"The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"
             (Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads). Discuss.
             Wordsworth argues in his 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads that "poetry should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered "poetic." He argued that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory and that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling-for he claimed that all human sympathy is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is "the naked and native dignity of man."
             William Wordsworth's style is plain spoken and easy to understand; almost as if he is speaking directly to you and enticing readers to come with him on a journey which is his poetry. Although the rhythms and style of common English have changed from those of the early nineteeth century, Wordsworth's poetry remains comfortable to read. Many of Wordsworth's poems, such as Tintern Abbey," deal with the subjects of childhood and the memory of childhood in the mind of the adult. Wordsworth's images and metaphors mix natural scenery with religious symbolism (as in the sonnet "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, in which the evening is described as being "quiet as a nun").
             Wordsworth was also interested in combining nature with humanity. His poems feature cottages, hedgerows, orchards, and other places of the sort where readers can visually imagine the tranquil surroundings which Wordsworth composed his poetry in. Wordsworth's poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and regulation. By beginning the Romantic era, Wordsworth opened the doors for later writers such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron in England, and Emerson and Thoreau in America.
             ...