1. Discuss William Wordsworth as a Poet of Nature.

Or, Discuss the three stages of Growth in Wordsworth’s philosophy of nature.

Or, Comment on Wordsworth’s Treatment of nature in “Tintern Abbey”.

As a poet of Nature, Wordsworth stands supreme. He is a worshipper of Nature, Nature‟s devotee or high-priest. His love
of Nature was probably purer and more genuine than that of any other English poet, before or since. Nature comes to
occupy in his poem a separate or independent status and is not treated in a casual or passing manner as by poets before
him. Wordsworth had a full-fledged philosophy, a new and original view of Nature. Three points in his creed of Nature
may be noted:
(a) He conceived of Nature as a living Personality. He believed that there is a divine spirit pervading all the objects of
Nature. This belief in a divine spirit pervading all the objects of Nature may be termed as mystical Pantheism and is fully
expressed in “Tintern Abbey” and in several passages in Book II of The Prelude.
(b) Wordsworth believed that the company of Nature gives joy to the human heart and he looked upon Nature as
exercising a healing influence on sorrow-stricken hearts.
(c) Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of Nature. He spiritualized Nature and regarded her as a
great moral teacher, as the best guide, guardian and nurse of man, and as an elevating influence. He believed that between
man and Nature there is mutual consciousness, spiritual communion or „mystic intercourse‟. He initiates his readers into
the secret of the soul‟s communion with Nature. According to him, human beings who grow up in the lap of Nature are
perfect in every respect.

'Tintern Abbey' of William Wordsworth is the first clear expression of emotional change in poetry. It recognizes the
power of Nature to quicken the imagination of a creative mind. It helps us get an analysis of the three different stages in
the gradual development of the poet's altitude to Nature (a) The sensuous period - the animal pleasures of his boyhood, the
enjoyment and apprehension of the sensuous beauty of Nature in his youth (b) The moral stage — the stage of discovery
and establishment of a reciprocal and moral relationship between man and nature, his capacity to look on Nature with a
philosophical eye in his maturity, and (c) the spiritual or religious stage - the period of the imagination and the soul which
can find the existence of the One (God) in every elements of Nature.

Wordsworth's boyhood and the formative years of his life were spent in the midst of Nature's beautiful surroundings. This
was the period of his love of Nature. It was a healthy boy's love of the open air, sunshine and freedom of the fields. He
loved Nature with a passion which was all physical without having any trace of intellectual or philosophical association.
He haunted the hills and the vales for sports and bounded over the mountains „like a roe‟. In his youth which was a period
of the senses, Wordsworth was thrilled and enchanted by the physical beauty of Nature. His love of nature in this stage
was purely sensuous and emotional. This was characterized by "dizzy raptures" and "aching joys" which is based on his
earlier "coarser pleasures" of his boyhood and of the “thoughtless youth”. The beautiful sights and sounds of Nature, The
colors and the forms of the objects of Nature roused his sweet sensations, and made him very passionate but he was
unable to understand the intellectual affinity with nature.

In the mature years, the poet was blessed with an imaginative faculty and an uplift of his soul. In youth he did not find any
hidden meaning of nature nor had he any philosophy of Nature. Now he looks at Nature not with a painter's eye, but as a
philosopher who can explain its hidden meaning. Thus the poet has developed a philosophic mind which helps him
understand the miseries and sufferings of mankind by seeing the natural phenomena. This experience of the miseries of
the world makes him nobler and sympathetic towards the suffering humanity. Now he experiences a kind of moral and
spiritual uplift, a sublime state of meditation in which he can listen to the “still sad music of humanity” in the waters of
the sounding cataract.

In the third stage the poet goes one step ahead and takes his relationship with Nature to another level. He finds that Nature
is not only related to man, it is also the abode of God. He feels within himself a presence of the Divine spirit that animates
mystic thoughts in him.
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 the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
This Divine spirit is the Soul of the Universe or the Spirit of Nature that puts the mind in motion and makes the body move.
According to Wordsworth, this Divine Spirit is the source and the guiding force of all creations.

