The Full Text of “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room”
1Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
2And hermits are contented with their cells;
3And students with their pensive citadels;
4Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
5Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
6High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
7Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
8In truth the prison, into which we doom
9Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
10In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
11Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
12Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
13Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
14Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
The Full Text of “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room”
1Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
2And hermits are contented with their cells;
3And students with their pensive citadels;
4Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
5Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
6High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
7Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
8In truth the prison, into which we doom
9Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
10In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
11Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
12Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
13Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
14Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
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“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Introduction
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“Nuns Fret Not At Their Convent’s Narrow Room” is a Petrarchan sonnet by the English poet William Wordsworth, first published in 1807 in a two-volume edition of Wordsworth's poetry. The poem's speaker argues that constraint—like that of the small room in a convent—can paradoxically offer a feeling of liberation. In the same vein, the speaker continues, the seemingly rigid sonnet form itself, with its strict rhythms and rhymes, can be a place of artistic experimentation and freedom.
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“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Summary
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Nuns aren’t bothered by how narrow the rooms are in their convent. Likewise, religious recluses are happy with their tiny homes. And students, too, don’t mind their secluded study quarters. Both young girls at their spinning wheels and weavers making textiles at their looms are carefree and happy. Bees that fly high to reach blooming flowers—high as the highest mountain in the English Furness Fells—will happily hum for hours inside the bell-shaped petals of the foxglove flower. The truth is that the prison into which we doom ourselves isn’t really a prison at all. And thus, whenever I was in all kinds of moods, it was a hobby of mine to write poetry following the strict rules of the sonnet form. I'm happy if others (for there certainly are others) who have struggled with the difficulty of too much freedom should, like me, find comfort in this small space.
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“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Themes
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Restriction, Freedom, and Poetry
The speaker of “Nuns Fret Not” asserts that restriction is actually a source of freedom. The poem opens by listing a series of people who live or work in confined spaces: nuns in convents, hermits in solitary rooms, students in libraries, and so forth. None of these people are fazed by their confinement, the speaker says, and in fact, they benefit or delight in being restrained. Suggesting that too much freedom is overwhelming, the speaker argues that people can find joy, purpose, and even liberty through structure. And the speaker brings all this up in a sonnet in order to make a point about the nature of poetry itself: the sonnet form, with all its rules and specifications, can provide immense freedom for both a writer and a reader.
To this speaker, confinement can be satisfying because it encourages deep, focused engagement. Neither nuns, nor hermits, nor students worry about the restrictions of their environments because these spaces provide them with all that they need in order to pray, think, or study.
Seeming “prison[s]” like the “narrow room[s]” of a convent or the “pensive Citadels” of a university thus aren’t really “prison[s]” at all, but rather dedicated spaces that allow their residents to engage more fully and exclusively with their goals (i.e., in the nuns’ case, to feel closer to god without any distractions).
Likewise, craftspeople, like maids at a spinning wheel and weavers at a loom, can find happiness in the sense of focus and purpose their crafts give them. Sure, the weaver can’t carve wood with a loom, but that’s not what a loom is for; though it restricts his behavior to weaving, it also liberates the weaver in the sense that he is able to dedicate himself to a single task—and, in doing so, to experiment with new and interesting ways of weaving that he might otherwise overlook. Even bees, though they might delight in the freedom of flying over vast expanses, particularly delight in their busy work inside the tiny space of a single flower.
Similarly, the confines of the sonnet form can be a source of liberation. The sonnet, as opposed to something like free verse, has many rules about rhyme, meter, and length. Though the form might appear like a “scanty” plot of ground with its mere fourteen lines, the speaker says that the tiny space of the sonnet is big enough for something exciting to grow.
In other words, the sonnet, while supposedly as limiting as those convents' “narrow room[s]," is actually a place for creativity and excitement. Like the weaver’s loom, the sonnet form forces the poet to really dig into an art form and see what they discover. “Too much liberty,” by contrast, can be overwhelming or “weighty” for a poet. Having to follow set rules (and make careful decisions about when to deviate from those rules) can actually give a poet a greater sense of freedom than a form where no such rules exist.
