“I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Introduction

• "I Travelled Among Unknown Men" is the last of William Wordsworth's "Lucy poems," a sequence of mysterious ballads in which a speaker mourns his beloved Lucy. In this poem, the speaker returns home to England after long travels and vows never to leave again—not just because England is his home, but because it was Lucy's home. A love of a country, the poem suggests, can be as much to do with the memories that live on there as with the place itself. Wordsworth likely wrote this poem in 1801 after a trip to Germany, but he first published it in the 1807 collection Poems, in Two Volumes.

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“I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Summary

• I took a trip abroad among strangers in countries across the ocean. Oh, England, I didn't understand how much I loved you until I made that journey.

  The sad, dreamlike time of my travels is over for good now! I'll never leave you again, England; the longer I'm home, the more I find I love you.

  It was among English mountains that I first felt joyful longing—and the woman I longed for sat at her spinning wheel by an English fireside.

  English mornings and English nights lit up or darkened the shady places where Lucy enjoyed herself. And a green English field was the last thing that Lucy saw.

“I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Themes

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  Homesickness and Homecoming

  This poem’s speaker, alienated and lonely after a journey abroad, comes home to England with a deep sense of relief. He’s delighted to be in his native country again not just because he loves its familiar landscapes, but also because Lucy, a woman he adored, lived and died there. The speaker apparently had no idea how much it meant to be near familiar scenes and memories until he was away from them. Absence, the poem thus suggests, really does make the heart grow fonder: you never know how much you love your home until you’ve left it.

  The poem’s speaker is so relieved to be back in England after his travels that he vows he’ll never “quit [its] shore” again. Being among “unknown men” in a foreign country felt lonesome, sad, and unreal to him, as if his journey were no more than a “melancholy dream.” England, to him, is the place where his real and fulfilling life goes on; the countryside is beautiful in itself and also full of happy memories (especially memories of Lucy, the woman he loved and lost).

  Now that the speaker is back home, he “seem[s] / To love [England] more and more.” To feel this ever-growing love, he observes, he first had to leave: it wasn’t “till then” (that is, until he traveled abroad) that he understood “what love [he] bore” to England. Only from a distance could he plumb the depths of his allegiance to his native country.

  The poem thus suggests that leaving home makes ones understand what home means. Leaving a beloved place behind reveals just how important it is—and makes homecoming into a joyful (if perhaps bittersweet) celebration.

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  Grief and Memory

  Returning from long travels abroad, this poem’s speaker is deeply relieved to be back home in England, the country where his beloved Lucy lived and died. When he’s away from the familiar English fireside where Lucy “turned her wheel” (that is, worked at her spinning wheel), he feels his grief for her even more deeply. When he’s in England, however, he can find some comfort in his memories of the places Lucy once roamed. The place a lost loved one lived, the poem suggests, can offer poignant consolation even in the midst of grief. By preserving memories, landscapes can also preserve the spirits of the dead.

  The speaker hardly seems to make a distinction between his long-lost Lucy and the landscape she lived in. It was by an “English fire” that she sat and worked, he remembers, and English “mornings showed” and “nights concealed” the gardens where she used to wander. He’s happy to be in England again because everything he sees there reminds him of Lucy; she seems almost to have become part of the countryside.

  Rather than making the speaker even sadder, however, being near these melancholy scenes offers him so much comfort that he vows he’ll never “quit [the English] shore” ever again. In staying near the places where Lucy lived, the speaker feels as if he’s close to Lucy, too—an idea that implies sweet memories linger on in landscapes long after the people in those memories are gone.

  The dead, this poem suggests, become part of the world in more ways than one. Just as Lucy’s body has gone back into the English soil, her memory has become part of the English atmosphere. For this speaker, consolingly, England will always have a bit of Lucy in it.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I Travelled Among Unknown Men”

• Lines 1-4

  I travelled among unknown men,
  In lands beyond the sea;
  Nor, England! did I know till then
  What love I bore to thee.

  The first lines of "I travelled among unknown men" might lead readers to expect a tale of adventure. The speaker describes a journey upon which he "travelled among unknown men" (that is, strangers) "In lands beyond the sea." All that ambiguity—what men, which lands?—makes it sound as if he's been in a fairy story, a quest that took him to mysterious, nameless places.

  He didn't enjoy it:

  Nor, England! did I know till then
  What love I bore to thee.

  As this fervent apostrophe shows, traveling far over the sea has merely left the speaker relieved to be back in his native country at last. Addressing England as if it were a beloved he'd been forced to leave behind, the speaker tells his homeland that he had no idea how much he adored it until he went away. This will be a poem about home: a place you don't fully appreciate, the speaker suggests, until you leave it for a spell.

  Appropriately, the speaker will use the homespun ballad form for this tale. Derived from old folk songs, this form uses quatrains (four-line stanzas) of common meter, a pattern that alternates between lines of iambic tetrameter (that is, lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm) and iambic trimeter (three iambs in a row), like this:

  I trav- | elled am- | ong un- | known men,
  In lands | beyond | the sea;

  A simple ABAB rhyme scheme complements this swaying rhythm.

