An Evening Walk

Research papers on William Wordsworth's An Evening Walk can explicate the poem that was written during the romantic era by one of the most prolific poets in American literary history. Paper Masters will provide you with a narrative of the poem, a detailed, line by line explanation of Wordworth's thought process or any other type of poetry analysis you need.

An Evening Walk expresses a distance or separateness, not from Romantic ideology, but from the friend to whom he writes. The distance is an emotional one; therefore, the poem itself is relatively absent of emotion. The distance infuses the poem with a feeling of separation of man from himself, even though it is rarely reinforced directly; rather the reader engages with the narrator immediately, and we find ourselves in his shoes, our memory meshed with his. Because he is distant from his emotion, so are we as readers. Right from the start, "Far from my dearest Friend," puts both reader and narrator on a plane slightly 'off' from the reality of the poet's environment in Nature.

The ideology of Romanticism can be defined as the context from which the poet and the poem emerge, namely a particular culture. Romantic ideology includes some of the following characteristics:

• A passion for the truth;
• Emotion expressed through words and words that evoke emotion;
• Interconnectedness between Man and Nature;
• Particular examples drawn from Nature;
• A universal, truth-seeking purpose.

In this poem, Wordsworth seems separated from his emotion, perhaps because of a strained relationship with his sister Dorothy. In this regard, he is distanced from the Romantic ideology of emotion. What he indulges in, instead, are lush descriptions, rich imagery and pointed observation of the natural world in which he finds himself. It is clear that Wordsworth believed intensely in the worth of words and it is only an accident but a poignant one that his name speaks his purpose. The poet sees and then must make the reader 'hear' the words, and then, in turn, see what the poet sees. The poet is the intermediary or intercessor of almost biblical proportions. Through the Romantic poets, the simple, natural Man could find the truth-and one can suppose the salvation that comes with it.

The Romantic Movement emerged from the Industrial Revolution almost with a vengeance for the depersonalization of men for the sake of science and industry. The pastoral life was fast disappearing, and the humble shepherd was no longer an object of adulation. The Romantic poets attempted to re-focus the search for the truth through the natural world. An Evening Walk does accomplish that re-focusing as he describes a walk that takes him to and through dusk, into night and through the moonrise to its apex in the sky. During that time, the reader sees/hears the natural world that surrounds the poet.