ABSTRACT
William Wordsworth's poetry, though so often about a defeated relationship between two people, usually concentrates on only one of them. As a narrative poem, The Ruined Cottage tells the story of Margaret. When Robert leaves, the poem does not digress to follow his fortunes; it remains with the wife he has abandoned. The Idiot Boy opens with a mock-epic arming of its hero. Susan Gale, a neighbour, is ill, and Betty has persuaded herself that Johnny, in spite of his mental deficiences, is competent enough to ride off on the family pony to fetch the doctor. The process of perception for the baby is as mutually creative as the interchanged smiles with which he learns to 'gather passion from his Mother's eye'. Betty's love confines her to a fretful life in an illusory world, but its stature is inseparable from its frequently absurd blindness.
