Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room, Poem by William Wordsworth, Typography Print

Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room, Poem by William Wordsworth, Typography Print

Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room, Poem by William Wordsworth, Typography Print

Wordsworth argues that many people, and other living creatures, in the world are happy with a small space in which to work: ‘Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room’ because a small room is all a nun needs for the worship of God, and the same goes for hermits who indeed choose to shut themselves away from the wider world outside. Students are happy to sit in their rooms at university (the grandness of ‘Citadels’ perhaps calling to mind the grandeur of the colleges at Oxford, or indeed Cambridge where Wordsworth himself studied), deep in thought.

Similarly, many young women sit and work at the spinning wheel, and weavers at their loom, and are happy and carefree. Even bees, which fly all over the place to collect nectar, will happily spend an hour by one particular flower sometimes.

In short, Wordsworth goes on to say, broadening out his point from these specific examples, what is often viewed as a ‘prison’, a space which restricts us, is actually no prison at all in Wordsworth’s analysis. The ‘Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground’ was a happy place for Wordsworth the poet to be ‘bound’, the implication being that a bit of structure and order was a good thing for a young poet. It taught him restraint and organisation. Wordsworth says that the sonnet is a good poetic form for those who ‘have felt the weight of too much liberty’.