Over the years, Wordsworth’s “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” has come to be seen as a manifesto for the Romantic movement in England. In it, Wordsworth explains why he wrote his experimental ballads the way he did. Unlike the highbrow poetry of his contemporaries, the late-Neoclassical writers, Wordsworth’s poems in Lyrical Ballads engage with the lives of the peasantry and are written in stripped-down, common language.
Wordsworth was alone in his effort; he penned the Lyrical Ballads with the help of his good friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. With friends like Coleridge, Wordsworth hopes to produce a new class of poetry, which will focus on “low and rustic life”—Wordsworth finds that the common people are less restrained and more honest because they are in constant communion with the beauty of nature. This new class of poetry will also use the language of the common people, as this language carries a certain universality and permanence, having none of the fickleness of poetic diction.
Wordsworth feels that much of the poetry of his contemporaries is far too trivial and crude, relying on sensationalism to appeal to readers. This sort of poetry—along with modern industrialization and urbanization—dulls the minds of readers. To Wordsworth, good poetry should have a purpose other than superficial entertainment. The purpose of Wordsworth’s ballads is to allow cosmopolitan readers to vicariously experience nature so that they can be revived from the mind-dulling aspects of modernity.
Wordsworth also sees great importance in emotions. Indeed, in poetry, emotions are more important than the plot and actions—he writes that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of emotion” that “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” It is important that the poet recollects his emotions in tranquility, as taking this time to contemplate the experience allows the poet to incorporate not only passion, but also profound thought in their work. Poetry ought to be a profound experience. Wordsworth disdains the trivialization of poetry: no matter how simple the meter of a poem, the contents of the poem still ought to be taken seriously by poet and reader alike.
Other than these larger ideas about poetry, Wordsworth also briefly digresses into the importance of meter. Wordsworth relates that he has chosen to write poetry and not prose because meter adds a certain charm to the work. Furthermore, the regularity of meter can help temper emotions that may grow to be too much if the work were written with the stylistic freedom of prose. Wordsworth ends the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” on the note that there is nothing more he can do except allow the reader to experience his ballads for themselves.
