Revealing the Meanings on William Wordsworth’s Poem Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

Abstract

This study investigates a literary work, a poem, from a linguistic framework. The aim of this study is to reveal the meanings found in William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known’ from systemic stylistic analysis in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Verbal Art Semiotics. The data were collected by library study and analyzed with a descriptive, deconstructive method and content analysis with an intrinsic objective approach. This result of the study proves that the subject matter of this poem is ‘the poet rode a horse to Lucy’s cottage from the rice of evening till the drop of the bright moon”. The deep level of meaning refers to the last clause complex ‘O that is a mercy, to myself I cried If Lucy should be dead.’ The deeper level of meaning of this poem is about ‘the death of a young girl named Lucy’, and finally, the deepest level or the theme of this poem is about ‘death is a natural part of life cycle.’