Surprised by Joy

“Surprised by Joy” (1815) is a deeply personal sonnet written by English poet William Wordsworth, the principal architect of the literary movement known as British Romanticism. 

At the time of composition, Wordsworth, then in his forties, was dealing with a number of sorrows, most notably the sudden deaths of two of his children. The poem explores a complex dynamic: How even at moments of greatest sadness, the heart can be turned by the unanticipated intrusion of happiness. The poem also considers the dark power of memory. Although mourning, the speaker, presumably (but not necessarily) Wordsworth, is caught up in an unexpected moment of delight; almost immediately, however, he realizes that it would be a much richer happiness if he could share it with the ones he has lost. 

Although it is not about Wordsworth’s signature topic—the inspirational energy of nature—the sonnet does show how Wordsworth made raw emotion into a fit subject for elevation into poetry. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, and child death.

POET BIOGRAPHY

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and child death.

Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, in the tiny village of Cockermouth, north of London, England. As a boy, Wordsworth happily immersed himself in the rugged splendor of the scenic Lake District. 

Inspired by the epics of John Milton and the satires of Alexander Pope, Wordsworth was writing poetry before he was a teenager. A confident student, Wordsworth was nevertheless restless in the classroom. The tipping point in his education came when he abandoned entirely his studies at St. John’s College in Cambridge University to undertake a year-long walking tour of continental Europe. He was drawn to the incendiary rhetoric of the French Revolution that celebrated the common people and dismissed any established authority as oppressive. Using that template, he committed to a radical re-conception of poetry. 

In 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a struggling poet who shared Wordsworth’s vision of a new kind of poetry: detailing emotions, celebrating nature, and lauding the experiences of ordinary people. Coleridge shared Wordsworth’s belief that poetry should be direct and accessible, free of the encumbrance of learned allusions and staid traditional forms. In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge published the collection Lyrical Ballads. These poems defied the prevailing Neo-Classical models popular at the time. Wordsworth, in his “Preface” to the volume’s second edition, wrote of the underappreciated value of depicting everyday life and the power of nature. 

Wordsworth married and had five children, including Catherine (born in 1809), the joy of his life. She died at age three in 1812. Just months later, Wordsworth’s youngest son, six-year-old Thomas, died from complications from the measles. Those deaths devasted Wordsworth, an impact he recorded in “Surprised by Joy.”

Wordsworth’s literary career made him the leading voice of the Romantic movement. He was prolific, publishing poems and essays to an ever-widening audience of admiring readers. By midcentury, he was Britain’s most recognized poet. Indeed, Queen Victoria named Wordsworth Poet Laureate in 1843.  

For 40 years, Wordsworth worked to complete an ambitious work that would trace the wellspring of creativity. That poem, The Prelude, was published in 1850, months after Wordsworth’s death. 

After his death, Wordsworth was widely hailed as Britain’s most important poet since Milton. He was buried in Grasmere, near his birthplace, but a life-size white marble statue was later placed next to William Shakespeare’s memorial tablet in the Poets’ Corner of London’s Westminster Abbey.

POEM TEXT

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind 

I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom 

But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, 

That spot which no vicissitude can find? 

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— 

But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, 

Even for the least division of an hour, 

Have I been so beguiled as to be blind 

To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return 

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, 

Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, 

Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

That neither present time, nor years unborn 

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. 

Wordsworth, William. “Surprised by Joy.” 1815. Poetry Foundation.

SUMMARY

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

The poem begins with an apparently up-tempo moment. The speaker is suddenly and unexpectedly jolted by happiness, although the cause of the speaker’s “joy” (Line 1) is left unspecified. “[I]mpatient as the Wind” (Line 1), the speaker eagerly wants to experience the feeling with an unnamed person. However, the poem reveals that he cannot “share the transport” (Line 2) since his loved one is “long buried in the silent Tomb” (Line 3). 

Death put this beloved person beyond reach—their existence in the tomb cannot be impacted by any “vicissitude” (Line 4), that is, by a change in mood or feeling. The grave is permanent. The speaker is left suddenly and absolutely alone, and the moment’s joy quickly dissipates.

The speaker asserts that “faithful love” (Line 5) has brought the dead person back to his memory at a time of happiness. His love for them is steadfast and faithful and his memories of them remain indelible: “[H]ow could I forget thee?” (Line 6). He rues this careless second of happiness, ashamed that “even for the least division of an hour” (Line 7), he had been “beguiled” (Line 8), that is tricked, into forgetting his “most grievous loss” (Line 9). 

The speaker, reeling in his newly stirred grief, concedes that the swift return of his sorrow in the midst of a moment of joy is the second-most painful thing he’s ever felt—the “worst pang that sorrow ever bore / save one” (Lines 10-11). His grief at his ability to forget his mourning for an instant now is nearly as deep as when he first understood that “his heart’s best treasure was no more” (Line 12), or that his loved one was dead. 

In the last lines, the speaker acknowledges that his grief will never end. He struggles to come to terms with the absoluteness of his loss—that he will see his lost love neither in the “present time” nor in “years unborn” (Line 13). The loss as absolute; the speaker will never again see “the heavenly face” (Line 14) of the ones he’s lost.