William Wordsworth: Poet of nature

[Last Island]

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cockermouth, on the northern edge of England’s Lake District. Educated at a school near Esthwaite Lake, he was often free to wander the countryside, exploring the woods and valleys which would shape his poetry in the years to come. Wordsworth’s writing frequently centers around nature and the rural landscape, and often features recollections of childhood experiences in nature which are contrasted by the poet’s older voice and experiences.

In 1798, Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This collection featured poems which Wordsworth wrote as celebrations of the rural landscape, and were written in simple language in an effort to capture to voice of the common people.

Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language;…because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings; and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended; and are more durable; and lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.

Similarly, Wordsworth believed that rural inhabitants “hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is derived,” which is why he sought to write in the language of the rural landscape. This idealization of the rural landscape is common in Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads, often presenting Nature as a teacher, a comfort, and an inspiration.

One example of Nature teaching the young Wordsworth is found in “Nutting”, a poem in which Wordsworth recalls a childhood memory of a day spent wandering through the woods in search of hazelnuts:

… in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o’er my shoulder slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow’rd some far-distant wood.

The poem describes how the young Wordsworth comes across a grove of hazels which appear

Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung
A virgin scene!

This quiet and untouched grove affords him several moments of peace, and he experiences

A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.

However, despite the tranquility of the scene, and after resting quietly and contemplating the murmuring brook and mossy stones, the boy rose up,

And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash
And merciless ravage: and the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being: and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past,
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky –
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch – for there is a spirit in the woods.

Here, Nature gives willingly to the intruder both a sense of happiness and calm, and the physical gift of hazelnuts, responding to his violence with stillness. The recognition of these gifts teaches the young boy to respect the silence and dignity of nature, and prompts the poet, upon recollection, to teach others of the gentle spirit of Nature.

Also included in Lyrical Ballads is “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”, a poem which illustrates the beauty Wordsworth sees in the isolation and uniqueness of nature and the rural landscape. Here, Wordsworth describes the loss of Lucy, a maiden referred to in many of the lyrical ballads.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
-Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

The presence of a single star in the sky makes that star more beautiful because it is alone, just as Lucy is made more beautiful and more vital to the poet by her isolation. Similarly, a “half hidden” violet is magical and unique where a fully revealed flower, appreciated by all, would lose its brightness and beauty from too much exposure. For these reasons, the girl, and by association the rural landscape, is made more precious to the poet.

In the preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth writes that rural inhabitants are “less under the influence of social vanity” due to their isolation, a feature which makes them better able to “convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions,… [in] a more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets”. This statement also illustrates the value Wordsworth attached to the rural landscape and which is expressed in “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”.

In 1798, Wordsworth went on a tour with his sister that brought them to the Wye valley and the ruins of Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth had visited the area in 1793, but found that the present landscape was different from the landscape of his memories. While traveling from the abbey to Bristol, a poem came into Wordsworth’s mind which he wrote down upon his arrival in Bristol, but “not a line of it was altered”. This mediation on the landscape and its impact on the poet’s life was included in Lyrical Ballads as “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey”, commonly referred to simply as “Tintern Abbey.”

“Tintern Abbey” begins with the recognition of the passage of time.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. – Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of a more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

This image of the landscape is one of wilderness and isolation, the only sound is that of the river’s “soft inland murmur”, and the cliffs unite this quiet land with the more quiet sky. However, Wordsworth was in fact gazing upon a rural landscape, and this description of what he saw illustrates Wordsworth’s view of the rural as part of a wild nature. This is clarified as the poet continues his portrait:

Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

The cottages and farms are part of the landscape and do not alter its nature. The homes are “green to the very door”. There is no loss to the woods by their presence, and their smoke “sent up in silence” has no impact on the stillness of the scene. Similarly, the cottages are compared to a hermit’s cave or a vagrant dwelling in the “houseless woods” further emphasizing the quiet solitude of the rural landscape and its incorporation into nature. The cottages do not diminish the wild of the landscape; they are united with it.

In the second stanza, Wordsworth describes how the memory of this scene has influenced his life.

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.

Memories of nature have not only restored the poet in moments of weariness, but may be responsible for leading him to “acts of kindness and of love”. Wordsworth also describes how nature has given him another gift:

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
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 motion 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.

In other words, these images of nature and the rural landscape have inspired within the poet the stillness necessary to meditate on life, to “see into the life of things” and by association, to write poetry. Nature has given Wordsworth a reason to write, and quite possibly, a reason to live. As his meditations continue, he realizes that

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.

This realization leads the poet to consider how his response to nature has changed with time, and he writes that in the past,

...like a rose
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved.

However, the passions of youth have faded,

And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. 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.

With the loss of his youthful fits of “aching joys” and “dizzy raptures” the poet has learned from nature, and once again he presents nature as a teacher, a comfort, and an inspiration, as it grants him a deeper understanding of human life. Nature has often been presented as still and silent, and here the “music of humanity” is “still [and] sad”, and the poet is subdued. The parallel images of humanity and of nature once again illustrate Wordsworth’s view of humans as part of nature. This idea is continued as the poet describes how he has been inspired by nature:

... 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 the 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,
And rolls through all things.

In his survey of wide and breathless spaces, “the light of setting suns,” “the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky” Wordsworth includes “the mind of man”. For Wordsworth, the mind of man is both natural and beautiful. In the preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth describes poetry as “an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe” and “a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man,” an idea which is clearly expressed in “Tintern Abbey.”

The power of nature to inspire is expanded to describe how the poet’s perception of nature has formed the core of his being:

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 recognise
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.

Finally, the poet turns to address his sister, and to express to her how Nature will protect them,

... for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
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 e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.

Clearly, nature has played an integral role in the development of Wordsworth’s mind and poetry. In the preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth writes that “poetry is the image of man and nature”. Not only Wordsworth’s poetry, but the rural landscape itself could be described as an “image of man and nature”. The link between man and nature, and Nature’s ability to teach us of ourselves, as was illustrated in both “Nutting” and “Tintern Abbey”, are a common theme in Wordsworth’s writing. As Wordsworth captures the wisdom of Nature, he too becomes a teacher, and as our treatment of nature too often resembles the child-poet’s destruction of the hazel grove, it is clear that we still have much to learn.