Critical appreciation of "Alice Fell, or Poverty"

 Alice Fell or Poverty

                        -William Wordsworth  

The Post-boy drove with fierce career,

For threat’ning clouds the moon had drown’d;

When suddenly I seem’d to hear

A moan, a lamentable sound.

As if the wind blew many ways

I heard the sound, and more and more:

It seem’d to follow with the Chaise,

And still I heard it as before.

At length I to the Boy call’d out,

He stopp’d his horses at the word;

But neither cry, nor voice, nor shout

Nor aught else like it could be heard.

The Boy then smack’d his whip, and fast

The horses scamper’d through the rain;

And soon I heard upon the blast

The voice, and bad him halt again.

Said I, alighting on the ground,

“What can it be, this piteous moan?”

And there a little Girl I found,

Sitting behind the Chaise, alone.

“My Cloak!” the word was last and first,

And loud and bitterly she wept,

As if her very heart would burst;

And down from off the Chaise she leapt.

“What ails you, Child?” she sobb’d, “Look here!”

I saw it in the wheel entangled,

A weather beaten Rag as e’er

From any garden scare-crow dangled.

‘Twas twisted betwixt nave and spoke;

Her help she lent, and with good heed 

Together we released the Cloak;

A wretched, wretched rag indeed!

“And whither are you going, Child,

To night along these lonesome ways?”

“To Durham” answer’d she half wild—

“Then come with me into the chaise.”

She sat elike one past all relief;

Sob after sob she forth did send

In wretchedness, as if her grief

Could never, never, have an end.

“My Child, in Durham do you dwell?”

She check’d herself in her distress,

And said, “My name is Alice Fell;

I’m fatherless and motherless.”

 

“And I to Durham, Sir, belong.”

And then, as if the thought would choke 

Her very heart, her grief grew strong;

And all was for her tatter’d Cloak.

The chaise drove on; our journey’s end

Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,

As if she’d lost her only friend

She wept, nor would be pacified.

Up to the Tavern-door we post;

Of Alice and her grief I told;

And I gave money to the Host,

To buy a new Cloak for the old.

“And let it be of duffil grey,

As warm a cloak as man can sell!”

Proud Creature was she the next day,

The little Orphan, Alice Fell!

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 Critical appreciation of the poem "Alice Fell, or Poverty" by William Wordsworth.

 William Wordsworth is one of the greatest literary figure in the 18 th century. His poem"Alice Fell, or Poverty was written in 1802,which dramatizing the idea that poverty is one of the main reasons for misery in the British Romantic era 

The poem takes place in the night, when the narrator is riding in his Chaise to an unnamed destination, though later in the poem, whether it was the original destination or not, it is Durham. The narrator and the Post-boy are trying to escape an on-coming storm. The narrator meets Alice Fell on the road when he is travelling in his Chaise. The two encounter one another when he hears Alice crying out. When suddenly he seems to hear a moan, lamen table sound. The narrator pities Alice, especially when he sees that the cause of her distress is an already ratted cloak caught in the wheel and is jammed in and it hangs there. She is crying after it.

 The Narrator takes her into the Chaise and the cloak is released from the wheel. But the child's misery does not cease for her cloak has been tom to rags. It has been a miserable cloak before. But she has no other and it is the greatest sorrow that can be fall her. Her name is Alice Fell. She has no parents and belongs to the next town. At the next town, Mr.O. leaves money with some respectable people in the town to buy her a new cloak. When he comes across Alice in her state of distress, Wordsworth seems to be trying to convey that the reason her particular character is in such a state of misery is due to her poverty the fact that she is an orphan. 

 Thus in "Alice Fell, or Poverty", Wordsworth wrote about the plight of the poor, and tells the story of a little orphan, 'fatherless and motherless', whom the speaker of the poem meets on the road to Durham. He shows her an act of kindness which lifts her spirits and helps her to forget her grief at being poor and without a family.