The Tables Turned - A Poem by William Wordsworth

Subject Matter:

The poem is saying that there is much more to learn and experience outside, in nature than there is in a book. The character is being encouraged to put his book down and go out into nature to learn things that his books could never teach him.

Purpose

The purpose of this poem is to promote nature and the environment and what it has to offer people and what it can teach people.

Emotion

The emotion in the poem is excitement about all nature can offer you. There is a positive attitude shown which encourages the reader and the character to want to experience what nature can teach them.

Craftsmanship

• Structure Each stanza of the poem is made up of four lines. Every second line of the rhymes eg.

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow

• Language The language used in the poem is formal and uses many uncommon words and phrases such as lore, come forth, hark and blithe. Some of the phrases are difficult to understand due to the words being very formal and not often used in everyday language.

• Imagery The poem creates an image of beautiful woods, mountains, the sun, green fields and other aspects of nature. This is done by using adjectives to describe things. The use of these adjective paints a clear picture in the readers mind. eg.

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

• Movement

• Sound When reading the poem, you can imagine hearing birds singing beautifully. This is described in the poem. eg.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

Summary

The poem is saying to stop spending so much time indoors, in this case reading books, and to go out and experience the world. The message is that nature can teach you many things about yourself and the world and that it does this better than any book can. This poem is still very relevant today as many people spend lots of their time indoors and do not get to spend much time in outdoors. It is still relevant because nature can still teach people the same things.

THE CRITICAL READING PROCESS:

The title "The Tables Turned" indicates that there is a change or a swap in the poem. The saying "the tables have turned" means that everything has changed or that things are the opposite of what they were before. This can be a positive or negative change.

The apparent meaning of the poem is that nature can teach you a lot more that a book can. This could be tied in with the title because the character reading the book is about to change his life in a big way and start learning from nature. Another possibility would be that everyone has always thought you could learn everything from books, but now it is said that is not true and that nature can teach you more.