Strange fits of passion have I known

STRANGE FITS OF PASSION HAVE I KNOWN

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.
Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.
In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"

"Strange fits of passion have I known" is a seven-stanza poem ballad by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Composed during a sojourn in Germany in 1798, the poem was first published in the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads" (1800). ["The Poetical Works of Wordsworth". Introduction by Paul D. Sheats. Cambridge ed. Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, 1982. p. 112.]

The poem describes the poet's trip to his beloved Lucy's cottage, and his thoughts on the way. Each of its seven stanzas is four lines long and has a rhyming scheme of "a-b-a-b".

tructure and synopsis

In the poem, the speaker narrates a nighttime ride to the cottage of his beloved Lucy, who always looks as "fresh as a rose in June". The speaker begins by saying that he has experienced "strange fits of passion" and will recount them only to another lover ("in the Lover's ear alone, / What once to me befell."). In the five following stanzas, he recounts how he wended his way on horseback "beneath an evening-moon". He crossed a lea, passed through an orchard, and began to climb a hill, atop which was Lucy's cottage. As he "came near, and nearer still" to "Lucy's cot", the sinking moon appeared to follow suit. As he closely approaches the cottage, the moon vanishes from sight behind the roof. A morbid thought rises unbidden to the speaker's mind: "O mercy!" he thinks. "If Lucy should be dead!"

"Strange fits of passion have I known" is simple in form but complex in content. The dramatic first stanza (the speaker "will dare to tell" of his "strange fits of passion," but "in the Lover's ear alone") quickly captivates the reader. Wordsworth then creates tension by juxtaposing the sinking moon and the approaching rider, the familiar landscape with the speaker's strange, dreamy feelings. [Phillips, Brian. " [http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/wordsworth/section2.rhtml Strange fits of passion have I known] ". "SparkNote on Wordsworth's Poetry".]

It is uncertain whether the Lucy of the poem was a bases on a historical person, or is a figment of Wordsworth's creative imagination. If she is real, her surname and identity are unknown, though they have been the subject of much "diligent speculation" in literary circles. "The one certainty is that she is not the girl of Wordsworth's 'Lucy Gray'." [ M.H. Abrams, ed. (2000), The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2A, The Romantic Period (7th ed.), New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.]

An earlier version of this poem ended with an extra verse:

:I told her this: her laughter light:Is ringing in my ears::And when I think upon that night:My eyes are dim with tears. [Hayden, John O. (1994) "William Wordsworth: Selected Poems" Penguin Classics ]

Citations

Bibliography

* Jones, Mark. "The 'Lucy Poems': A Case Study in Literary Knowledge". The University of Toronto Press, 1995.
* Murray, Roger N. "Wordsworth's Style: Figures and Themes in the Lyrical Ballads of 1800". Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.
* Rolfe, William J. "William Wordsworth, Select Poems of William Wordsworth" (New York: American Book), 1889.
* Woodring, Carl. "Wordsworth". Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

External links

* [http://litscholar.net/wordsworth/Wordsworths%20Passion.htm Wordsworth's Passion] Essay by Sheri Chriqui.