It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women by Judith W. Page (1994) 

Page offers a feminist reading of the poem that takes a critical view of the poet.  According to Page, Wordsworth generalizes the situation he describes and creates a sense of distance: By not naming the child or identifying her as his daughter, “he is evading his responsibilities to his illegitimate daughter Caroline. He uses conventional religious language to sanction his actions, and he finally places Caroline in the hands of God—a substitute for the father Wordsworth knows he will never be.”

The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry by Cleanth Brooks (1947)

In this seminal work of criticism, Brooks argues that all good poetry embodies paradox. The “paradoxical situation” in Wordsworth’s sonnet is that the girl has a deeper connection to God than the adult speaker because she “is filled with an unconscious sympathy for all of nature, not merely the grandiose and the solemn” (4). The overt religiosity of the adult contrasts with the “careless innocence” of the child. Brooks also notes another paradox: the adjective “breathless” in Line 3 suggests “tremendous excitement; and yet the evening is not only quiet but calm” (9).

“Wordsworth’s Foreign Affairs” by James Fenton (2006)

This article in the Guardian newspaper discusses Wordsworth’s relationship with Annette Vallon. At the insistence of Mary, Wordsworth’s widow, the affair was not mentioned in the first biography of Wordsworth, published in 1851 by nephew Christopher Wordsworth, and was not fully told until the 1920s. Fenton mentions Annette’s letter to Wordsworth and Dorothy in 1793, the year after Caroline’s birth, that reveals Annette’s deep desire that Wordsworth return to France and marry her. Fenton wonders whether there was friction between Annette and Wordsworth over political matters, since Annette’s family was royalist and counter-revolutionary, which was at odds with Wordsworth’s early enthusiasm for the revolution.