Confinement and freedom, the poem reveals, are not the opposites one might expect them to be. The most beautiful, exciting, and liberating work can be the fruit of restriction.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room”
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Lines 1-3
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;The poem begins by listing three different kinds of people with different aims or occupations: nuns, hermits, and students. These people all have one thing in common, in that they work and/or live in a very self-contained space:
- Convents, which are houses for particular religious orders, are often attached to churches or are located in remote areas far from society. Nuns who live in convents typically have small, bare rooms.
- Likewise, hermits are people who live simple, isolated lives removed from the rest of society (often for religious reasons). The cell the poem speaks of is not the cell of a prison, but rather refers to a single room.
- The student’s “citadel,” meanwhile, refers to a raised room, perhaps in the tower of a university or in some kind of academic building. That this citadel is "pensive," or thoughtful, emphasizes the fact that it's a place for quiet study and reflection.
None of these spaces is particularly glamorous, yet each allows their inhabitants to carry out their purpose: a nun must belong to a convent if she is associated with a particular religious order; a hermit not living in isolation isn’t a hermit at all; and a student cannot be a student without a place to study! For nuns, hermits, and students, then, physical confinement thus provides identity and purpose. These tight spaces free them from distraction and allow them to focus on their aims: becoming closer to God, reflecting on the nature of life, learning, and so forth. As such, none of these people "fret," or worry, about their confinement. For them, such spaces are in fact amenable to deep creativity and freedom.
On the level of form, these opening lines also reflect the relationship between confinement and freedom. The first three lines are composed largely in iambic pentameter, a meter of five iambs (feet with a da-DUM rhythm) per line. This meter is typical of sonnets, yet Wordsworth tweaks things from the getgo.
In strict iambic pentamer, the opening line would look like this, which sounds a bit unnatural:
Nuns fret | not at | their con- | vent’s nar- | row room;
Read in a more natural cadence, the words "Nuns" and "not" would receive stressed beats while "fret" and "at" would not. In other words, the first two feet of the poem are actually trochees—essentially the opposite of an iamb, DUM-da:
Nuns fret | not at | their con- | vent’s nar- | row room;
And her- | mits are | conten- | ted with | their cells;Varying the meter like this adds emphasis to the speaker's opening declaration that these "Nuns" absolutely do "not" worry about their confinement. Were the poem written in free verse, without any regular meter, such a variation wouldn't stand out quite so much; those opening trochees are all the more striking because the poem then falls back into the expected study drumbeat of iambic pentameter. The poem's structure, then, is precisely what allows the speaker to twist and bend the poem's language in meaningful ways!
Also notice the repetition within these opening lines. The word “and” appears twice: first at the beginning of line 2 and then again at the beginning of line 3. This use of polysyndeton/anaphora sets up a steady, logical structure for the poem.
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Lines 4-5
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; -
Lines 5-7
bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: -
Lines 8-9
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: -
Lines 9-11
and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground; -
Lines 12-14
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
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“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Repetition
The poem uses a few different kinds of repetition to add emphasis throughout. The first example is the polysyndeton of lines 2 and 3. Given that these repeated "ands" begin two consecutive phrases, this is also an example of anaphora.
Whatever readers call it, this device makes the speaker's argument feel methodical. The speaker is compiling a steady list of different kinds of people who are unfazed by confinement, and the repeated "ands" grant this list a sense of structure. Right from the start, then, the poem comes across as a worked-out, well-prepared argument. With each “and,” the speaker adds another bit of evidence in support of the thesis—and it feels as though this list could go on and on.
Later, in line 6, the speaker uses polyptoton to increase the sense of drama in the poem. The image of a bee flying across the wide, mountainous landscape of Furness-fells gains potency as “high” gives way to “highest.” This expansion of the word’s length mimics the wide, unfolding landscape available to the bee.
