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Why William Wordsworth Called As A Poet of Nature
Why William Wordsworth Called As A Poet of Nature
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 truer, and more tender, 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. 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.
The author used personification to describe beauty of daffodils. They becomed to have action and mind like
people. Those lines are as beautiful as a picture. If Wordsworth didn’t have love of nature, he couldn’t write good
verses.
(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. The poet felt happy and pleasant when he saw golden flowers smiling
in the sunshine:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
Perhaps to him, the daffodil’s charm was a gift which God granted.
Many years later, the daffodil’s beauty still haunted Wordsworth. Whether he stayed in empty or thoughtful mood, the
images of daffodils came to mind and flashed upon his eyes:
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
(c) Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of Nature. He spiritualised Nature and regarded her as a great
moral teacher, as the best mother, guardian andnurse 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.
Wordsworth believed that we can learn more of man and of moral evil and good from Nature than from all the
philosophies. In his eyes, “Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn, and without which any human life is vain
and incomplete.” He believed in the education of man by Nature. In this he was somewhat influenced by Rousseau.
This inter-relation of Nature and man is very important in considering Wordsworth’s view of both.
Cazamian says that “To Wordsworth, Nature appears as a formative influence superior to any other, the educator
of senses and mind alike, the sower in our hearts of the deep-laden seeds of our feelings and beliefs. It speaks to the
child in the fleeting emotions of early years, and stirs the young poet to an ecstasy, the glow of which illuminates all
his work and dies of his life.”.
Development of His Love for Nature
Wordsworth’s childhood had been spent in Nature’s lap. A nurse both stern and kindly, she had planted seeds of
sympathy and under-standing in that growing mind. Natural scenes like the grassy Derwent river bank or the monster
shape of the night-shrouded mountain played a “needful part” in the development of his mind. In The Prelude, he
records dozens of these natural scenes, not for themselves but for what his mind could learn through.
Nature was “both law and impulse”; and in earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Wordsworth was conscious of
a spirit which kindled and restrained. In a variety of exciting ways, which he did not understand, Nature intruded upon
his escapades and pastimes, even when he was indoors, speaking “memorable things”. He had not sought her; neither
was he intellectually aware of her presence. She riveted his attention by stirring up sensations of fear or joy which
were “organic”, affecting him bodily as well as emotionally. With time the sensations were fixed indelibly in his
memory. All the instances in Book I of The Prelude show a kind of primitive animism at work”; the emotions and
psychological disturbances affect external scenes in such a way that Nature seems to nurture “by beauty and by fear”.
In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth traces the development of his love for Nature. In his boyhood Nature was simply
a playground for him. At the second stage he began to love and seek Nature but he was attracted purely by its sensuous
or aesthetic appeal. Finally his love for Nature acquired a spiritual and intellectual character, and he realized Nature’s
role as a teacher and educator.
In the Immortality Ode he tells us that as a boy his love for Nature was a thoughtless passion but that when he
grew up, the objects of Nature took a sober colouring from his eyes and gave rise to profound thoughts in his mind
because he had witnessed the sufferings of humanity:
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Spiritual Meaning in Natural Objects
Compton Rickett rightly observes that Wordsworth is far less concerned with the sensuous manifestations than
with the spiritual significance that he finds underlying these manifestations. To him the primrose and the daffodil are
symbols to him of Nature’s message to man. A sunrise for him is not a pageant of colour; it is a moment of spiritual
consecration:
My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bound unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit.
To combine his spiritual ecstasy with a poetic presentment of Nature is the constant aim of Wordsworth. It is the
source of some of his greatest pieces, grand rhapsodies such as Tintern Abbey.
Nature Descriptions
Wordsworth is sensitive to every subtle change in the world about him. He can give delicate and subtle expression
to the sheer sensuous delight of the world of Nature. He can feel the elemental joy of Spring:
It was an April morning, fresh and clear
The rivulet, delighting in its strength,
Ran with a young man’s speed, and yet the voice
Of waters which the river had supplied
Was softened down into a vernal tone.
He can take an equally keen pleasure in the tranquil lake:
The calm
And dead still water lay upon my mind
Even with a weight of pleasure
A brief study of his pictures of Nature reveals his peculiar power in actualising sound and its converse, silence.
Being the poet of the ear and of the eye, he is exquisitely felicitious. No other poet could have written:
A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard
In springtime from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Unlike most descriptive poets who are satisfied if they achieve a static pictorial effect, Wordsworth can direct
his eye and ear and touch to conveying a sense of the energy and movement behind the workings of the natural world.
