Lyrical Ballads

by William Wordsworth

The 1800 edition of Lyrical ballads consists of two volumes. The first contains most of the poems of the 1798 volume, though in a different order, together with a Preface, in which Wordsworth, working from Coleridge's notes, delivers the first sustained exposition by either poet of their shared convictions on the nature of poetry and its language. The second contains wholly new poems, including the Lucy poems, 'There was a boy', 'The Brothers', and 'Michael'. In its two-volume form Lyrical Balla...