In the "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" Wordsworth discusses the pleasure we receive from the deployment of regular metrical language in a poem. This is Wordsworth's way of reassuring his readers that although his conception of poetry is indeed revolutionary in terms of its language and subject matter, it will not depart from the tried and trusted principles of regular poetic meter.
According to Wordsworth, metrical regularity isn't just something that gives order and stability to a poem. It also gives its readers pleasure....
(The entire section contains 257 words.)
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