At the time William Wordsworth wrote the poems "Expostulation and Reply," and "The Tables Turned," there was a mind-set among many of the poets of his time that book learning and the sciences were somehow unnatural and unpoetic. And that by engaging in their practices man as a race was abandoning his spirituality and distancing himself from nature.
The poems are basically a dialogue between two friends, William and Mathew. In "Expostulation and Reply," it is Mathew who finds William sitting alone on a grey stone without his books daydreaming throughout half the day. Stanzas five to eigh…