• Lines 5-8

  'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
  Nor will I quit thy shore
  A second time; for still I seem
  To love thee more and more.

  

  

• Lines 9-12

  Among thy mountains did I feel
  The joy of my desire;
  And she I cherished turned her wheel
  Beside an English fire.

  

  

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• Lines 13-16

  Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
  The bowers where Lucy played;
  And thine too is the last green field
  That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

  

  

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“I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Apostrophe

  The speaker's fervent apostrophe to England makes the country into a conscious being and connects the speaker's beloved country to his beloved Lucy.

  In one sense, the speaker's apostrophe draws on a grand old tradition of personifying a country in order to praise it. When British patriots sing "Rule, Britannia," for instance, they're doing just the same thing as the speaker is here, representing Britain as a person (or unconquerable goddess-like figurehead, as the case may be).

  Here, however, the speaker is less interested in a grand Britannia who rules the waves than in a gentler, smaller "England": a figure who welcomes him home with sweet memories, lofty "mountains," and "green field[s]." The speaker's apostrophe to England isn't a big bombastic patriotic one, but the kind of affectionate greeting a wandering husband might offer his wife: I'm so sorry I went away, I missed you so badly, I'll never leave again.

  For that matter, the speaker's love for England seems marbled with his love for Lucy, a woman he "cherished" and lost. Much of his happiness at being home comes from the fact that Lucy used to live here and the landscape reminds him of her. His feelings for the personified country and the real woman thus weave in and out of each other.

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• Assonance

  

  
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• Repetition

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

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"I Travelled Among Unknown Men" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Nor
• Bore
• Thee, Thy, Thine
• 'Tis
• Melancholy
• Quit
• Wheel
• Bowers
• Surveyed

• Neither.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I Travelled Among Unknown Men”

• Form

  "I travelled among unknown men" is built from four quatrains (or four-line stanzas). Each is a ballad stanza, written in common meter and rhymed ABAB. This deceptively simple form is all part of Wordsworth's grand poetic project to write what he and his collaborator Coleridge called "lyrical ballads": works that united the deep emotion of lyric poetry with the earthy rhythms of folk ballads.

  This poem is also part of the sequence known as the "Lucy poems." In this famous series of five short, cryptic ballads, a speaker mourns the death of his beloved Lucy. Many readers interpret these poems' speaker as Wordsworth himself, but Lucy is a more mysterious figure, not clearly modeled on any one person in Wordsworth's life. Always related closely to the English landscape Wordsworth loved, she might simply represent Wordsworth's ideal: a lost dream of poetic inspiration or perfect beauty that he can now only sometimes glimpse in the natural world.

• Meter

  This poem uses simple ballad stanzas written in common meter. That means that each stanza alternates between iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm) and iambic trimeter (lines of only three iambs). Here's how that sounds:

  Among | thy moun- | tains did | I feel
  The joy | of my | desire;

  Wordsworth sticks pretty scrupulously to this meter all through the poem. (There's arguably a spondee—two stresses in a row, DUM-DUM—in line 3's "Nor, England," but if so it's a subtle one.) The steady, rocking rhythm suggests the speaker's calm certainty that England is where he belongs.

• Rhyme Scheme

  "I travelled among unknown men" uses ballad stanzas. The traditional rhyme scheme of this old form goes like this:

  ABAB

  Wordsworth matches this pure, simple rhyme scheme with pure, simple language. No slant rhyme here: every rhyme is a neat full rhyme, as in men / then or see / thee. Most of the rhyme words here are monosyllabic; the only exceptions are "desire" in line 10, "concealed" in line 13, and "surveyed" in line 16.

  All this pointed simplicity conceals many questions—the same kinds of questions that haunt all of Wordsworth's "Lucy poems." The speaker gives no hint of why he left England, who his beloved Lucy was, or how he lost her. His apparent plainspokenness is really a veil over a mystery.

“I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Speaker

• This poem's speaker, like the speaker of all Wordsworth's "Lucy" poems, is a mysterious fellow. All readers learn about him here is that he traveled far from his native England for a while and loved a woman called Lucy, now dead. His love for Lucy and his love for his homeland feel all of a piece; in part, he loves England because it's the place where his memories of Lucy live on.

  Wordsworth wrote this poem not long after he made a journey to Germany; the speaker's relief to be back in England seems a lot like Wordsworth's own. "Lucy" herself, however, doesn't have an obvious model in Wordsworth's life. Some critics speculate that she's a veiled way for Wordsworth to examine his intense feelings for his sister Dorothy (who was his close companion for most of his adult life) or his friend Coleridge (from whom he was estranged at the time he wrote this poem); others theorize that she's more symbolic. The name "Lucy," after all, means "light"; perhaps she's a guiding light, an embodiment of poetic inspiration or romantic longing.

