Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day artistic style, but it may have done the opposite effect, as reflected in this poem. "Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day" was written at Green Thorpe during Brontë's three-year stay from 1842-1845, and may have been influenced by homesickness. She wrote the poem on December 30, 1842. It was composed during the Victorian Crisis of Faith, a period which played a major role in poems and literature during its time. The meter may have been derived from Thomas Moore's style based on Irish folk song. His poem "I saw from the beach" has four quatrains similar in
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard of conflict, conflict by its nature unresolvable." In 1968, Herbert Starr pointed out that the poem was "frequently referred to, with some truth, as the best known poem in the English language." During the 1970s, some critics pointed out how the lines of the poems were memorable and popular while others emphasised the poem's place in the greater tradition of English poetry. W. K. Wimsatt, in 1970, suggested, "Perhaps we shall be tempted to say only that Gray transcends and outdoes Hammond and Shenstone simply because he writes a more poetic line, richer, fuller, more resonant and memorable in all