She was a phantom of delight - William Wordsworth

Message: the beauty of his wife, and how his appreciation of her has changed throughout the course of their relationship and marriage. This is reflect in the stanza structure:

  1. How he met his wife - first impressions

  2. Getting to know each other better

  3. Married life

Context:

  • Written in 1803, published 1807

  • Wordsworth: 1770 - 1850

  • Romantic era poet

  • About his wife Mary Hutchinson

Speaker: contains autobiographical elements as it’s about his wife, therefore we can assume the speaker is come version of the poet.

Infatuation, intimacy and love: poem illustrates how seeing and appreciating people fully can lead to deeper intimacy and love. The speakers initial impressions show intense yet shallow infatuation - he didn’t really think of her as a person but was entranced by her beauty, but by the end he can appreciate her more for her humanness. Therefore the poem charts the speaker’s movement from physical infatuation with a stranger to mire deeply knowing, loving and admiring her.

The trajectory suggests that have genuine intimacy and lasting you must see people fully and love them for who they really are.

Meter, form and rhyme

  • 3 stanzas, 10 lines each

  • Iambic tetrameter

  • Lyrical Ballard

  • Uxorious poem - having excessive fondness for ones wife

  • Rhyming couplets - easy to read, but there’s don’t last all the way through, shows she’s not completely perfect and still human

  • Switch of tenses in the last stanza to the present - shows poets perception change from illusionary to real

  • Regular rhyme and meter emphasize the hyperbolic descriptions of the woman

First Stanza - entails the moment ‘first she gleamed upon my sight’. There is a reverential and amorous tone here as well as an atmosphere of mystery. The woman is constantly referred to as something otherworldly or unreal ‘phantom of delight’‘lovely apparition’. Despite Wordsworth holding fairly modern views, we can still see the evidence that he hold some classic 19th century gentleman’s views ‘a moment’s ornament’, the description of her as a possession of beauty and a temptress (‘to haunt, to startle, and way-lay’) conforms with the societal attitudes in Wordsworth’s time.

There is lots of use of the word ‘twilight’ and ‘dusky hair’ this is reminiscent of witching hour and adds to the wife’s elusive, magical and beautiful aura, as well as Wordsworth’s feeling of being waylaid or having his heart stolen by this beautiful ‘creature’.

Second Stanza - here, the ‘dancing shape’ develops into a tangible person. This woman still remains as magical as the poet has always believed, but she now takes a human form ‘A Spirit, yet a Woman too’ - the use of capital letters show that each of these forms are both as wonderful as each other. Wordsworth can appreciate her beauty in the completion of boring, mundane, everyday tasks ‘her household motions light and free’. The stanza ends with a list of all the things he adores of their relationship ‘transient sorrows, simple wiles, praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles’, the use of listing highlights the poets mounting emotions.

Third stanza - this is their married life, and while he now appreciates that she is fully human ‘a perfect woman’, his respect for her has never wavered ‘an angel light’. He still uses listing methods to emphasize the lengths of her wonderfulness ‘to warn, to comfort and command’. Whereas in the first two stanzas she was a apparition or piece of nature, still fairly unreachable and so much better then him, now she is very firmly and living and temporary organism ‘very pulse of the machine’, ‘travelled betwixt life and death’, yet his admiration only grows because of this - that so much wonder can exist in a normal, living being. There is an understanding here, beginning to form, on how Mary works.

Poem

She was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;

Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;

A dancing Shape, an Image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

Her household motions light and free,

And steps of virgin-liberty;

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet;

A Creature not too bright or good

For human nature's daily food;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine;

A Being breathing thoughtful breath,

A Traveller between life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;

A perfect Woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command;

And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.