Bartlett notes a "pattern of revision" from the 1805 to the 1850 version of The Prelude in which Wordsworth shows "an increased affinity for the convention of poetry as song." Barlett cites a number of examples in which the personal pronoun (e.g. I, my) is revised to "the song."

Wordsworth, while making frequent allusions to poetry as the song, also explores his own poetry as a vast song. Bartlett cites books X.552, and VIII.476-77: "recall, My song!" While Wordsworth’s use of the generalized "the song" draws less attention to the poet himself, Bartlett finds the more personal "my song" more satisfying and less detached from the poet writing.

Bartlett explores the ways in which Wordsworth brings originality and vitality to the common poetic convention of poem as song. Wordsworth places his bards in historical contexts, and dramatizes the origins of the Orphic tradition, without mechanically adopting it. Bartlett cites John Hollander who points out that Wordsworth was the creator of a world in which "non-musical sounds . . . are continually treated in a language of musical description." In a surprising turn, but one which more critics should take, Bartlett alludes to the jazz standard "I Hear Music", as performed by Billie Holiday in 1950, for its allusion to the nonmusical mundanities of wind, the milkman on the stair, and percolating coffee as "mighty fine music." Bartlett then uses the word "skimpy."

Bartlett pursues Wordsworth’s use of birdsong and the music of flowing water. Each affects Wordsworth’s growth as a poet, and points to the reciprocal forces of the poet imposing his imagination on Nature, and of Nature imposing attributes on the poet. Wordsworth also explores what Bartlett calls "actual music-making" as opposed to the music metaphors themselves. The effect of Wordsworth’s best "songs" is to "awaken the . . . imagination of his reader", thus the poet engages music itself as "a force affecting or swaying the listener."

Bartlett concludes: "Throughout Wordsworth’s two longest poems, man’s music and nature’s music . . . are caught again and yet again, to transform listeners and readers."

Document created March 14, 1997