Lyrical Ballads With Other Poems, 1800, vol 1 | Page 3

I should contend at the same time that it
is far less pernicious in the sum of its
consequences. From such
verses the Poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at least
by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy purpose. Not
that I mean to say, that I always began to write with a distinct purpose
formally conceived; but I believe that my habits of meditation have so
formed my feelings, as that my descriptions of such objects as strongly
excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a purpose.
If in this opinion I am mistaken I can have little right to the name of a
Poet. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings; but though this be true, Poems to which any value can be
attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man
who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility had also
thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are
modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the
representatives of all our past feelings; and as by contemplating the
relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what
is really important to men, so by the repetition and continuance of this
act feelings connected with important subjects will be nourished, till at
length, if we be originally possessed of much organic sensibility, such
habits of mind will be produced that by obeying blindly and
mechanically the impulses of those habits we shall describe objects and
utter sentiments of such a nature and in such connection with each
other, that the understanding of the being to whom we address
ourselves, if he be in a healthful state of association, must necessarily
be in some degree enlightened, his taste exalted, and his affections
ameliorated.
I have said that each of these poems has a purpose. I have also

informed my Reader what this purpose will be found principally to be:
namely to illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are
associated in a state of excitement. But speaking in less general
language, it is to follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when
agitated by the great and simple affections of our nature. This object I
have endeavoured in these short essays to attain by various means; by
tracing the maternal passion through many of its more subtle windings,
as in the poems of the IDIOT BOY and the MAD MOTHER; by
accompanying the last struggles of a human being at the approach of
death, cleaving in solitude to life and society, as in the Poem of the
FORSAKEN INDIAN; by shewing, as in the Stanzas entitled WE ARE
SEVEN, the perplexity and obscurity which in childhood attend our
notion of death, or rather our utter inability to admit that notion; or by
displaying the strength of fraternal, or to speak more philosophically, of
moral attachment when early associated with the great and beautiful
objects of nature, as in THE BROTHERS; or, as in the Incident of
SIMON LEE, by placing my Reader in the way of receiving from
ordinary moral sensations another and more salutary impression than
we are accustomed to receive from them. It has also been part of my
general purpose to attempt to sketch characters under the influence of
less impassioned feelings, as in the OLD MAN TRAVELLING, THE
TWO THIEVES, &c. characters of which the elements are simple,
belonging rather to nature than to manners, such as exist now and will
probably always exist, and which from their constitution may be
distinctly and profitably contemplated. I will not abuse the indulgence
of my Reader by dwelling longer upon this subject; but it is proper that
I should mention one other
circumstance which distinguishes these
Poems from the popular Poetry of the day; it is this, that the feeling
therein developed gives importance to the action and situation and not
the action and situation to the feeling. My meaning will be rendered
perfectly intelligible by referring my Reader to the Poems entitled
POOR SUSAN and the CHILDLESS FATHER, particularly to the last
Stanza of the latter Poem.
I will not suffer a sense of false modesty to prevent me from asserting,
that I point my Reader's attention to this mark of distinction far less for
the sake of these particular Poems than from the general importance of

the subject. The subject is indeed important! For the human mind is
capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent
stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and
dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know that
one being is elevated above another in proportion as he possesses this
capability. It has