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Dorothy Wordsworth: Sister and Poet

© Pamela St. Clair

In his preface to the second edition of his Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth wrote that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Powerful feelings alone do not create "good" poetry. Rather, good poetry stems from the poet's ability, as Wordsworth's own poems attest, to depict and evoke those very feelings as if they overflow from the page itself. His lyrical and eloquent poems capture fleeting essences, such as memory and reminiscence, as he saw them mirrored in the beauty and serenity of nature. In "Tintern Abbey," one of my personal favorites, Wordsworth reflects upon a distant childhood. He pairs the aching loneliness that often accompanies such memories with the sheer pleasure of remembrance. Nature intensifies these seemingly conflicting emotions and melds them into her own majesty: "...For I have learned/To look on nature, not as in the hour/Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes/The still, sad music of humanity, /Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power/To chasten and subdue." Our human agonies are elevated to a grand scale.

Just how spontaneous, however, was Wordsworth in apprehending such emotions? He and his sister Dorothy had an uncommonly close relationship, sharing the same household, for example, even after he married. Although Dorothy never considered herself to be a poet, her journals reveal a writer concerned with poetic techniques. They also reveal images and descriptions similar to those her brother made famous.

Dorothy seems fascinated by how words fit together. With her attention to color, sound, and touch, her language details a landscape and community that moves and breathes as she plays with poetic devices, such as alliteration, assonance, personification and simile. Consider, for example, the poet's ear for detail and description in the following journal entry: "But as we went along there were more and yet more [daffodils]; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that flew upon them over the Lake; the looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing."

According to her journal, Dorothy wrote those lines on April 15, 1802. Compare, however, her brother's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," first printed in 1807: "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." His spontaneity seems to be, in part, a borrowed impulsiveness. In all fairness, Dorothy was privy to her brother's literary circle, which included, among others, their close friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ideas most likely traveled, spontaneously, from person to person and pen to pen.

The copyright of the article Dorothy Wordsworth: Sister and Poet in British Literature is owned by Pamela St. Clair. Permission to republish Dorothy Wordsworth: Sister and Poet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.