Hi beautiful people :)

Question

For English we need to select a poem and write a story based on the poem. The poem I have selected tentatively is William Wordsworth's "There was a Boy". What I was wondering was whether the boy jumped off the cliff, fell off the cliff or didn't die that way?
Thanks a heap,
Em

Answer 1

I see nothing in the poem to suggest that the boy jumped or fell off the cliff... only that he died before he was fully 12 years old. Some theorize that Wordsworth was writing about his own childhood and loss of it when his parents both died while he was young before he was 13). He had a brother who drowned at an early age, and a childhood friend who imitated owls who went to the same college. Thus the boy may represent a composite of characters in his life. I see it as a poem about nature and childhood insights about heaven and earth.

Answer 2

Oh, okay. Because I was thinking that the lines " Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received/ into the bosom of the steady lake,/ this boy was taken from his mades, and died

Because I though recieving into the bosom meant "into the embrace" or something similar so that the meaning of the lines was that the boy went into the embrace of the lake (drowned) and that's why heaven received this boy who was taken from his mates.

And if the boy represents a composite of characters, what if he combined the friend who imitated owls and his drowned brother into one character and that this character is the boy in the poem?

Would that still make sense?