Strange Fits of Passion Response

Strange Fits
Love is a strange phenomenon that has forever been something that is incredibly challenging to understand. Time and time again people find themselves attempting to explain or portray this in song, poetry, art, or just with simple words, and some capture the beauty and passion in a way far more gracefully than others. Although it is an emotion that many of us have felt, or at some point may feel, it remains to perplex even the brightest of minds. In the case of William Wordsworth, “Strange fits of passion have I known” so elegantly and subtly touches on the principles of what it is to be in love. He captures just what it is to have thoughts of a lover within one’s head. These thoughts may come at random, but will linger on and grow into something far deeper and stronger, as love tends to do. The rider’s thoughts start as something random and passing, but as his ride continues and as the moon continues to fall, his feeling towards his love grows steady. Through the use of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ terms or objects, a contrast is created which demonstrates the passion in the lover’s mind and paints out a story of love between a man and a woman.
As the title of the poem tells us, love may strike when one may not be expecting it. When one is away from one’s lover for too long, it is most likely that one would be thinking of their lover. In this instance, the rider is travelling to the cottage of his lover when this “strange fit of passion” began to dominate his mind (1). It is unclear the amount of time for which he was away from his love, though these thoughts were able to slip into his head, as love always finds its way. Just as one could be performing any task and still be taken by the sweet spell that is affection, the rider is so quickly enthralled in the thoughts of his lover. As he rides on he is filled with various past images of her, particularly as she looked “fresh as a rose in June” (6). He doesn’t state this a one-time occurrence, but...