Discuss Wordsworth's theory of poetry as propounded by him in his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads."

William Wordsworth in his “Preface” to the
Lyrical Ballads, outlines a theory of poetry that involves a number
of different assumptions, including the
following:

• Pleasure in poetry results, in part,
  from “vivid sensation” and from language that is close to real
  speech.


• Good poetry can deal with “incidents and
  situations from common life,” especially when such “ordinary things” and “presented to
  the mind in an unusual way.”


• Effective poetry can deal
  with the “beautiful and permanent forms of nature,” including the “great and simple
  affections” of human nature.


• Wordsworth was deliberately
  not trying to present the kinds of “personifications of abstract ideas” common in early
  poetry.


• Effective poetry can be written when its
  language is close to the “language of prose.”


• A poet
  is

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a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued
[that is, “endowed”] with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who
has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are
supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions,
and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him . . .
.

• Poets are more
  likely to be moved by memories of absent things than other people
  are.


• Poets have a greater capacity for expressing what
  they think and feel, especially when relying on their imaginations and
  memories.


• The
  poet,

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singing a song in which all human beings join
with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as in our visible friend and hourly
companion.

• Poetry
  has the ability to unite human beings in shared thoughts and feelings despite
  superficial differences of language, laws, customs, and
  geography.


• In one of the most famous sentences he ever
  composed, Wordsworth asserts that

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poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility . .
.

Wordsworth’s theory of
poetry has much in common with the theory propounded many centuries earlier in his
treatise On the Sublime.  Both men thought of poetry as a kind of
lofty, ennobling, almost spiritual force that draws upon and appeals to the best aspects
of human nature.