Michael Dirda

The timeless verse -- and turbulent lives -- of the founders of Romantic poetry.

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By Michael Dirda

Sunday, February 11, 2007

THE FRIENDSHIP

Wordsworth and Coleridge

By Adam Sisman

Viking. 480 pp. $27.95

Like many people, I love William Wordsworth's poetry, from his simplest lyric about daffodils to his autobiographical "The Prelude." His passionate sincerity about the life-enhancing powers of nature touches even my jaded, urban soul: "Enough of science and of art;/ Close up these barren leaves;/ Come forth, and bring with you a heart/ That watches and receives" (from "The Tables Turned"). His "Tintern Abbey" might well be the best medium-length poem in English, while the only slightly less good "Immortality" ode never fails to elicit that thrill to the back of the neck that A.E. Housman maintained was the only infallible sign of poetic genius:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

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