Year 10 English

William Wordsworth Poems

In one of his poems, William Wordsworth wrote, “Bliss was it that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven.” Students in Year 10, as part of a writing unit, were set the task of arguing whether or not “to be young” is “very heaven” in a letter to Wordsworth.

Dear Mr Wordsworth,

Your line “bliss is heaven to be young” is almost a truism in that obviously you and every adult who is currently alive on this planet believes ‘youth, that dawn of life, is pinnacle.’ However, the sunset of your life was quite some time ago and things are very different now.

Being young means to live an adventuring, amazing and astounding life

and make mistakes to learn from them like Amit Kalantri, who people spoke of

as the Wealth of Words, once said, “Great losses are great lessons.”

A great loss is a great lesson, but by having adults who have experienced

all those lessons and are teaching us not to do them doesn’t give us the

lesson we try to learn. Adults call it protection while we call it a missed

opportunity to learn. It is not heaven when we don’t get to experience life

situations for ourselves, we don’t get to enjoy the little moments that we

will remember forever, and we don’t get to experience the lesson of mistakes for ourselves. Heaven for a young child means to go out and experience things we aren’t allowed to do rather then staying at home like a gunnie pig who never leaves its cage. Heaven for youth is to be allowed to make a mistake and suffer the consequences of it rather then getting away with it until it becomes an addiction and then having to live with the consequences.

Children love experiencing new things and if we had that opportunity do accomplish that, then ‘To be young would be heaven.’ Unfortunately, I personally cannot say that, I’ve been hidden, away. Alone. I haven’t experienced the things I wish to. I haven’t been able to make the choices I wish to. I haven’t been able to learn from my mistakes. Never have I ever made one that has affected me. We all make the little mistakes in life like the wrong answer in a math test or misspelled a word in English. A 16-year-old girl almost at the end of her childhood, I haven’t learnt from mistakes that have changed my life, I have spent most my childhood in the four walls of my bedroom wishing I could be out making my own choices in life. Adults expect you to grow up and be in control of your life. They expect you to teach your children right from wrong but in fact they can’t achieve such greatness due to not experiencing them yourself.

In your time the children adored their parents and would do whatever they were asked, they would never leave home, they would never experience things for themselves. But the fact is time has changed and adults, parents in particular need to change with society. Technology has become a part of our generation, it has surrounded us, it is what we’ve grown in to. Technology is not all good we have experienced many difficulties with it.

The young generations have now suffered from cyber bullying from February 4th, 2004 when Facebook was invented, everyone has got access to meeting new people we have never met online. We have been exposed to people allowed to make a rude,

horrifying and petty comments on a post or photo you have shared that means something to you. The sad truth is we aren’t able to hide from it, we aren’t able to remove it. It stays. We stay. It has been considered ‘uncool’ not to be on the technology we use.

Mr Wordsworth, to be young is not to be heaven, Mr Wordsworth we are not the best we can be, Mr Wordsworth the older generation has failed to educate us for us that we educate the generations to come. Mr Wordsworth, we will try our best to be as educated as we can but if we can’t teach the older generation it’s a different time and that we need to experience things for ourselves or we won’t be able to teach the new generations we will all end up like a robot in time to come.

Yours sincerely,

A 16-year-old girl wishing to make mistakes.

Dear Mr. Wordsworth,

Might I say, what an amazing and wise poem you wrote; “To be young is very heaven.”

I truly agree with your poem. To be young is indeed the very essence of life; freedom without responsibility, exploring new paths of life, being able to grasp any opportunity feel it squirm in your very palms. Mr. Wordsworth, I do believe there has been many decades between our lives but really, how much can nature change? When I look on at people younger than me, I see them trying to grow up as fast as they can and I don’t understand. I had the fondest memories of being a child; playing silly games with my brothers and sisters, running wild at the beach among the waves under the burning, blistering sun, having the time of my life! Don’t get me wrong I do very much enjoy being adolescent, the tastes of a bitter sweet blood orange on a warm, mid-May morning, resonates through my mouth.

Even though life can be tough at times, you can strip back the multi-layers of coverings to the very bones of what matters, like a bare tree in autumn, and ask yourself, what is important? Family, friends and life itself is what really matters. This very love I feel, refreshes me like a cold glass of water in a 40-degree day. You can ask a handful of people one value they hold close to their heart, people

never seem to admit that it’s Love. But if you took away their love supply, they would crumble. To me a life without love is a life without happiness. Simply meaningless. I think people never recognize love is so important because they always think of love as their “significant other” but it’s not exclusively. Love is your Children, your Mother and Father, your Best Friend, even your Dog. Love is someone who makes your cheeks squish to the side of your face while you flash your pearly whites in joy. That is what adolescents feels like for me. The very heaven on Earth. I like to keep this feeling close because it could be taken away from me in a heartbeat. Like a game of Russian roulette, you never can know when your number is up.

I can confidently say I would love to stay young forever, but that,

of course is not an option. I guess growing old can be beautiful too,

a different kind of beautiful, but beauty nonetheless. Dawn to Dusk,

they go hand in hand, like a summer’s day and the beach. Dawn;

the start of a day, the beginning of a long beautiful life. Dusk; the

last cherished moments of the day, of a life. Both are equally as beautiful. Bright orange sun that rises and falls against your face, you stand still, absorbing the first and last light of the day like a cold-blooded reptile. Awaiting what comes next.

This is what adolescent is like for me. I guarantee I will forever hold onto this feeling and memories I create, past and present because I know, before I know it, it will be slipping through the gaps in my brain, like the sand that I feel between my toes, the same sand I so hopefully try to clasp in my hands.

From an adoring admirer of your literature,          

Ruby