Write an essay on Wordsworth as a poet of Nature.

Answer:
Wordsworth‟s treatment of Nature was entirely different from that of his contemporary poets. He
looked on Nature not simply as a creation of God; but God himself manifested. For Wordsworth,
Nature was an embodiment of the divine spirit. He finds life in Nature, discovers spirit or soul in
Nature and according to him, Nature has a mind which is directly connected with the mind of
man.

Says the eminent critic Stoppford A. Brooke, “It had, he imagined, one living soul which,
entering flowers, streams, mountains gave each of them a soul of its own. Between this spirit of
Nature and the mind of man there was a pre-arranged harmony which enabled Nature to
communicate its thoughts to man and man to reflect upon him until on absolute union between
the two was established.”

It is one of the peculiar features of Wordsworth‟s Nature poetry that all the attention of the poet
is devoted to the representation of calm and tranquil sites and scenes of Nature. He never
presents Nature, „red in tooth and claw‟. Aldous Huxley in his essay „Wordsworth in the
Tropics‟, draws our attention to this fact that “Wordsworth‟s conception of Nature is one sided.
He deals only with the trim and well dressed Nature as it is in the Lake Districts, but he has not
one word to say about the malevolent aspect of Nature- Nature red in tooth and claw.
Wordsworth rarely presents Nature in its tumultuous and roaring aspects.”
As he himself was a peace loving soul, so his conception of Nature is essentially peaceful,
placid, calm, serene and untroubled by painful thoughts.
“Byron saw Nature in the tumult of revolt”, says W.H.Hudson, “…Wordsworth found in Nature,
what he sought the peace that was in his soul.”
Wordsworth‟s healing balm to festered sores of humanity rises out of this tranquil and peaceful
representation of Nature‟s objects. We are deeply impressed and influenced by his calm and
tranquil representations bringing before us- „the silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is
among the lonely hill.‟

It must, however, be noted that Wordsworth‟s attitude towards Nature had not been the same
throughout. It underwent changes from time to time according to the elevation of his mood. Dr.
Miss Mary Woodland, a modern critic, is of the opinion that Wordsworth‟s conception of Nature
can be divided into four distinct stages:
1. Sensuous
2. Spiritual
3. Moral
4. Divine

1. Sensuous stage:
At this stage, Wordsworth loved only the outer manifestation as of Nature. Like a roe he
sprang and hopped from one object of Nature to another without realizing the inner
significance which Nature possesses. The objects of Nature simply stirred his passions
when he looked at them: “The tall rocks, the sounding cataract …. were then to me a
passion and an appetite.”

2. Spiritual stage:
As he advance in his approach to Nature he began to see her inner vision he realized
Nature‟s spiritual significance. He discovered a spirit in Nature, a universal spirit operating
all over the earth and heaven. This spirit of Nature, according to him, had on all embracing
and all inclusive power binding herself with man so that a spiritual union has was
established.

3. Moral Stage:
Having spiritualized Nature, Wordsworth sought to interpret Nature as the greatest
moralizing power. According to him, man should go to Nature primarily for drinking deep
the fountain of her perpetually moralizing nectar. In his famous poem „Tintern Abbey‟, he
describes Nature as:
“The anchor nurse and guide of my moral being.”
Here lies the fundamental difference between Shelley‟s and Wordeworth‟s conception of
Nature. Shelley never tries to moralize Nature.

4. Divine Stage:
In his final stage of approach to Nature, Wordsworth appears more or less like a Vedantist.
According to him, man in his ultimate quest for Nature, loses his material or physical
identity and becomes a living soul.
 As a little stream is restless to be absorbed in the water of the endless and unchartered
ocean, in the some way, according to Wordsworth‟s philosophy, the ultimate goal of man‟s
quest for Nature is to be completely absorbed in the soul of all souls. Man, according to
him, will die physically; yet in spirit, he would live immortally blissful.

According to Stoppford A. Brooke, there were three special characteristics of the life of
Nature as Wordsworth conceived:
a. Its joy
b. Its solitude
c. Intercommunication of its love.
He saw joy in Nature and it awakened joy in him. To him, it was finally, the joy of God in his
own creative life.
The greatest and the most sublime gift of Nature to man according to Wordsworth is the bliss of
solitude. Loneliness of Nature is a balm that heals all the gashing wounds inflicted on the hearts
of many by the forces of gross materialism:
“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”
The sublimit phase of Wordsworth‟s treatment of Nature lies in his complete surrender and
dedication to Nature. He believes ethically that as soon as man surrenders himself completely to
the tranquil and calm elements of Nature, all his misfortunes will end and he will lead a morally
and spiritually perfect life.

He regrets that man has gone remote from Nature and this is the main reason why his life has
become insipid and dreary.

