(sub)Text: The Power of Calm: Two Wordsworth Sonnets | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog (opens in new tab)

William Wordsworth wrote no fewer than 523 sonnets over the course of his career. (By comparison, the second most prolific Romantic sonneteer was Keats with a paltry 67.) Two of Wordsworth’s best-loved efforts in the form are both Petrarchan sonnets with the same rhyme scheme, written in the same year, published in the same volume. Yet their messages, at least at first blush, are fundamentally opposed; one admires London’s cityscape and establishes a truce between the trappings of human innov...