Ah, happy new guests! I heard you.
I'm encouraged to hear your voice:
Ah, cuckoo! Should I call you "bird",
Or is it just a wandering voice?
When I was lying on the grass
Hearing your folded cry
As if flying from a small peak to a small peak,
Sometimes far and sometimes near.
Even though you're just looking at that
Valley of sunshine and flowers,
You brought me a story.
This is a dreamy time.
Welcome you three times, lover of spring!
You're even interested in me
It's not a bird, it's sacred,
It is a mystery, a sound;
When I was a primary school student
I listened to the same voice: the crying.
Let me look for it a thousand times.
In the bushes, in the trees, in the heart of heaven.
I used to wander around looking for you.
Go through the Woods and step on the grass;
You are still a hope, a ray of tenderness,
Still eager, but never see the figure.
But I can still listen to you;
You can lie in the wilderness.
Listen until I really feel it
Then the golden age will come again.
Ah, blessed bird! The earth under our feet.
It's like another dream.
A magical home like a fairyland,
Just in time for you to settle down.
(Translated by Zou Difan and Zou Hailun)
In this lyric poem, the singing of azaleas, which is far away and near, brings us to the blue sky and clear water, the open and stretched Scottish Lake District, suggesting the poet's indifferent mentality and faint sadness in his heart after he settled in the Lake District.
Like Byron and Shelley, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, but after the failure of the Revolution, he became disillusioned and became passive, living in seclusion in the lake area far away from the hubbub. In terms of art, he is a great poet. He created a romantic style of poetry and saved English poetry from the classical stagnant water of18th century.
Wordsworth lost his family when he was a child. He is attached to mountains and rivers, and the natural scenery has established a close relationship with his feelings, which has earned him the reputation of "natural singer". Wordsworth is extremely sensitive to everything in nature, and some quite ordinary things can inspire him. Narcissus, lark, butterfly and rainbow are the themes of his poems. Here, when the poet hears the cuckoo's cry, he can't help but "cheer up", sing the song in his heart and welcome the "new guests".
Although the whole poem is about the cuckoo, it does not appear the image of the cuckoo, but depicts its beautiful, tactful and erratic voice. Therefore, the poet wrote, "Should I call you a bird or a wandering voice?" "These two simple questions describe the cuckoo's crow as if it were everywhere, so that this bird is no longer a physical existence ... cuckoo calls all spring, but it is rare, so our imagination plays the above role." (The preface of Lyric Ballads Collection (version 18 15) may seem monotonous if it simply describes its sound. The poet evokes a series of imaginations through his voice: imagining how it flies, imagining whether it is near or far, imagining the background where it flies, recalling childhood like a dream, and recalling the past like smoke. In the cuckoo song, the poet seems to see the rolling mountains, which are full of gorgeous sunshine and delicious flowers; It seems to have brought him back to the colorful stories and dreamland that passed away, and all this has evoked his painful memories and gentle homesickness.
It's spring again, and it's still the sad and tactful singing, but the golden time has long gone, leaving only thousands of miles of disappointment and boundless meditation. The poet's heart is divided into three parts, one for the past, the other for the future and the other for the present. From beginning to end, he listened to the cuckoo's cry with this mentality, but never appeared. It's just "a voice", "a mystery", "a hope" and "a ray of tenderness". The poet has been looking for it, but he always only hears its voice, but he can't see its shape. This is a symbol in itself, a symbol of irretrievable things, a symbol of unfulfilled prayers, and it may also imply the indifferent reaction of the ruling class to the reform after the French Revolution. But the past has passed, and it can only stay in the imagination forever. However, the poet lying in the wilderness, listening to the cuckoo's cry, can also feel the "return of that golden time" by imagination. Gorky heard joy from Haiyan's crying, but the poet found comfort from Du Fu's bleak singing. Perhaps this is the difference between a revolutionary and a hermit.
Similarly, he is dissatisfied and disappointed with reality. Shelley hopes that he can destroy all old things like the west wind and be as brave as a lark. In short, he will pursue and fight. Wordsworth, on the other hand, found a song from this sad bird, looking for a dreamy past that could not be retrieved and imagining an unattainable future. Helpless, just want to lie in the wilderness, in imagination, in the kingdom of art, waiting for the arrival of the golden age, which may be the difference between positive romanticism and negative romanticism. Different from the "juvenile romanticism", his poems have strong external force and expansibility, and have strong interference with the outside world; His poems are more inclined to tap the inner feelings, express the spirit of tranquility and touch nature with his own emotional color. His poems are like a gurgling spring, flowing from a passionate spring, beautiful and sad, sad and sweet.
Formally, eight-syllable and six-syllable iambic poems appear at intervals, and ABAB crosses rhyme at the end of the sentence. It reads melodious and catchy, like the voice of a cuckoo, when it is far away and near, when it flows, it is clear and green.
Wordsworth's poems have a great influence on many poets. American poet Frost and China poet Xu Zhimo both benefited from Wordsworth. (Yihai)