Catharine Garbo
Mr. Salsich
Grade 8
8 April 2009



“Expostulation and Reply”:
A Paragraph about a poems theme.



A theme of a poem, is like a path. As you read the poem you are on the path, sometimes zigzagging back and fourth, or getting lost, or just a straight ride. The theme of the poem, “Expostulation and Reply” by William Wordsworth, was a zigzag ride for me. But after reading this poem {over and over and over}(parallelism) I realized what the theme was. One of the themes could be that Mathew is asking a question. Mathew is asking William why he’s just sitting there on a rock and not studying his books or doing something more significant. As William answers back, the words that he said made a point to me as I read it. William sitting on a rock said, “Nor less I deem that there are powers which of themselves our minds impress;” Additionally, he could be saying that the earth has a lot to offer than just the things we observe. A simple way of saying this could be when you don’t notice something it could be right in front of you. For example Mathew says to William, “ You look round on your Mother Earth, As if she for no purpose bore you;” In this quote you realize that Mother Earth put us all on this planet for a reason. Also, the theme could have to do with uncovering something. William said, in the poem that we could have powers that we have not discovered. When William is replying to Mathew he understands that there is more to life than work, or learning, lots of things, he could understand as he sat on that rock that there are {things lots of things} (parallelism) to uncover. The path to this theme could be a maze, but it could also be a straight smooth path, it just matters what you uncover.