Finally, the diacope of lines 8 and 9, with the repetition of the word "prison," is part of the poem's paradoxical thesis statement: none of the so-called "prison[s]" introduced in the poem so far is actually a prison at all. The "narrow room" of a convent might feel restrictive and close-off, but it doesn't impede the nuns' purpose. On the contrary, its simplicity is meant to help them focus on their relationship with God.
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Asyndeton
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Caesura
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Enjambment
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Parallelism
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Metaphor
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"Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room" 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.
- Fret
- Hermit
- Cells
- Pensive
- Citadel
- Blithe
- Peak of Furness-fells
- Foxglove
- Sundry
- Solace
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Worry, fidget, or mope.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room”
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Form
The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, meaning it has 14 lines broken up into two main chunks: an eight-line octave followed by a six-line sestet. The octave, in turn, can be broken down further into two quatrains (four-line stanzas) with an ABBA rhyme scheme; the sestet, meanwhile, consists of two tercets (three-line stanzas).
Typically, the octave of a Petrarchan sonnet proposes a problem or argument of sorts, to which the sestet then responds. The shift between these sections is called the poem's turn or volta, and it usually shows up in line 9. In this poem's octave, the speaker ruminates on various people/creatures who are happy to exist within confined spaces or circumstances. The poem's turn then shows up in the middle of line 9, after a clear caesura:
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
Having declared that none of the aforementioned situations is a true "prison," the speaker spends the poem's discussing the implications of this idea on his own work.
It makes sense that Wordsworth follows the traditional sonnet form here given that the poem is, in part, about the sonnet form! The speaker praises the limitations of "the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground"—with its specific length, meter, rhymes, and volta—because such restrictions offer "solace," or peace and tranquility. Having "too much liberty," in contrast, can be overwhelming.
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Meter
The poem is written in iambic pentameter, which is the usual meter for sonnets. An iamb is a poetic foot made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, creating a da-DUM rhythm. Pentameter just means there are five of these iambs per line, creating a total of 10 syllables.
Here are lines 10-11 as an example of this meter in action:
In sun- | dry moods, | ’twas pas- | time to | be bound
Within | the Son- | net’s scan- | ty plot | of ground;The rigid metrical pattern of iambic pentameter is just one of the typical constraints of the sonnet form—one of the ways the poet “binds” himself in a “scanty plot of ground.”
The poem has slight variations, however, as metered poems often do. Take the opening line:
Nuns fret | not at | their con- | vent’s nar- | row room;
Or line 4:
Maids at | the wheel, | the weav- | er at | his loom,
Both lines here start with trochees, metrical feet with a stressed-unstressed pattern. (Note that "Nuns fret" might also be scanned as a spondee, two stressed beats in a row: "Nuns fret.")
Variations like this are all the more interesting because the rest of the poem is so regular. They add emphasis to the image of those maids and nuns.
Another interesting variation comes in the poem's penultimate line, which might be scanned as follows:
Who have felt | the weight | of too | much lib- | erty,
While this is mostly iambic, the first foot is an anapest (da-da-DUM; "Who have felt") and the fourth is another spondee, appropriately putting an extra stress on the phrase "too much." In total, this line is 11 syllables long. It's as though the "weight" of that "liberty" has stretched out the line itself.
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Rhyme Scheme
A typical Petrarchan sonnet has a rhyme scheme of either ABBA ABBA CDC CDC or ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. While this poem largely follows that rhyme scheme, it makes a slight departure in the sestet. It goes:
ABBA ABBA CDD CCD
The opening octave follows the sonnet's expected pattern perfectly, sandwiching couplets between those A rhymes. And throughout the poem, all of the rhymes in the poem are full; there are no slant rhymes here. This adds to the poem’s sense of cohesion and containment. Careful, regular rhyme gives the poem a feeling of internal logic.
Notice, however, how Wordsworth switches the expected rhymes of lines 11 and 12. A more typical sonnet would have a C rhyme (here, the "-ee" sound) for line 11 and a D rhyme (the "-ound" rhymes) for line 12. Ironically, this swap comes right after the speaker expresses delight at being “bound” in the sonnet! Though the speaker says that he is being contained, then, the restraint is not so strict much that it binds him in complete adherence to form. That is, he can play around with the poem's rhyme scheme a bit, keeping things interested and surprising.
