The Woodspurge (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- First Published: 1870
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
The Poem
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Woodspurge” is a sixteen-line poem divided into four-line stanzas of iambic tetrameter that describe an unidentified grief-stricken narrator in an outdoor setting, who experiences a vivid heightening of sense perception during a time of intense psychic stress. In his depressed state, the narrator undergoes an unforeseen and unbidden, but clear and intense, visual experience of the woodspurge, a species of weed that has a three-part blossom.
The poem’s first stanza presents a countryside that is geographically...
[The entire page is 1568 words long]
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