In the first three lines of William Wordsworth's poem, there is a lot of imagery that is referenced to nature, a reference to water to be more specific. Miss Helen Williams "wept"; her tear drops are just like rain drops. When it rains, it is gloomy outside and people tend to be less happy, just like when people cry, they usually aren't very happy. Drops, whether they be rain drops or tear drops, provide the audience with a dark, murky image. Similarly, "swimming eyes" are ones that are full of tears. The reference to water is within the eyes - it is the tears themselves. Also, the word "swimming" provides an even deeper reference to water because where do we swim? In the water, of course. Tears swim in the eyes, just like rain drops swim in lakes, rivers, or other bodies of water. Wordsworth also mentions words like "tide," "flow," and "streams." It's pretty obvious how tides and streams relate to water, and "flow" does so as well since water flows through rivers and streams. The water flowing through a river is like blood flowing through the human body. The stronger your tears, the more emotional you are leading to a more rapid blood flow due to the anxiety within your body. Similarly, the stronger the rain, the worse the weather leading to a more turbulence on water causing a faster flow. The flow of blood in the human body is complex process as blood must be delivered to many different areas in the body. There is also more to a river than just a long narrow body of water - rivers have forks and separate, therefore rivers deliver water to different areas as well. As you can see, nature and humanity are connected in various ways; they have comparable habits and work in similar ways.
Rain and Tears Song
A good roundup of watery imagery in the poem--and you convincingly connect it to ad emotions. But is the poem all sad? What if the imagery invokes *both* sadness and, say, sexual pleasure?
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