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This is one of those poems by Wordsworth which has rarely been a subject to any literary criticism. And probably the reason can be related to the amount of attention generally given to the Jewish Community in Europe. The title seems to be referring to the homelessness of the Jew Community because during the time of Wordsworth—the eighteenth Century—the Jew were the minority in England because most of the Jews were not allowed to live in England. This poem therefore seems to be a sympathetic portrayal of abandonment experienced by the Jews. Having been structured with seven quatrains, the poem’s content depicts Wordsworthian images inspired by the harmonious nature to present them in contrast to the abandonment of a Jew.
It is in the last stanza that a reader may identify the persona of the poem by the hint provided through the use of personal pronouns I and my: “Day and Night my toils redouble…Never ever I feel the trouble”. It suggests the speaker seems to be extremely agitated or disturbed and the reason of the agitation and disturbance is nothing but the experience of observing the homeless wandering Jews who are looking for a shelter in the world; their helplessness has become the cause of inflicted agony in the heart of the poet who therefore finally penned down that experience.
It is a very clichéd Wordsworthian poem in a sense that He likes roaming around like a vagrant observing people—specially who symbolize or depict innocence, helplessness, misery or weakness—and writing down a poem about them to record that experience forever. The other such famous exemplary poems are Lucy Gray or a Solitary Reaper in which the persona of the poem appears as a hidden camera monitoring its object and making comments about it. Similarly the sight of a wandering Jew evokes emotional turbulence in Wordsworth who eventually weaved down this poem loaded with aesthetically loaded images of Nature.
Wordsworth in his initial six stanzas draws images from nature as usual, mainly focusing on the idea that the natural objects, in spite of seemingly troubled existence, find home and harmony with each other. He frequently mentions natural homes and habitats like the torrents find ‘’resting-places’’ in mountains achieving calmness and depth; the clouds find home among the ‘’heads of towering Hills’’; the chamois in spite of living in the snowy mountains does not have any trouble in finding his home and he has freedom to stay on his ‘’chosen ground’’. Moreover, the waves of the ocean provide the sea-horse an atmosphere to rest even though it doesn’t have any of its own specific ‘’domestic cave’’. This is the shift of the imagery from the mountains, clouds and air to the sea life before observing another bird Raven who also ‘’loves her haven/ in the bosom of the cliff’’ and eventually ending the imagery by observing an Ostrich Fleet in a desert who also even in tough conditions of cold night reposes while ‘’brooding over her eggs’’ These images symbolize the fact that freedom and rest is present all around the nature but very unfortunately this is not the case with the Jew.The Wandering Jew for Wordsworth holds an ironic orientation in the world who is totally alienated and marginalized from the world full of nature while the nature depicts the idea of freedom and harmony in all surrounding places. Therefore the persona in this poem is a human being feeling the sufferings of another human being regardless of any cast, color or creed and this is the reason that he has become agitated and restless as he says: Night and day, I feel the trouble/ Of the Wanderer in my soul.’’
The poem follows the rhyming scheme of abab in all the seven stanzas which provides a pleasure to the ears but ironically the subject matter of the poem makes the reader tremble with the sorrow upon the sufferings of the helpless Jews. Even though Wordsworth himself is a Christian but he feels empathetic towards the Jewish community’s helplessness during his time period who was marginalized in Europe and this community has been a subject of many literary pieces like Shakespeare’s Jew in Merchant of Venice and Auden’s “Refugee Blues’’ . And it is a distinguished quality of any writer specially a poet to feel the pain of the people and Wordsworth has just done that in this poem.
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