Michael Dirda
The timeless verse -- and turbulent lives -- of the founders of Romantic poetry.
Sunday, February 11, 2007; Page BW10
THE FRIENDSHIP
Wordsworth and Coleridge
  This scene depicting the southern reaches of Ullswater is the same setting that Wordsworth described in "The Prelude." (Joseph Wright / The Wordsworth Trust) |
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,
