Lyrical Ballads

Published in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by close friends, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - two major figures of English Romanticism. The volume heralded a new approach to poetry and expresses the poets' reflections on mankind's relationship with the forces of the world. Coleridge's contribution includes the nightmarish vision of 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', one of the works for which he became best known, as well as the fantastical conversational poem 'The Foster-Mother's Tale' and the melancholic 'The Nightingale'. Wordsworth's 'We are Seven' depicts a child's naive optimism in the face of the cruelty of mortality, while 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill' and 'Simon Lee' celebrate the simplicity and strength of country people. The famous 'Tintern Abbey', explores the healing powers of nature.