by Leigh Bennett

Created on: May 12, 2009   Last Updated: May 18, 2009

Wordsworth Analysis

In his sonnet "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free" William Wordsworth uses imagery and poetic language in order to show the symmetry between nature and God, as he does in many of his other works. In the sonnet he addresses his illegitimate daughter, Caroline. While many see this is a thoughtful attempt to engage his daughter by drawing her in to his world viewpoint, I see it as an attempt only to comfort and excuse himself of his absence in his daughter's life.

While visiting France as a young man Wordsworth met Annette Vallon, and the two began an affair. She became pregnant and delivered Anne-Caroline in December 1793. Later that same month, Wordsworth left France and returned to England. He returned to France only once, in 1802, to visit Annette and Caroline before marrying Mary Hutchinson. It is speculated that "It is a beauteous evening" was written regarding this brief visit. He lived and remained in England until his death in 1850 (Watson 2-4). Therefore Wordsworth was almost completely absent from his daughter Caroline's life.
"Beauteous Evening" begins with Wordsworth seeming to paint a very somber calm mood. He writes:

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:

Here the reader gets a picture of a tranquil sunset setting into a gentle sea. However in the following lines, he implies that things are not as calm and quiet as they first appear. "Listen! The Mighty Being is awake,/And doth with his eternal motion make/A sound like thunder - everlastingly." Wordsworth is making a statement that there is much more going on under the calm exterior. "The Mighty Being" refers to the sea or may even refer more specifically to the god Poseidon. Waves are crashing against the storm, making "a sound like thunder." Wordsworth may have been using this imagery to show the parallel between what is going on in nature and what is going on in the interaction with his daughter. Things could have appeared calm and collected on the outside, while actually very tumultuous just under the surface. Don Bailostosky supports this idea in Wordsworth, dialogics, and the practice of criticism, "The speaker, carried away with his sense of the evening, has invited the child to enter into something unsuited to her, and , like the father in 'Anecdote for Fathers,' he covers his embarrassment

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