Alice Fell (William Wordsworth)

Alice Fell
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

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 hi 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!

In Wordsworth’s poem Alice Fell, he is dramatizing the idea that poverty is one of the main reasons for misery in the British Romanticism era.  The narrator is an unnamed speaker who meets the girl, Alice Fell on the road.  They are never identified as a male or female, although when reading the poem it felt as though it was a male.  The narrator isn’t speaking to any audience in particular, and only addresses the only three other characters mentioned in the poem—the Post-boy, Alice Fell, and the Host of the Tavern.

The poem is written in a standard ABAB rhyme scheme.  The words that seemed to provide the most effect are the last word or two of each stanza.  Those last few words tend to truly make an impact, because it is usually at the end of each stanza that a reader thinks about what they just read.  It isn’t at the beginning, or the middle, it is at the end.  It provides a clean break for the reader to stop and think before continuing on to the next stanza. 

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.  “For threat’ning clouds the moon had drown’d…” (2) 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 I seem’d to hear, A moan, a lamentable sound.” (4) The narrator pities Alice, especially when he sees that the cause of her distress is an already ratted cloak caught in the wheel.  “I saw it in the wheel entangled, A weather beaten rag as e’er…A wretched, wretched rag indeed!” (26-27, 32) 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.  The reader would understand that given the time during which Wordsworth had written the poem, this was the most common cause of a person’s misery.