Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138127678
• eBook ISBN: 9781136773365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

When it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to that which had been voiced before. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge's and Wordsworth's contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.

Poems in the 1800 Edition of Lyrical Ballads in ihe Order in Which They Were Printed

Volume One

The poems in this first volume were substantially the same as those in the 1798 edition. For details of the order in which they were printed and the changes in the titles of some of the poems, see the list of Poems in the 1798 edition. The Convict was omitted, but the following poem of Coleridge’s was added:

– (21) Love

Volume Two

1. Hart-leap Well

2. There was a Boy, &c.

3. The Brothers, a Pastoral Poem

4. Ellen Irwin, or the Braes of Kirtle

5. Strange fits of passion I have known, &c.

6. Song

7. A slumber did my spirit seal, &c.

8. The Waterfall and the Eglantine

9. The Oak and the Broom, a Pastoral

10. Lucy Gray

11. The Idle Shepherd-Boys, or Dungeon-Gill Force, a Pastoral

12. ’Tis said that some have died for love, &c.

13. Poor Susan

14. Inscription for the Spot where the Hermitage stood on St. Herbert’s Island, Derwent-Water

15. Inscription for the House (an Outhouse) on the Island at Grasmere

16. To a Sexton

17. Andrew Jones

18. The two Thieves, or the last stage of Avarice

19. A whirl-blast from behind the Hill, &c.

20. Song for the wandering Jew

21. Ruth

22. Lines written with a Slate-Pencil upon a Stone, &c.

23. Lines written on a Tablet in a School

24. The two April Mornings

25. The Fountain, a conversation

26. Nutting

27. Three years she grew in sun and shower, &c.

28. The Pet-Lamb, a Pastoral

29. Written in Germany on one of the coldest days of the century

30. The Childless Father

31. The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description

32. Rural Architecture

33. A Poet’s Epitaph

34. A Character

35. A Fragment

36. Poems on the Naming of Places,

(I	It was an April Morning: fresh and clear
II	To Joanna
III	There is an Eminence, – of these our hills
IV	A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags
V	To M.H.)

37. Michael, a Pastoral

Wordsworth is inconsistent in his use of titles and some of the above titles differ from those which head the poems.

Love

All Thoughts, all Passions, all Delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal Frame,

All are but Ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I 5

Live o’er again that happy hour,

When midway on the Mount I lay

Beside the Ruin’d Tower.

The Moonshine stealing o’er the scene

Had blended with the Lights of Eve; 10

And she was there, my Hope, my Joy,

My own dear Genevieve!

She lean’d against the Armed Man,

The Statue of the Armed Knight:

She stood and listen’d to my Harp 15

Amid the ling’ring Light.

Few Sorrows hath she of her own,

My Hope, my Joy, my Genevieve!

She loves me best, whene’er I sing

The Songs, that make her grieve. 20

I play’d a soft and doleful Air,

I sang an old and moving Story –

An old rude Song that fitted well

The Ruin wild and hoary.

She listen’d with a flitting Blush, 25

With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;

For well she knew, I could not choose

But gaze upon her Face.

I told her of the Knight, that wore

Upon his Shield a burning Brand; 30

And that for ten long Years he woo’d

The Lady of the Land.

I told her, how he pin’d: and, ah!

The low, the deep, the pleading tone,

With which I sang another’s Love, 35

Interpreted my own.

She listen’d with a flitting Blush,

With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;

And she forgave me, that I gaz’d

Too fondly on her Face! 40

But when I told the cruel scorn

Which craz’d this bold and lovely

Knight, And that he cross’d the mountain woods

Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage Den, 45

And sometimes from the darksome Shade,

And sometimes starting up at once

In green and sunny Glade,

There came, and look’d him in the face,

An Angel beautiful and bright; 50

And that he knew, it was a Fiend,

This miserable Knight!

And that, unknowing what he did,

He leapt amid a murd’rous Band,

And sav’d from Outrage worse than Death 55

The L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition
• Foreword
• Foreword to the 1991 Edition
• A Selected Bibliography and List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Lyrical Ballads, 1798
• Lyrical Ballads, 1800
• Preface 1800 Version (with 1802 Variants)
• Notes to the Poems
• Appendix A: Text of Lewti; or, the Circassian Love-Chant
• Appendix B: Wordworth’s Appendix on Poetic Diction from the 1802 Edition of Lyrical Ballads
• Appendix C: Some Contemporary Criticisms of Lyrical Ballads
• Index of Titles
• Index of First Lines