“I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Setting

• "I Travelled Among Unknown Men" is set, emphatically, in England, the speaker's beloved native land. The speaker returns to England from a journey abroad with a deep sigh of relief. Wandering "among unknown men," he's felt lost and alone. Back in England at last, he feels connected both to the land itself and to the memories it carries for him—especially memories of his darling and long-lost Lucy. His love for England, in fact, seems tightly interwoven with his love for Lucy. It's because English "mornings showed" and "nights concealed" the places where Lucy used to wander that he feels at home in this landscape.

  A sense of home, for this speaker, isn't just about being in England, but about the way the English landscape and his memories intertwine.

Literary and Historical Context of “I Travelled Among Unknown Men”

• Literary Context

  William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote "I travelled among unknown men" in 1801, early in his revolutionary poetic heyday. Alongside his friend and collaborator Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth kicked off the English Romantic movement with the 1798 book Lyrical Ballads, a collection that proclaimed poetry should use everyday, earthy language (that's the "ballad" part) to explore the depths of the soul and the imagination (the "lyrical" part).

  These were very new ideas in the 18th century, whose most prominent writers (like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope) were more interested in satirical, elegant wit than plainspoken sincerity. But Wordsworth's and Coleridge's innovations would change poetry forever. Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," for example, meditated on nature and memory in a way that was completely novel in its time—and has now become a perfect example of what readers expect traditional poetry to do.

  Wordsworth published "I travelled among unknown men" in an 1807 collection known as Poems, in Two Volumes. It's the last of the "Lucy poems," a five-poem sequence dealing with a speaker's grief over a mysterious beloved; the other four appeared in the 1800 second edition of Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth probably wrote this poem in 1801 after spending time abroad in Germany.

  There's no critical consensus about whether the "Lucy" this poem mourns was based on a real person. But one theory is that these poems might in part express Wordsworth's sorrow over his broken relationship with Coleridge. The two men, along with Wordsworth's brilliant sister Dorothy, shared a short period of intense creative inspiration. For a few magical years, they lived and worked closely together, going for long walks, discussing literature, and composing poetry.

  But Wordsworth and Coleridge were very different. Wordsworth was disciplined, arrogant, and fully persuaded of his own genius; Coleridge was erratic, inspired, and insecure, prone to addictions and hopeless loves. After the pair's brief period of shared genius, they drifted apart: Wordsworth grew frustrated with Coleridge's moods and frenzies, and Coleridge was heartbroken by Wordsworth's rejection.

  These tensions came to a head when Wordsworth published the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. By this time, Wordsworth was conscious of his status as a public poet—and of his and Coleridge's stylistic disagreements. He revised Lyrical Ballads to play down Coleridge's contributions, even taking Coleridge's name off the title page. This was the first in a long series of blows, disagreements, and misunderstandings that would erode the pair's friendship.

  But the great collaboration between Wordsworth and Coleridge lives beyond "the touch of earthly years." Their work was a major inspiration to younger Romantic poets like John Keats and to future generations of writers.

  Historical Context

  Wordsworth wrote this poem during a time of massive political and social upheaval. Besides the burgeoning Industrial Revolution, during which the English began to abandon traditional rural lifestyles to find employment in factories and cities, all of Europe was shaken in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which kicked off in 1789.

  In this revolt, the French people overthrew their decadent monarchy and installed a republic in its place. Wordsworth, who had traveled extensively in France in the years leading up to the Revolution (and left an illegitimate daughter behind there), was at first a passionate supporter of the revolutionaries. He was, in his youth, a great believer in democracy; his championing of the popular, lower-class ballad form speaks to his sense of universal human dignity. But his fervor for the French cause cooled as the Republic fell into the Terror, a dark, paranoid, and bloody period in which the new government took to guillotining its opponents.

  Wordsworth's disappointment in the French Revolution led to his reactionary conservatism. In his later years, this former anti-monarchist was pleased to accept the title of Poet Laureate from Queen Victoria herself.

More “I Travelled Among Unknown Men” Resources

• External Resources

  • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Wordsworth's life and work via the British Library.

  • The Wordsworth Trust — Visit the website of a museum dedicated to William and Dorothy Wordsworth.

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.

  • Wordsworth's Legacy — Read an appreciation of Wordsworth by contemporary novelist Margaret Drabble.

  • Lyrical Ballads — Take a look at the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, the collection with which Wordsworth and Coleridge changed English poetry forever.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by William Wordsworth

  • A Complaint

  • A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

  • Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

  • Expostulation and Reply

  • Extract from The Prelude (Boat Stealing)

  • It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

  • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

  • Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

  • Lines Written in Early Spring

  • London, 1802

  • Mutability

  • My Heart Leaps Up

  • Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room

  • Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

  • She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

  • She was a Phantom of Delight

  • Strange fits of passion have I known

  • Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind

  • The Solitary Reaper

  • The Tables Turned

  • The World Is Too Much With Us

  • Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

  • To a Snowdrop

  • We Are Seven