The Writer's Thesaurus
By Dr Oliver Tearle
‘They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude’: this quotation is from one of the most famous poems of the Romantic movement. The lines appear in the final stanza of ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, an 1807 poem by Wordsworth. Continue reading “The Curious Meaning of Wordsworth’s ‘They Flash Upon That Inward Eye’”
By Dr Oliver Tearle
‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!’ This quotation is one of the most famous lines associated with the American Civil War, and is up there with ‘Four score and seven years ago’ – which, coincidentally, was spoken by the same person, Abraham Lincoln. Continue reading “The Meaning of ‘So You’re the Little Woman Who Wrote the Book That Made This Great War!’”
By Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Cold Pastoral’ is a phrase from one of John Keats’s best-known poems. But the meaning of this two-word phrase is somewhat enigmatic, so we need to look more closely at the poem, and the relevant stanza containing this expression, to understand its meaning fully. Continue reading “The Meaning of Keats’s ‘Cold Pastoral’”