Explication: Shelley's "To Wordsworth"

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship, and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine          5
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:          10
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

Large Issues

     The main theme this poem seems to be addressing is change. The speaker claims that the things that he/she and Wordsworth both enjoyed in the past are now gone, but the speaker is addressing a change in Wordsworth as well. The speaker is saying to Wordsworth that he once "wert as a lone star whose light did shine", whose "voice did weave/Songs consecrate to truth and liberty", but he no longer represents any of this, much to the dismay of the speaker. As for the speaker's identity, it could likely be Shelley, however I acknowledge the fact that the speaker could possibly be a reader of Wordsworth's poems, due to the fact that the "woes" he feels are "common". In either case, the speaker is someone who is disappointed to see that Wordsworth's work has lost the spark that it had originally. The audience here is likely Wordsworth, since it is addressed and specifically focused toward him.

Details

     Form– for the most part, the piece follows the structure of a traditional sonnet, with an ABAB rhyme scheme. However it breaks this scheme at lines 9-10, the only couplet in the poem.

     Rhetoric– lines 1-6 seem to have very polite, sympathetic language. Starting with line 7, the rhetoric changes so that the speaker is now directly addressing Wordsworth, and it is very strong up until line 12. Lines 13 and 14 seem to reflect the more somber tone of the first six lines.

     Syntax- again, the syntax seems to imply that the speaker is either Shelley or a common person. None of it seems to be convoluted or vague.

     Vocabulary- the phrase "rock-built refuge" in line 9  illustrates just how strong the speaker once perceived Wordsworth, as well as adding to the powerful and serious tone of that section. In line 12, it is interesting that Shelley chose to use the word "consecrate", because the word has both literal and religious connotations.

Patterns

     Rhetorical Patterns- as I mentioned above, lines 13 and 14 seem to follow the same pattern as the first six lines. Lines 7 and 9 are the most direct in the entire poem, as they both are direct statements beginning with "Thou".

     Rhyme- the only place where rhyme seems to have any inherent significance seems to be in lines 9-10, but this is likely because the poem shifts its tone at this point.