In my previous post, I mentioned that Keats "wrote some of the greatest poetry," but a person interested in reading his poetry might avoid him because his poems seem difficult. If that is the case, then the best place to begin reading English Romantic poetry is with William Wordsworth. Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote poems that are sensitive, profound, beautiful, and written in he what described as "a selection of language really spoken by men." A theme that Wordsworth explored often his poems is his view of our relationship with nature. His poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" illustrates this point:
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud,
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The wave beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
and dances with the daffodils.
This delightful, simple poem is based on an experience Wordsworth had while he and his sister were out walking one day. In stanzas 1-3, the speaker "floats" cloud-like above the landscape, isolated and aimlessly drifting, when he is startled by the sight of daffodils, "Fluttering and dancing in the breeze." These are no ordinary flowers, but like the stars of the milky way they "stretch" infinitely "along the margin of a "bay." As if granted boundless perspective, he absorbs "Ten thousand" flowers within a single "glance." Seeing the daffodils' transcendent brilliance fills him with an immediate, visceral feeling of joy, but gives "little thought" to the "wealth the show to me had brought." That wealth only comes to him later "when on my couch I lie/In vacant or in pensive mood,/They flash upon that inward eye/Which is the bliss of solitude;/And then my heart with pleasure fills."
Once having read the poem, it is clear that Wordsworth views our relationship with nature as having something more to it that than just one of enjoying the beauty of natural scenery. As we follow the poems sequence, we see him notice the flowers, feel inspired by them, then remember the experience days later when his mind is "In vacant or in pensive mood." It is important to recognize here the necessity of memory, his recollecting the image through his imagination which soothes him in his solitude when "They flash upon his inward eye." The question is, in what way does the imagination participate in this process? Is it the force driving the experience toward its fulfillment, or is it subordinate to nature, simple a receptacle, passively receiving nature's spiritual bounty? To answer that, we must turn to one of Wordsworth's masterpieces, "Tintern Abbey."
"Tintern Abbey" (organized into six verse paragraphs) recounts a time when he and his sister visited the river Wye, near Tintern Abbey. The poem can be described as a meditation on how nature can instill goodness and wisdom in those willing to receive and possess her gifts. Wordsworth first begins the poem by stating how long it has been since he last visited this place: "five years have passed; five summers, with the length/Of five long winters! and again I hear/These waters." He then proceeds with this first section of the poem describing the attributes of the scene, which include cliffs, trees, a cottage, growing fruit, farms, and hedgerows. These images convey a picturesque seclusion of pastoral tranquility.
If the poem were to end here, the result would be a poem that merely describes, rather beautifully, a specific landscape. In the second verse paragraph, Wordsworth turns inward and recollects the gifts nature had given him:
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration--feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motions of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
The landscape's gifts become tangible even as Wordsworth remembers memories that comforted him while he lived in "lonely rooms, and 'mid the din/Of towns and cities." Deprived of the actual sight of the landscape, Wordsworth's memory and imagination recall to him "sensations sweet" at times when he is overwhelmed with "weariness." These "sensations" are "Felt in [his] blood" and "pass into" his "purer mind," where they restore him to the tranquility, he experienced at Tintern Abbey. But the images of the landscape that memory and imagination transmute into emotions accomplish much more than alleviate the poet's loneliness. They also inspire him to "acts/Of kindness, and of love" toward his fellow human beings. Lastly, he proclaims that he "owed another gift" to these "sensations," "Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood," that leads him to a transcendent state in which he becomes a "living soul" and sees "into the life of things."
For a brief moment in the next two verse paragraphs, Wordsworth seems to mistrust his memory and the words he just uttered: "If this/Be but a vain belief," which is followed in the next paragraph by "And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought/With many recognitions dim and faint." But his doubt is set aside: "And somewhat of sad perplexity,/The picture of the mind revives again;/While here I stand, not only with the sense/Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts/That in this moment there is life and food/For future years." In the rest of this verse paragraph, Wordsworth looks back on his youthful days, when he roamed wildly among the "hills," satisfying his "coarser pleasures," and knowing simply the "dizzy raptures" of the "cataract," "the mountain," and the "deep and gloomy wood." That was a time when he "had no need of a remoter charm,/by thought supplied, nor any interest/Unborrowed from the eye." His raw response to nature, unmediated by thought, fulfilled his young desire.
By the time he visits this landscape at the present moment, he has put away those "dizzy raptures" of his youth without regret, "Not for this/Faint (lose heart) I, nor mourn nor murmur." Instead, he has an "Abundant recompense," far higher than those ecstatic passions felt along his physical senses. For the mature Wordsworth, nature's boon enters through the senses, but becomes nourishment for contemplation of our mortality and our indivisible union with nature:
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
All rolls through all things.
No longer youthful and impulsive, the older and wiser Wordworth hears in nature "The still sad music of humanity," and "A presence that disturbs me with the joy/Of elevated thoughts." He has changed since his first visit from a youth who responds solely physically to this scene with aching, dizzying passions, to one who has been chastened through experience to have an empathic understanding of human suffering, which opens him to the immanent "presence" interfusing his mind with all the externalities of the world.
The obvious intangible quality of the "presence" in the landscape suggests that Wordsworth receives revelation of divinity strictly through nature. But that would misrepresent the poem and Wordsworth. The "motion" and "spirit" Wordsworth "feels" requires those images of nature to be seen, heard and remembered. He can summon them through the faculty of memory, but the physical scene first must be apprehended by the eyes. In his "older" and "wiser" contemplation of nature, he is now able to contrast his earlier and later experiences and recognize how he possesses through his creative imagination a sense of transcendence:
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
In the poem's final paragraph, Wordsworth turns to his sister Dorothy, hears "The language of my former heart," and sees "My former pleasures in the shooting lights/"Of thy wild eyes." He prays that in years to come Nature (capitalized in this part) will,
inform
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
The mind that is within us, so impress
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall ever prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
And as the poem ends, Wordsworth avers that Dorothy will always remember the beauty of what this landscape evokes, and how much dearer it was to him because she was with him.
Wordsworth's expression of nature, which when recalled through the imagery of the "inward eye" has the power to transform bleakness into blessing of "aspect more sublime...in which the heavy and weary weight/Of all this intelligible world,/is lightened..." This power is expressed in other words in his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads":
"In spite of differences of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and the senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man."
Wordsworth's vision (and that of all the Romantic poets) provides the ordinary person with the power to overcome the mundane, the tragic, the disastrous, by embracing the beauty that can animate the soul.