The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 8 (of 8)

This final volume of Wordsworth's complete poetic works offers something rare: access to the poet's own hand. Published in 1851, it contains every verse Wordsworth himself authorized for publication, accompanied by his extensive Notes and Prefaces to the 1849-50 edition, the last he would ever write. The poems here, composed between 1834 and 1837, find the aging poet in contemplative mode: mourning friends like Charles Lamb, contemplating portraits that stir deep feeling, addressing a child with tender directness. These are not the revolutionary lyrics of Lyrical Ballads but something quieter and perhaps more devastating: the reflections of a man who had outlived most of his contemporaries, still turning over the great questions of memory, mortality, and what it means to be moved by beauty. The volume serves as both capstone and testament, a gathering of nearly six decades of poetic enterprise, filtered through Wordsworth's own editorial vision.