(6-8). He only realized the importance of England in his life after he had
left. When he returned, he felt his love for his country grow every day and he
could relish in the things that he loved most about his country, but only as
they were connected to Lucy. This promise may have been made to his country
because he was wishful that he could tell Lucy he would never leave her again,
or because he had the realization that the miserable life he led temporarily is
the misery that Lucy would contain forever.
Wordsworth’s “I travelled among unknown men” appears
at first to be a simple love poem but concludes on a much deeper level. He is
explaining to the reader the travels that are taken, both temporarily and
permanently; it is up to the reader to conclude whether Lucy’s permanent
journey away from England to Heaven is a journey to her home or away from it.
Wordsworth is connecting his travels and Lucy’s death through the description
of his own journey away from England. This poem is much more than a love story;
it is a testimony of the life and death experience of mankind.
“I travelled among unknown men” is a love poem
completed in April 1801 [1] by the English poet William Wordsworth and
originally intended for the Lyrical Ballads anthology, but it was first
published in Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807 (see 1807 in poetry). The third poem
of Wordsworth's " Lucy series ", "I travelled..." was
composed after the poet had spent time living in Germany in 1798. Due to acute
homesickness, the lyrics promise that once returned to England, he will never
live abroad again. The poet states he now loves England "more and
more". [2] Wordsworth realizes that he did not know how much he loved England
until he lived abroad and uses this insight as an analogy to understand his
unrequited feelings for his beloved, Lucy. [3]
Although "I travelled..." was written two
years after the other four poems in the series, in both tone and language it
closely echoes the earlier work. [4] Wordsworth gives no hint as to the
identity of Lucy, and although he stated in the introduction that all the poems
were 'founded on fact', knowing the basis for the character of Lucy is not
necessary to appreciate the poem and its sentiment. Earlier critics assumed she
represents a youthful love of Wordsworth who had died, but modern scholarship
believes she was likely a hybrid or largely fictitious. Similarly, no insight
can be gained from determining the exact geographical location of the 'springs
of Dove'; in his youth, Wordsworth had visited springs of that name in
Derbyshire, Patterdale and Yorkshire. [4]
The poem is filled with conflict and contradictions.
Comparing the irony of the usage of the words "among" and
"unknown" in the poem's title, the critic Mark Jones concluded that
'unknown' indicated the poet finally realizes the depth of his feelings for
Lucy. Jones wrote, "These are paradoxes of memory and belated
appreciation, and they turn on the question of what it is to know, as the two
uses of this word in the first stanza indicate". [3] The language used is
highly nostalgic for a personal and societal ideal, according to critic Dudley
Fitts it "expresses with quiet assurance the value of a life lived within the
protective circle of a national and social tradition". [5]
Lucy's only appearance is in the second half of the
poem, where she is linked with the English landscape. As such, it seems as if
nature joins with the narrator in mourning over Lucy, and the reader is drawn
to this mutual sorrow. Although the poem focuses on death, it transitions
into a poem describing the narrator's love for England and nature. [6]
'Tis
past, that melancholy dream!
Nor
will I quit thy shore
A
second time; for still I seem
To
love thee more and more. (lines 5–8)
Critical Analysis of "I Travelled Among Unknown Men" by Wordsworth
This is a poem of love and nostalgia for one home's
country. Wordsworth wrote it after travelling abroad for some time, and finding
that when he went abroad it was not the exciting experience that he thought it
would be. He describes it as moving "among unknown men" which
indicates how lonely he felt. The first stanza balances this experience of
travel with an evocation of the love that the speaker has for England in the
second half with England being apostrophized.
Now that the speaker is back in his beloved England,
he looks back on his foreign travel as a "melancholy dream" and
swears that he will never leave England again because the love he has for his
country is just growing greater and greater. It was only among the mountains of
England that Wordsworth felt "the joy of his desire" and also Lucy,
the subject of Wordsworth's longings and unrequited love, is a figure who is
rooted firmly in English soil. The fact that Lucy lived, played and died in
England is another factor that makes England so important to the speaker:
Thy
mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The
bowers where Lucy played;
And
thine too is the last green field
That
Lucy's eyes surveyed.