To sum up, throughout his whole life Wordsworth remained a true worshipper of Nature, the true priest and a revealer of
her harmonies to humanity. He considered Nature as the external garb of God or the manifestation of the Divine Spirit.
According to Wordsworth a man can establish a communion with God through his worship of Nature.

2. Theme of Loss and Recovery in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”

Wordsworth‟s poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” is apparently and mainly about the loss of the intuitive powers
of perceptions and joyful existence in childhood, but it turns out to be more importantly about growing up and developing
the poetic, moral and philosophical faculties in the process of losing the primal powers of the child. It starts with a
profound sense of loss of the childhood visions or pleasures of looking at things with wonder and ends with a consolation
and recovery that for the loss of celestial pleasure the speaker has got „abundant recompense‟.

The ode can be divided into three sections for analytical convenience: in the first four stanzas, the poet mediates on the
loss of the divine original vision that the child is born with; the second section from 5th to 8th stanza is an attempt to
explain the nature and causes of the loss; the third section from 9 th to 11th stanza, deals with the compensating gain of
another type of vision, namely the philosophical vision by the grown-up man or poet. The first stanza begins with a
nostalgic meditation on the loss. But the poet, while lamenting the loss, describes the childhood world creating a beautiful
image of childhood life. He used to perceive everything as if they all had “the glory and freshness of a dream”. But now,
the poet says he cannot see anything covered in that heavenly light, and there is nothing glorious and dreamlike about the
world that the grown-up poet lives in. However, there is a thing of reassurance in this stanza: „a timely utterance‟ of the
feeling whether of grief or joy gives him some consolation, to make the poet somewhat strong to go on with life. Each of
the first three stanzas has a mixture of joy and grief, but after having found a compensation for that loss, the poet is now
able to celebrate the spirit of May. He will not fail to appreciate whatever he can perceive of the nature, which has not
changed. The poet sees a tree and a field; the Garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, which speak of something that is
gone. In short, the feeling of irrecoverable loss predominates this section, despite the outbursts of momentary joy; the
recovery of another mode of experience is yet to be made.

The second section is a brief account of growth of man and the loss of the vision; it is based on the Platonic philosophy of
pre-existence that “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting”, because the soul has its source outside our individual being,
and it becomes less and less accessible to the child as he grows up. We come in a kind of “trailing clouds of glory from
God, who is our home” and “heaven lies around us in our infancy!” But the shadows of the “prison-house”, or reason that
limits feelings and experience, begin to close upon the „growing boy‟. Wordsworth says that the earth (nature) is filled
with some blissful pleasures, but it is the grown up man who is incapable of experiencing and appreciating it fully. The
nature, in the sense of „the formative influence‟ of the natural process of life, also makes man forget that „imperial palace‟
from where he came. The poet laments: for soon the child‟s soul will have the unbearable burden and the heavy weight of
custom or habitualized behavior will fall on him. And it will overpower his capacity for living through the original vision,
and seeing and enjoying the celestial life on all the common sights around him.

But at the third section the poet is finally able to exclaim with a sudden realization that all is not lost. He wants to say that
though we have lost our childhood vision, we can regain it instantly by recollecting the sweet memories of our childhood.
Even in adulthood we can if we want and try to, retain or still cultivate some vision. The shadowy recollections of
childhood life are the fountain light of all our life; though the fountain light or vision is now not the primary mode of
perception, the poet affirms that it is the inner light of „all our seeing‟. That light reveals the eternal truths of life, which
noting in adult life can destroy. The truth intimated by the celestial spirit of the nature in our childhood is so persistent that
neither society, adulthood, custom and the culture of reason not grief can abolish or destroy.

Thus Wordsworth in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” presents his ideas about the loss of the childhood vision and its
recovery. With the natural process of growth and maturity we gradually lose our childhood simplicity and innocence and
enter the world of experience. But our childhood memories lies latent in our deep unconscious mind and whenever we
want to revive the memories, we can recall them and get back to those days and thus we can recover our lost glory.