Wordsworth‟s faith in Nature was absolute, firm and unshakable. He had something of a moral
and an ethical conviction that Nature would never betray the man who loves her sincerely and
deeply. Every object of Nature, however ordinary it may be, according to him, could provide
man with highest joy and most sublime nobility:
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
To sum up, Wordsworth‟s treatment of Nature is spiritual, moral and divine. To him, Nature is
God and God is Nature. The breath of man according to him is to be mingled with the breath of
Nature and the breath of Nature finally becomes the breath of heaven.
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What is meant by the term Romantic Revival and to what extent it is correct to say that
Wordsworth was the forerunner of this movement in English poetry?

OR
Write an essay on Wordsworth as a romantic poet.
OR
Estimate the importance of Wordsworth’s contribution to the Romantic Movement.
Answer:
Romantic revival or the age of the Romantic Movement which plays a pre-dominant part on the
stage of English poetry was the result of ho one cause or a singular incident. As a matter of fact,
it was the inevitable corollary of the Renaissance and Reformation. The dignity and importance
of man as man and the glories of the world of Nature -these ideas of which we hear so much at
the close of the 18th century were born centuries before and had been working in man‟s mind
through the entire politically stormy period of unrest of the 17th and 18th centuries. But the spirit
of romanticism was hidden and dormant. It was still in its budding from suppressed by the dry
intellectualism and sordid reasoning of the classical convention. Thus the flower of romanticism
was not allowed to bloom, though it had blossomed long ago.

Poets like Gray, Collins and Thompson who preceded Wordsworth showed symptoms of a new
kind of poetry which was yet to be born. They struggled against the rigidity and conventional
limitation of the classical school and to some extent, succeeded in breaking through the narrow
bondage of classical conventionalism. But it will be unwise to think that they were the harbingers
of the school of Romantic Revival in English poetry.
The real flowering of the romantic spirit of poetry in England was made by Wordsworth. He was
the first English poet who, with the help of his friend and associate Coleridge, gave a smashing
blow- rather a death-blow to the classical attitude of poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads in
1798. Their book containing poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge was the official manifesto of
the new poetry- the Romantic School of Poetry.
The French revolution with its slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the awakening of a
democratic urge in the hearts of the common men and women and the interest which the younger
generations began to take in Nature- all these added stimulating vigor to the cause of the birth of
the romantic school of poetry teachings of Rousseau, William Godwin and Mac Peterson
advocating man‟s return to Nature, inspired poets like Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron to blow
the trumpet of romanticism.

Nature was brought back and introduced in the realm of poetry. Poets of the Romantic School
displayed a strong love and passion for wild mountains, shimmering waves of the fountains,
starlit nights and sounding cataracts. Wordsworth found delight in tall and lofty cliffs and the
sounding cataracts haunted him like a passion. Byron longed to become a portion of the storm.
Shelley prayed to the west wind to lift him up as a wave, a leaf, a cloud and Coleridge hid his
face behind the mystic veil of supernatural phenomena seen in the lonely unchartered and
unfathomed seas while Keats revelled in sensuousness.

Besides love for Nature, humanitarianism, democratic spirit, medievalism supernaturalism and
simplicity of diction began to influence the romantic poetry. Wordsworth, undoubtedly, is the
first romantic poet in the real sense of the term. He has been aptly described by Professor Dunn
as the architect of the Romantic Revival. It was he and he alone who for the first time endowed
Nature with a living identity- having a spirit, a soul, a mind and thought of its own.

The matter of the universe to Wordsworth was merely the gesture of a great spiritual power
interpenetrating Nature. A rock, a flower, a sunset, a mountain torrent, the beauty of a girl
reaping and singing to herself, were for him, the different manifestations of a unifying principal.
Wordsworth‟s mysticism was something new which the poets of the classical school had never
experienced. The poet viewed the spirit of God pervading the entire universe- both animate and
inanimate. He saw the presence of the Divine Life in every flower, bud, insect and the mossy
stone. He felt the presence of the inscrutable power of god in Nature and in human life. The
mysticism of Wordsworth was a new thing and it introduced the spirit of romanticism in poetry.
Wordsworth‟s mystical utterances constitute the loftiest expressions in Romantic poetry.

Wordsworth‟s theory of poetry and poetic diction introduced the new world of Romanticism.
The poet‟s insistence on the use of simple language in preference to the gaudiness and inane-
phraseology of the 18th century poets was something of novelty in the world of poetry. It was the
beginning of the new romanticism and Wordsworth paved the way by making the language of
poetry more real and more natural than it used to be in the 18th century. It was Wordsworth‟s
great assertion that neither there is nor can be any essential difference between the language of
prose and metrical composition. Wordsworth‟s theory of poetic diction broke away all the points
with the classical poetry- particularly in its formal side.
Wordsworth‟s numerous lyrics, odes and sonnets were also romantic in colour and in them, the
note of music, emotional excitement and imaginative supremacy, which were the hall marks of
the poetry of romanticism were introduced in the finest measure possible.
Wordsworth had numerous other excellences which made him the leader of the Romantic
Movement. Coleridge made reference to the excellences of Wordsworth as a romantic poet in his
Biographia Literaria and all of them go to show that Wordsworth was a great romantic poet and
his contribution to romanticism was of paramount importance in the history of English poetry.
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