Book Description

Peter Bell: A Tale in Verse is a long narrative poem by William Wordsworth, written in 1798, but not published until 1819. Synopsis: In a tone of straight-faced humour the prologue tells of the poet's travels over the face of the earth and through the heavens in a boat of the imagination, which urges him to choose some exotic or otherworldly theme. The poet rejects the suggestion, and opts for the more homely subject of Peter Bell. The poem proper begins with a description of him as a hard-hearted sinner, impervious to the softening influence of nature, who makes his living as an itinerant hawker (or potter, in Wordsworth's northern expression) of earthenware. One night, while walking through Swaledale by night, he loses his way. He comes across an ass standing untended, gazing into the river Swale, and he tries to ride away on it, but the ass does not respond to his furious beating of it. Peter sees the face of a corpse in the river, and faints from shock. On recovering consciousness he drags the dead man, once the owner of the ass, onto dry land. The ass now consents to start for home, taking Peter with him. A loud cry is heard in the distance, which, though Peter does not know it, comes from the dead man's young son, who is searching for his father. Unnerved by this, and by the sight of the bloody wounds he has inflicted on the ass, Peter begins to feel unaccustomed pangs of conscience. His mind turns to his many past sins, and as he passes an outdoor Methodist meeting his heart responds to the preacher's calls for repentance. The ass reaches the home of the dead man, whose wife is waiting for him. She learns that she is a widow, and her children orphans. And now is Peter taught to feel That man's heart is a holy thing; And Nature, through a world of death, Breathes into him a second breath, More searching than the breath of spring. The poem closes with Peter downcast by his experiences, but eventually emerging as a better man.......... William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 - 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge."Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. Early life: Main article: Early life of William Wordsworth The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. He was frequently away from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant from him until his death in 1783. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular set him to commit to memory large portions of verse, including works by Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser.....