Poem
The poem is of 463 lines and is written in five-line stanzas with a varying rhyme scheme. It was first published in the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, where it appeared between The Mad Mother and Lines Written Near Richmond.
The poem is narrative in form. Set in the countryside, it tells the story of Betty Foy and her mentally handicapped son. Foy's neighbor Susan is sick; Foy has no choice but to send her son into the nearby village to fetch the doctor. She places him on her pony and sends him on his way. When he has not returned after several hours, she grows worried and sets off to find him. The doctor has not seen the boy; finally, she finds him placidly astride his pony, who is grazing near a stream. As they are walking home, they encounter Susan, who has, as it were, worried herself well and come in search of her friend.
Read more about this topic: The Idiot Boy
Famous quotes containing the word poem:
“This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)