I've been rereading some Romantic poetry, and this post returned to my mind. Was the period in which Wordsworth and Coleridge flourished one of the times of "suspiciously high rates of male baptism"? I don't think I've ever been so haunted by "The Thorn," a poem that reflects the nearly inevitable uncertainty surrounding the death of a child—or Coleridge's revelation in his "Letter to Sarah Hutchinson" that he periodically wished his children had never been born (in lines that were dropped as the poem underwent its revision into "Dejection: An Ode"). I'm not sure I want to think about this "demographic background" as I consider Wordsworth's hymns to the child's wisdom and to sibling love!
A different angle on Samuel Butler's conjecture that Wordsworth murdered Lucy with the help of Coleridge, perhaps! I'll have to reread the Coleridge. Wordsworth, to give him credit, is very attuned to the fact that children are a problem for the poor. Lots of poems like:
I've been rereading some Romantic poetry, and this post returned to my mind. Was the period in which Wordsworth and Coleridge flourished one of the times of "suspiciously high rates of male baptism"? I don't think I've ever been so haunted by "The Thorn," a poem that reflects the nearly inevitable uncertainty surrounding the death of a child—or Coleridge's revelation in his "Letter to Sarah Hutchinson" that he periodically wished his children had never been born (in lines that were dropped as the poem underwent its revision into "Dejection: An Ode"). I'm not sure I want to think about this "demographic background" as I consider Wordsworth's hymns to the child's wisdom and to sibling love!
A different angle on Samuel Butler's conjecture that Wordsworth murdered Lucy with the help of Coleridge, perhaps! I'll have to reread the Coleridge. Wordsworth, to give him credit, is very attuned to the fact that children are a problem for the poor. Lots of poems like:
Ten children, Sir! had I to feed,
Hard labour in a time of need!
My pride was tamed, and in our grief,
I of the parish ask’d relief.