The Significance of Childhood in Wordsworth's Poetry

William Wordsworth, perhaps more than any other writer, is the poet of childhood, Even though, in a popular sense, he is not considered as a writer of verse for children, yet as a poet, who writes of children and who deals with the psychology of child, hood, he ranks supreme. All that Romanticism sought, Wordsworth looked for and discovered in the child. It was the child guided by its emotions, rather than the thoughtful child, that he watched; he studied the richness of its soul, and looked not at its frail body; the individual child, not the typical, drew his attention; he was interested in the concrete child whom he had met or with whom he had associated in childhood; and he studied those children who had a certain amount of freedom in contrast to those who were disciplined by mature minds.