Not only does the speaker have a strong connection
with his home country but he also has another attachment as England is the
location where he loved and lost his beloved Lucy. The connection that he feels
to her even after her death is something that makes England forever special in
his mind.
Summary and Analysis
“I Travelled Among Unknown Men,” by the English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850), is written in the simple, clear, colloquial style that Wordsworth helped champion as one of the original Romantic poets. The poets who embraced Romanticism objected to the often ornate, “artificial” style of language used by many authors of the eighteenth century. Poems by those earlier writers were often filled with allusions to classical literature, especially to gods and goddesses whom no one believed and who seemed quite remote from the lives of common people.
The audience for such poetry was well-educated, often from the upper
strata of society. Much of Wordsworth’s poetry, in contrast, can easily be read
and appreciated by anyone. As its titular opening line implies, “I Travelled
Among Unknown Men” deals with personal experience in the real world.
Like many Romantic poems, this work features the thoughts and feelings of a person a “man speaking to men,” as Wordsworth himself once phrased the ideal. Even people who have not travelled abroad can easily relate to the idea that we especially appreciate our homes when we return to them after having been away. In this poem, the speaker refers to “unknown” people (1) in a way that implies people who are not only unfamiliar but who have a different culture and speak a different language.
These are people, in other words, who are not only geographically distant but also culturally distinct. The fact that they live in “lands” (plural) “beyond the sea” (2) suggests that they are people from a variety of different countries. Imagine how different the impact of the second line would be if it read “In a place across the stream.” The speaker wants to emphasize his contact with people of a variety of nationalities in places significantly distant from his own country.
Not until the second half of the first stanza do we realize the precise significance of the traveller’s travels: They have made him appreciate his country much more fully than he had before. Travelling abroad helped him learn not only about foreign lands but also about his own psyche; he had not realized, until his travels, how much he loved his own country. The fact that he did travel shows that he is not a narrow-minded jingoist. We can assume he realized that learning about other countries might be valuable.
However, the added and apparently unexpected benefit of such travels is that they have brought home to him the attractions of his own nation. He doesn’t praise England simply because he is an ignorant patriot, unfamiliar with other lands; instead, he praises England precisely because he is familiar with other nations and their peoples.
Nor does he simply mention his love of England; he
exclaims it (3). He now realizes how much love he “bore” to England a verb that
can refer not only to how much love he felt for his homeland but also to how
much love he brought back with him when he returned to his native country. The
phrase “bore to” makes his love sound more weighty and substantial than would
be the case if Wordsworth had written something like “felt...
FAQ?
What is the theme of I travelled among unknown men?
What is a complaint by William Wordsworth about?
What meter is used in the world is too much with us?
What is the theme message of the poem?
What is the theme of the poem a character?
What type of poem is a complaint?
What is the central idea of To Wordsworth by Shelley?
What is the figurative language in a complaint?
What is the setting in a poem?
How to summarize a poem?
What is the character and theme of the story?
What is the theme of the writer?
What type of poem is a story?
What is the main type of poem?
What type of poem tells a story?
What is the summary and central idea of the poem?
What is the central and main idea in a poem?
Is the central idea or message in a poem?
What is a common phrase to start a complaint?
What are the concluding lines in a complaint letter?
What is the closing paragraph of a complaint letter?
What is the theme of a story?
What is the tone of the poem?
What is the conflict of a story?
What is a poetry paragraph?
How is a poem structured?
How do you start a paragraph in a poem?
What is the plot of a story?
What is the setting in a story?
What is the tone of the story?
This website is designed to provide free notes and study materials on English Literature. The prime aim is to help financially weaker students with their ready references. Since a lot of different content writers write and contribute articles for this website, it’s pretty tough to check and verify the originality and uniqueness of the content. There may be a few contents which are directly or indirectly copied/ plagiarized from other websites/ books/ journals etc. If such type of issues is noticed please don’t forget to inform us. We will immediately remove the content from our website www.engliterature.com. Our mailing address is admin@engliterature.com
إرسال تعليق
Don't spam comments