Michael (poem)
Encyclopedia
Michael: A Pastoral Poem, written in 1800, is a one of William Wordsworth
's best known poems and the subject of much critical literature. It was first published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads
. It is a pastoral
poem that tells the story of the eponymous Michael, an aging shepherd, and his only child Luke.
Michael has lost half his land which he used as surety for a nephew who met with financial misfortune. When Luke reaches the age of 18, Michael sends Luke to stay with a merchant that he might learn a trade and acquire sufficient wealth to regain the land that Michael has lost. It breaks Michael's heart to send Luke away and he makes Luke lay the first stone of a sheepfold as a covenant between them that Luke will return. However, Luke is corrupted in the city and is forced to flee the country and Michael must live out his life without his son. He returns sometimes to the sheepfold but no longer has the heart to complete it.
The epigraph of George Eliot's Silas Marner is taken from the poem.
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
's best known poems and the subject of much critical literature. It was first published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature...
. It is a pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
poem that tells the story of the eponymous Michael, an aging shepherd, and his only child Luke.
Michael has lost half his land which he used as surety for a nephew who met with financial misfortune. When Luke reaches the age of 18, Michael sends Luke to stay with a merchant that he might learn a trade and acquire sufficient wealth to regain the land that Michael has lost. It breaks Michael's heart to send Luke away and he makes Luke lay the first stone of a sheepfold as a covenant between them that Luke will return. However, Luke is corrupted in the city and is forced to flee the country and Michael must live out his life without his son. He returns sometimes to the sheepfold but no longer has the heart to complete it.
The epigraph of George Eliot's Silas Marner is taken from the poem.