Thoughts on Michael

Like Kelly, after reading Wordsworth's final entry to Lyrical Ballads, the question of legacy was pressed upon me. However, the immortality of the poet does not seem to be affirmed by the content of the poem--though Wordsworth's introduction would suggest otherwise. 

"I will relate the same/ For the delight of a few natural hearts, / And with yet fonder feeling, for the sake / Of youthful Poets, who among these Hills / Will be my second self when I am gone" (385-386). 

Michael is an aged man that evokes the innocent, natural characterizations that are common tropes within the pastoral tradition. His son, born to him late in his life, brings a renewed sense of joy and love that he valued above all. However, after Michael is forced to leverage his farm for the sake of familial debts, he has no choice but to send Luke to apprentice with a merchant. Before Luke departs, Michael begins the construction of a Sheep-fold to form a covenant with his son to ensure his return. Instead, the son is corrupted and forced to flea, never returning to his familial land. This leaves Michael to die without his son and without the sheep-fold ever being completed. 

The function of lineage and immortality is clearly problematic when put in concert with the content of the poem. I read the poem with the presumption that the Shepard was functioning as the Poet. Wordsworth has crafted a failed "prodigal son" parable in which the innocent is lost with time with no hope of return. What, then, was Wordsworth suggesting he could pass on to his "second self?" And furthermore, what "natural heart" can really find "delight" within the world of "Michael?" 

At the close of the poem, Michael's natural world has been destroyed by the outside world. The "evil courses" of the "dissolute city" had taken his son, his land, and his home. The lineage of labor that Michael hoped to pass down was replaced by estrangement. So, again, what sort of covenant is Wordsworth suggesting for the generations to come? The Evening Star is destroyed by the poems end. Michael died without his son. His wife died three years after, completely alone. The covenant between father and son is left incomplete: broken. What then is Wordsworth's Shepard offering to his poetic progeny? It seems like a world that is shattered and an ideal that is withering away. The covenant does not seem strong enough to withstand the corruption of mankind.