William Wordsworth
Appendix to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
"By what is usually called Poetic Diction."

As perhaps I have no right to expect from a Reader of an  introduction to a volume of Poems that attentive perusal  without which it is impossible, imperfectly as I have been  compelled to express my meaning, that what I have said in the  Preface should throughout be fully understood, I am the more  anxious to give an exact notion of the sense in which I use  the phrase poetic diction ; and for this purpose I  will here add a few words concerning the origin of the  phraseology which I have condemned under that name.  The  earliest Poets of all nations generally wrote from passion  excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men:   feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring and  figurative.  In succeeding times, Poets, and men ambitious of  the fame of Poets, perceiving the influence of such language,  and desirous of producing the same effect, without having the  same animating passion, set themselves to a mechanical  adoption of those figures of speech, and made use of them,  sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied  them to feelings and ideas with which they had no natural  connection whatsoever.  A language was thus insensibly  produced, differing materially from the real language of men  in any situation.  The Reader or Hearer of this distorted  language found himself in a perturbed and unusual state of  mind:  when affected by the genuine language of passion he  had been in a perturbed and unusual state of mind also:  in  both cases he was willing that his common judgment and  understanding should be laid asleep, and he had no  instinctive and infallible perception of the true to make him  reject the false; the one served as a passport for the other.   The agitation and confusion of mind were in both cases  delightful, and no wonder if he confounded the one with the  other, and believed them both to be produced by the same, or  similar causes.  Besides, the Poet spoke to him in the  character of a man to be looked up to, a man of genius and  authority.  Thus, and from a variety of other causes, this  distorted language was received with admiration; and Poets,  it is probable, who had before contented themselves for the  most part with misapplying only expressions which at first  had been dictated by real passion, carried the abuse still  further, and introduced phrases composed apparently in the  spirit of the original figurative language of passion, yet  altogether of their own invention, and distinguished by  various degrees of wanton deviation from good sense and  nature.

It is indeed true that the language of the earliest Poets was  felt to differ materially from ordinary language, because it  was the language of extraordinary occasions; but it was  really spoken by men, language which the Poet himself had  uttered when he had been affected by the events which he  described, or which he had heard uttered by those around him.   To this language it is probable that metre of some sort or  other was early superadded.  This separated the genuine  language of Poetry still further from common life, so that  whoever read or heard the poems of these earliest Poets felt  himself moved in a way in which he had not been accustomed to  be moved in real life, and by causes manifestly different  from those which acted upon him in real life.  This was the  great temptation to all the corruptions which have followed:   under the protection of this feeling succeeding Poets  constructed a phraseology which had one thing, it is true, in  common with the genuine language of poetry, namely, that it  was not heard in ordinary conversation; that it was unusual.   But the first Poets, as I have said, spoke a language which  though unusual, was still the language of men.  This  circumstance, however, was disregarded by their successors;  they found that they could please by easier means:  they  became proud of a language which they themselves had  invented, and which was uttered only by themselves; and, with  the spirit of a fraternity, they arrogated it to themselves  as their own.  In process of time metre became a symbol or  promise of this unusual language, and whoever took upon him  to write in metre, according as be possessed more or less of  true poetic genius, introduced less or more of this  adulterated phraseology into his compositions, and the true  and the false became so inseparably interwoven that the taste  of men was gradually perverted; and this language was  received as a natural language; and, at length, by the  influence of books upon men, did to a certain degree really  become so.  Abuses of this kind were imported from one nation  to another, and with the progress of refinement this diction  became daily more and more corrupt, thrusting out of sight  the plain humanities of nature by a motley masquerade of  tricks, quaintnesses, hieroglyphics, and enigmas.

It would be highly interesting to point out the causes of the  pleasure given by this extravagant and absurd language; but  this is not the place; it depends upon a great variety of  causes, but upon none perhaps more than its influence in  impressing a notion of the peculiarity and exaltation of the  Poet's character, and in flattering the Reader's self-love by  bringing him nearer to a sympathy with that character; an  effect which is accomplished by unsettling ordinary habits of  thinking, and thus assisting the Reader to approach to that  perturbed and dizzy state of mind in which if he does not  find himself, he imagines that he is balked of a  peculiar enjoyment which poetry can, and ought to bestow.

The sonnet which I have quoted from Gray, in the Preface,  except the lines printed in Italics, consists of little else  but this diction, though not of the worst kind; and indeed,  if I may be permitted to say so, it is far too common in the  best writers, both antient and modern.  Perhaps I can in no  way, by positive example, more easily give my Reader a notion  of what I mean by the phrase poetic diction than by referring  him to a comparison between the metrical paraphrases which we  have of passages in the old and new Testament, and those  passages as they exist in our common Translation.  See Pope's  "Messiah' throughout, Prior's "Did sweeter sounds adorn my  flowing tongue," &c. &c.  "Though I speak with the tongues of  men and of angels," &c. &c.  See 1st Corinthians, Chapter  13th.  By way of immediate example, take the following of Dr.  Johnson.

"Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,
Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise;
No stern command, no monitory voice,
Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice;
Yet timely provident she hastes away,
To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;
When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,
She crops the harvest and she stores the grain.
How long, shall sloth usurp thy useless hours,
Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers?
While artful shades thy downy couch enclose,
And soft solicitation courts repose,
Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight,
Year chases year with unremitted flight,
Till want now following, fraudulent and slow,
Shall spring to seize thee, like an ambushed foe."
[The Ant ]

From this hubbub of words pass to the original, "Go to the  Ant, thou Sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise:  which  having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in  the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.  How long  wilt thou sleep, 0 Sluggard?  when wilt thou arise out of thy  sleep?  Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little  folding of the hands to sleep.  So shall thy poverty come as  one that travaileth, and thy want as an armed man." Proverbs,  chap. 6th.

One more quotation and I have done.  It is from Cowper's  verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.

"Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard
Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell,
Or smil'd when a sabbath appear'd.

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I must visit no more.
My Friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
0 tell me I yet have a friend
Though a friend I am never to see."

I have quoted this passage as an instance of three different  styles of composition.  The first four lines are poorly  expressed; some Critics would call the language prosaic; the  fact is, it would be bad prose, so bad, that it is scarcely  worse in metre.  The epithet "church-going" applied to a  bell, and that by so chaste a writer as Cowper, is an  instance of the strange abuses which Poets have introduced  into their language till they and their Readers take them as  matters of course, if they do not single them out expressly  as objects of admiration.  The two lines "Ne'er sigh'd at the  sound," &c. are, in my opinion, an instance of the language  of passion wrested from its proper use, and, from the mere  circumstance of the composition being in metre, applied upon  an occasion that does not justify such violent expressions,  and I should condemn the passage, though perhaps few Readers  will agree with me, as vicious poetic diction.  The last  stanza is throughout admirably expressed:  it would be  equally good whether in prose or verse, except that the  Reader has an exquisite pleasure in seeing such natural  Ianguage so naturally connected with metre.  The beauty of  this stanza tempts me here to add a sentiment which ought to  be the pervading spirit of a system, detached parts of which  have been imperfectly explained in the Preface, namely, that  in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, whether the  composition be in prose or in verse, they require and exact  one and the same language.