Imagery plays a large role in most poetry. In " Her Eyes Are Wild", William Wordsworth brings the life of an insane woman to life through his use of vivid imagery. Through the metaphors we see that the mother sees her child as having drawn her out of her insanity. She becomes dependent on the child for emotional stability, after her husband and the people of the town have abused her. This theme of dependence and life giving is continued throughout the poem.

In the first stanza, the reader is given their first look at the focus of the poem. A woman is walking along, eyes wild, hair flowing freely, and she caries a baby with her. It seems as if she has been traveling like this for a long time. The speaker describes her as, " The sun has burnt her coal-black hair; Her eyebrows have a rusty stain, And she came from far over the main." (Lines 2-4) The speaker also says that the woman sings in, " the English tongue ", (line 10) giving the impression that the woman came from a place with civilized people. This gives the impression that something has happened that has forced her away from civilization, instead of being a truly wild woman, like a nymph.

The second stanza opens saying, " Sweet babe! they say that I am mad,". (Line 11) This is our first indication of what has driven her away from society. The community thinks that she is mad, and probably alienated her from their activities because of it. She tells her baby not to fear her, probably because others had feared her because of her insanity. The poem, aside from the first stanza, is told through the woman's voice speaking to her child. Through this voice, the reader sees that the woman feels she owes her child something. She says, " To thee I know too much I owe; I cannot work thee any woe." (Lines 19-20)

The nature of the woman's ailment and the reason for her debt to her child is explain in the third stanza. She describes a fire, " with in my brain;", (line 21) and " And fiendish faces, one, two, three, Hung at my breast, and pulled at me;" (lines23-24). The fire in her head is how she describes her insanity, while the fiendish faces are the voices in her head that torment her. These faces may also be representative of the people who had caused her pain in her life. The woman wakes up and sees her little boy, and this sight brings her sanity to her. The fourth stanza fully brings to light the need she has for the baby. Her boy brings her life. She says, " Suck, little babe, oh suck again! It cools my blood; it cools my brain;" (lines 31-32). The act of breast-feeding is often seen and used in literature as a symbol of giving life, it is used here to the same effect, yet with a strange twist. The baby's breast feeding gives the mother life by alleviating the pain in her heart and mind. It is as if the breast milk were transferring some of her insanity to the child, helping to stabilize herself. She even describes it saying, " It loosens something at my chest; About that tight and deadly band I feel thy little fingers prest." (Lines 36-38).

The fifth stanza offers the reader a deeper look into the depths with which the woman's belief in her newly found sanity run. She sees herself as immune to the effects of her former insanity as long as she has her child. She believes that her newfound sanity will help to protect them both from being thrown back into her sea of torment. She says, " And do not dread the waves below, When o'er the sea-rock's edge we go; " (lines 43-44). This is not a literal sea, but a metaphorical one for her bouts of insanity. Her security in the knowledge that it is her child who protects her comes when she says, " The babe I carry on my arm, He saves for me my precious soul;" (lines 47-48). The child still needs its mother to survive though, as she says in line 50, " Without me my sweet babe would die.".

In stanzas seven and eight the reader discovers that the woman is married, and that the father of the child, her husband, left her. She cannot understand how he could leave his own child, and she surmises that he would have eventually left her even without the child, if he could abandon his own baby. Here the cause of her insanity is shown. Her husband was probably abusive, and when he left her, the town she lived in probably scorned her. She says, " From him no harm my babe can take; But he poor man! Is wretched made;" (lines 77-78) The townspeople would have thought that the child was a bastard, making the woman an adulterer, as shown when she says, " Dread not their taunts, my little Life; I am thy father's wedded wife;" (lines71-72). This would have caused the town to ridicule her, and most likely banish her from town.

The ninth stanza begins with many of the same meanings as stanza six. Both stanzas essentially describe the woman wanting to teach and protect her son. Yet, in stanza nine, something happens to startle the woman. She sees a, "look so wild", in her baby's eyes, and says that it couldn't have come from her. She says, " It never, never came from me: If thou art mad, my pretty lad, Then I must be forever sad." (Lines 88-90). This also shows the breast feeding again. It is when the baby has, "sucked [its] fill", that she notices the wild look in the baby's eye. After saying that the baby freed her from her insanity, during breast-feeding, it comes again that she cannot believe she passed her insanity on to the child. The gives the idea of insanity being shared or transferred through the breast milk more form.

The woman sums up her life's trials in the last stanza. She tells how she has been looking for the boy's father, and how she has learned to live in the woods without comforts of a home. She says that they should be happy living in the woods, searching for the father. The ending of the poem is a bit surreal, and could have a few possible meanings. The woman could be seeking out the father for a type of revenge, but far more likely is that the woman has lost her sanity. In stanza eight she says, " -- Where art thou gone, my own dear child?" (Lines 85) This could be an indication that the child has died, probably of malnutrition. In the last stanza, the woman has lost all sanity, and is living with the ghost of her child in her mind only. She most likely will live in the woods with her delusions until she dies. She says, " And there, my babe, we'll live for aye." (Line 100) When she too dies, their spirits would be together again, living in the forest.

The poem, "Her Eyes Are Wild", depicts the tragic story of a woman gone insane and her developing dependence on her child, until the point of tragedy. Wordsworth paints a tragic and surreal picture of a mother and child relationship using vivid imagery and extensive metaphors to bring his words to life.