To William Wordsworth
Appearance
To William Wordsworth is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge written in 1807 as a response to poet William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem The Prelude, called here "that prophetic lay". Wordsworth had recited that poem to his friend Coleridge personally. In his poem, Coleridge praises Wordsworth's understanding of both external and human nature, at the same time emphasizing Wordsworth's poetic achievement and downplaying his own. Warning: template has been deprecated.
The poem exists in various forms, the earliest being in a letter of 1805. It was previously titled To a Gentleman.