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“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Speaker
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The speaker of this sonnet is a poet who, appropriately, takes "solace" in writing sonnets. The "narrow" confines of the sonnet form, this speaker argues, aren't a prison, but a paradoxically liberating set of boundaries: within a sonnet's restrictive form, the speaker feels, true poetic freedom lies.
The poem invites the reader to imagine that the poem's speaker is Wordsworth himself: after all, this is a sonnet about writing sonnets! What's more, the poem belongs to a set of poems that Wordsworth wrote while mourning the French Revolution's descent from stirring idealism into brutal violence. At such a time, "too much liberty" might indeed have struck Wordsworth as dangerous.
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“Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Setting
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The poem does not have a particular setting. But the kinds of people the poem mentions—nuns, students, hermits, weavers, maids—evoke the Europe of the late 1700s and early 1800s. All of these figures live in a contented seclusion.
The only specific place name that gets mentioned here is “Furness Fells," a hilly area in England's Lake District. In hearkening back to the English countryside, this sonnet might reveal Wordsworth’s own desire to return to his home country: many scholars believe that he wrote this poem while traveling in France.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room”
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Literary Context
This poem was the opening sonnet to Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes, which was published in 1807 and cemented Wordsworth’s reputation as a major Romantic poet. Poems actually came after what is perhaps Wordsworth’s most famous collection, the Lyrical Ballads— a joint publication with fellow “Lake District” poet Samuel Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads contains some of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s most famous poems, including Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge’s "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
The preface to the Lyrical Ballads, written by Wordsworth, functions as a statement of Wordsworth's poetic principles, and it also captures some of the major concerns of the Romantic movement in general. In it, Wordsworth describes poetry as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and proposes that the language of poetry should be closer to that of natural spoken language, the “real language of men.”
The Romantics also sought to reconnect with a past untouched by the contemporary forces of industrialization and modernization. As such, it makes sense that Wordsworth praises the sonnet's capabilities in "Nuns Fret Not." Sonnets are one of the oldest poetic forms around, first emerging in 13th-century Italy and making their way into English in the 1500s. This poem is more specifically a Petrarchan sonnet, a specific form popularized by the Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarca in the 1400s.
By Wordsworth's time, sonnets had long been out of fashion. Wordsworth, along with Charlotte Smith and Coleridge, is an important figure in the form's revival.
Historical Context
“Nuns Fret Not” was likely written in 1802, either during or after Wordsworth’s time in Calais, France. In 1791, Wordsworth had traveled to France because of his enthusiasm for the French Revolution. The revolution's principles of equality, brotherhood, and liberty appealed to Wordsworth, and English Romantic poetry more broadly was greatly influenced by the intellectual and ideological repercussions of the French Revolution.
When the violence of the Revolution intensified, however, Wordsworth was forced to flee the country, and it was not until 1802, after the Peace of Amiens, that he was able to return to France. Many of the sonnets written during and after this trip are more political in theme and reflect Wordsworth's reconsideration and rejection of revolutionary ideology.
Romantic writers were also responding to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in Europe. During his lifetime, Wordsworth saw the development of new technologies that would dramatically change the economy and environment of his home country. In its attention to the beauty of nature and pre-industrial forms of labor (such as thread spinning and textile weaving), "Nuns Fret Not" expresses a kind of nostalgia for a simpler way of life in a rapidly changing world.
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More “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” Resources
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External Resources
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More on the Lake District — Learn more about the Lake District, the area where some of Romanticism's biggest names lived and worked.
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More on Wordsworth — Find a treasure trove of Wordsworth resources at the British Library.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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A Wordsworth Biography — Read more about Wordsworth's life and work.
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Preface to the Lyrical Ballads — Read the Preface to Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads—a groundbreaking work that remains one of the most important treatises on English literature.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Wordsworth
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