A Poet! He Hath Put His Heart to School
A Poet! He Hath Put His Heart to School - form Summary
Sonnet as Argument
This sonnet stages a brief, forceful argument: poetry made by rule is stunted, while true poetic power derives from natural freedom and inward vitality. Wordsworth contrasts the constrained, theory-driven poet with the spontaneous growth of a meadow-flower and forest-tree. The fourteen-line sonnet compresses denunciation and exemplification, using compact structure and vivid images to assert that authentic art springs from nature rather than from imposed precept.
Read Complete AnalysesA poet! - He hath put his heart to school, Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff Which art hath lodged within his hand--must laugh By precept only, and shed tears by rule. Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff, And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool, In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph. How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold; And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree Comes not by casting in a formal mould, But from its own divine vitality.
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