I travelled among unknown men
Encyclopedia
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and originally intended for the Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature...
anthology, but it was first published in Poems in Two Volumes in 1807 (see 1807 in poetry
1807 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Ireland:* Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom...
). The fifth and final poem of Wordsworth's "Lucy series
The Lucy poems
The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth between 1798 and 1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworth's...
", "I travelled..." was composed after the poet had spent time living in Germany in 1798. Due to acute homesickness, the lyrics promise that once returned to England, he will never live abroad again. The poet states he now loves England "more and more". Wordsworth realizes that he did not know how much he loved England until he had lived abroad and uses this insight as an analogy to understand his unrequited feelings for his beloved Lucy.
Although "I travelled..." was written two years after the other four poems in the series, in both tone and language it closely echoes the earlier work. Wordsworth gives no hint as to the identity of Lucy, and although he stated in the introduction that all the poems were 'founded on fact', knowing the basis for the character of Lucy is not necessary to appreciate the poem and its sentiment. Earlier critics assumed she represents a youthful love of Wordsworth who had died, but modern scholarship believes she was likely a hybrid or largely fictitious. Similarly, no insight can be gained from determining the exact geographical location of the 'springs of Dove'; in his youth, Wordsworth had visited springs of that name in Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
, Patterdale
Patterdale
Patterdale is a small village and civil parish in the eastern part of the English Lake District in the Eden District of Cumbria, and the long valley in which they are found, also called the Ullswater Valley....
and Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
.
The poem is full of conflict and contradictions. Comparing the irony of the usage of the words "among" and "unknown" in the poem's title, the critic Mark Jones concluded that 'unknown' indicated the poet finally realizes the depth of his feelings for Lucy. Jones wrote, "these are paradoxes of memory and belated appreciation, and they turn on the question of what it is to know, as the two uses of this word in the first stanza indicate". The language used is highly nostalgic for a personal and societal ideal, according to critic Dudley Fitts it "expresses with quiet assurance the value of a life lived within the protective circle of a national and social tradition".
Lucy's only appearance is in the second half of the poem, where she is linked with the English landscape. As such, it seems as if nature joins with the narrator in mourning over Lucy, and the reader is drawn within this mutual sorrow. Although the poem focuses on death, it transitions into a poem describing the narrator's love for England and nature.
- '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 5–8)