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Audiobook edition · 2 h 28 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
An old sailor interrupts a wedding guest; a little girl refuses to count her dead siblings out of her family.
In Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge bring ordinary speech and humble lives into serious poetry. Their collection sets village scenes beside supernatural tales. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner opens the book with a sailor who compels a stranger to hear the story of his sea voyage.
Wordsworth turns toward people poetry has often ignored, and toward the countryside as a source of learning. We Are Seven gives a child's view of family and death. Expostulation and Reply asks whether sitting quietly can teach us something books cannot. Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey closes the collection with a longer, more personal poem shaped by memory.
What you’ll discover
- The strange beside the familiar Move from plain village life into the haunted world of Coleridge's old sailor.
- A child's firm conviction Meet the girl in We Are Seven, whose sense of family includes her dead siblings.
- Nature as a teacher Consider what quiet attention to the countryside offers beside the lessons found in books.
- Ordinary speech, serious feeling Discover poems that give the lives of poor people space and weight.
- Memory beside Tintern Abbey Reach the collection's closing poem, where Wordsworth turns toward a more personal exploration of memory.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you like poems that tell stories, the voices of ordinary people, sea tales with a touch of the supernatural, and quiet country walks.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Ordinary speech can carry poetry
- Cruelty breaks the world's order
- Guilt becomes a terrible loneliness
- Unforced love begins the healing
- Plain lives deserve an honest hearing
- Adults do not always see clearly
- Nature teaches a receptive heart
- Memory changes our bond with nature
- Listening and love reconnect human lives
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Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798)
by William Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798
A sailor with a glittering eye stops a wedding guest, and ordinary voices turn suffering and nature into poetry.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to read20 languages
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“Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power.”
In short
A sailor with a glittering eye stops a stranger on his way to a wedding. This scene opens The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the first poem in Lyrical Ballads.
Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798) at a glance
- Reading time
- About 1 h 30 min1 h 10 min fast, 1 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 20,800 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1798by William Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A preface proposes poetry in everyday speech
The book opens with a short preface that sounds a little like a dare. The author says most of the poems are experiments. He wants to find out how far the language of conversation among ordinary people can serve the purposes of poetic pleasure.
He knows readers may be thrown. Many are used to showy, empty language in verse, and they may wonder what gives these pieces the right to be called poetry. His advice is gentle. Do not let one disputed word stand in the way of your pleasure. Ask whether the poems give a natural picture of human passions, characters and events.
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Details
- First published
- 1798
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 1 h 35 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798). Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrical-ballads-with-a-few-other-poems-1798.
Wordsworth, W., & Coleridge, S. T. (2026). Lyrical ballads, with a few other poems (1798). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrical-ballads-with-a-few-other-poems-1798 (Original work published 1798)
Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798). Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrical-ballads-with-a-few-other-poems-1798.
@book{wordsworth2026lyrical,
author = {Wordsworth, William and Coleridge, Samuel Taylor},
title = {Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798)},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrical-ballads-with-a-few-other-poems-1798},
note = {First published 1798}
}
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What is Lyrical Ballads about?
It is a collection of poems about ordinary people, including beggars, mothers, children, an old huntsman and a sailor, and about nature's power to heal. Its preface describes the poems as experiments in the language of everyday conversation.
Who wrote Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth or Coleridge?
Both did. The 1798 book was a joint work that first appeared without names. Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Nightingale and a few more, and Wordsworth wrote most of the rest, including Tintern Abbey.
What is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner about?
An old sailor stops a wedding guest to tell how his ship sailed to the icy south, how he shot a friendly albatross, and how the crew suffered on a silent sea. It is a story of guilt and love for living things.
The author
William Wordsworth
1770–1850 · English Romantic poet
William Wordsworth was an English poet born in Cockermouth in 1770. He lived mainly in England’s Lake District. He published Lyrical Ballads with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. He became poet laureate in 1843. He died at Rydal Mount in 1850. His poem The Prelude was published after his death.
“Let Nature be your teacher.”
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