wordsworth

             The name of the poem chosen for this project is She Was a Phantom of Delight by William Wordsworth. This lyric poem's main subject was the finding and describing the perfect woman. This describes a non-human entity. He begins speaking of a woman who seems to be too gorgeous and wonderful to be real. Later, he begins to see that she acts like a real person, so questions the authenticity of the woman. At the end of the poem, the author realizes the woman is real, as for that reason is even more wonderful than he had imagined. On a more personal level, I hope Wordsworth was speaking of the first day he met his true love, but most people would disagree. Many believe it was a poem about the Babylonian goddess Inanna, or Lilith, the Shadow-self of Inanna.
             If this poem is talking about Lilith and Inanna, then imagery is used to express the themes. In the first section she is simply a Phantom, not known to be real or not. Next, she is transformed into a virgin and once again into a mother in the third section. This shows the integration of the Phantom woman into a thoughtful woman instead of a inconsiderate virgin, thus creating a perfect woman. Also the month of May is mentioned, which happens to be the month dedicated to Lilith. The only hints of metaphors or similes come in the woman's description. Wordsworth describes her eyes as stars of a twilight sky, as well as her hair to be dusky like the twilight. The sense of sight is implied at the beginning of each section. The poem is thirty lines long, broken up into three stanzas of ten lines each, with each stanza being one sentence. The poet probably decided on this structure to show the three transitions, or integration of the perfect woman being described. The rhyme scheme is aa,bb,cc,etc. and the meter is an iambic tetrameter. The poet has most likely chosen these patterns to keep the poem simple and have an easier flow when being read aloud.
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wordsworth. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 19:23, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/24148.html