A Complaint by William Wordsworth: context, form and key methods

A speaker mourns a love or friendship that once flowed freely but has now gone quiet and hidden.

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Context and Wordsworth's purpose

Published in 1807. It is widely believed to be about Wordsworth's friendship with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which had cooled; the two had worked closely together on Lyrical Ballads.
A 'complaint' is a traditional kind of poem that laments lost love. The poem shows that the end of a close friendship can feel like a loss of riches.

Form and structure

Three six-line stanzas with an ABABCC rhyme scheme and iambic tetrameter. The neat rhyming couplet at the end of each stanza gives a sense of sad conclusion.
Stanza one remembers the love as it was; stanza two contrasts past and present; stanza three wonders whether the love still exists, hidden.
Cyclical structure: the poem begins with "a change" that leaves him "poor" and ends by saying the change has "made me poor".

Language and key methods

Extended metaphor of water: the love was "A fountain at my fond heart's door, / Whose only business was to flow". It was generous, constant and alive.
Now he has only "A comfortless and hidden well". A well is still and dark; the love may be there, but it no longer reaches him.
Rhetorical questions ("What have I? shall I dare to tell?") show his pain and uncertainty. The metaphor of wealth and poverty shows how much the love meant.
Worked example

Compare how the end of a relationship is presented in A Complaint and Neutral Tones.

  1. Both poems mourn a relationship that has faded.
  2. Wordsworth's water metaphor; Hardy's winter imagery.
  3. AO3: Wordsworth's cooling friendship with Coleridge; Hardy's bitterness about a failed love.

Answer: Both Wordsworth and Hardy use images from nature to show a relationship that has died. Wordsworth's extended metaphor contrasts a "fountain" whose "only business was to flow" with "A comfortless and hidden well", suggesting love that was once generous has become still and out of reach. Hardy's imagery is bleaker: the sun is "white, as though chidden of God", and the pond is edged with "grayish leaves". Wordsworth's tone is sorrowful and still hopeful, since he wonders if the well is deep and "never dry", whereas Hardy's is bitter and final. Both use a cyclical structure to show that the speakers cannot move on.

Key idea

1807; probably about Coleridge. Three sestets ABABCC; cyclical ("poor"). Water metaphor: fountain to "comfortless and hidden well"; wealth and poverty; rhetorical questions.

Key words
Context
The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
Form
The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
Speaker
The voice of a poem. The speaker is not always the poet.
Metaphor
A comparison that says one thing is another, without using 'like' or 'as'.
Rhyme scheme
The pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, labelled with letters, such as ABAB.
Rhyming couplet
Two consecutive lines that rhyme.

All GCSE and International GCSE English Literature key terms and definitions →

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Last updated 2 October 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix it.

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