“Goings on” was a favourite word he applied to Nature. But he is not interested in mere Nature description.
Wordsworth records his own feelings with reference to the objects which stimulate him and call forth the
description. His unique apprehension of Nature was determined by his peculiar sense-endowment. His eye was at once
far-reaching and penetrating. He looked through the visible scene to what he calls its “ideal truth”. He pored over
objects till he fastened their images on his brain and brooded on these in memory till they acquired the liveliness of
dreams. He had a keen ear too for all natural sounds, the calls of beasts and birds, and the sounds of winds and waters;
and he composed thousands of lines wandering by the side of a stream. But he was not richly endowed in the less
intellectual senses of touch, taste and temperature.
Conclusion:
Wordsworth’s attitude to Nature can be clearly differentiated from that of the other great poets of Nature. He did
not prefer the wild and stormy aspects of Nature like Byron, or the shifting and changeful aspects of Nature and the
scenery of the sea and sky like Shelley, or the purely sensuous in Nature like Keats. It was his special characteristic
to concern himself, not with the strange and remote aspects of the earth, and sky, but Nature in her ordinary, familiar,
everyday moods. He did not recognize the ugly side of Nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ as Tennyson did. Wordsworth
stressed upon the moral influence of Nature and the need of man’s spiritual discourse with her.
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet. He and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth was
Britain’s Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
2.1. Life
a) Early life (1770 - 1790)
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland – one
part of the scenic region in the northwest of England, the Lake District. And there were many beautiful sites in this
land. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature.
His father, John Wordsworth taught him poetry of Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser. In addition, his
father allowed him to rely on his own father's library. While spending time on reading in Cockermouth, Wordsworth
also stayed at his mother's parents house in Penrith, Cumberland. At the time in Penrith, Wordsworth was exposed to
the moors. He had lost his mother when he was eight and five years later, his father. This fact had a great influence on
his life and his literary work.
William Wordsworth was the second of five children in his family. Specially, his sister – Dorothy was a very
important person in his life. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic
sister Dorothy. She had especially fresh contact to nature from a very early age. Her thoughts and experience brought
a endless/invaluable source of inspiration for her brother, who also introduced himself as Nature's child. The first time
she saw the sea, she burst into tears, "indicating the sensibility for which she was so remarkable," Wordsworth
remembered.
In 1778, William Wordsworth entered a local school and then continued his studies at Cambridge University.
He started his poetic career in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same year, he
began attending St. John's College, Cambridge, and received his B.A. degree in 1791. During a summer vacation in
1790, Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France. He also traveled in Switzerland, Italy.
b) 1791 – 1802
On his second journey in France (in November 1791), William Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France
and became enthralled with the Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon. And
they had a daughter, Caroline. Because of lack of money and Britain’s tension with France, he returned alone to
England. Then, he couldn’t see them again.
In 1793, Wordsworth’s first poetry was pulished with collections “An evening Walk” and “Descriptive
Sketches”. He received a legacy of 900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could continue the poetic career. In
that year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset and they became close friends. Together, Wordsworth and
Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic
movement. The second edition was published in 1800. Wordsworth gives his famous definition of poetry as "the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." A fourth and
final edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in 1805.
In 1795 - 1797, he wrote his only play, “The borderers” but it wasn’t performed at any theatre.
In autumn of 1798, Wordsworth, Dorothy and Coleridge went to Germany. Despite extreme stress and
loneliness, he began working on an autobiographical piece later titled “The Prelude”. In that period of time, he wrote
many famous poems. One of them was “Lucy”. Then, he and his sister returned Lake District where he was born.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were known as the "Lake Poets".
c) 1802 – 1850
In late 1802, Wordsworth Wordsworth married to a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy continued
to live with the couple and grew close to Mary. For the last 20 years of life, she had lost her mind as a result of physical
ailments. Almost all Dorothy's memory was destroyed/lost, she sat by the fire, and occasionally recited her brother's
verses.
He continued writing autobiographical poems, which he never named but called the "poem to Coleridge". In
1805, his brother, John died and that affected him strongly. In 1807, his Poems in Two Volumes were published,
including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Since 1810 Wordsworth and
Coleridge were estranged over the latter’s opium addiction. Two of his children, Thomas and Catherine, died in
1812. Wordsworth was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. Then his family, including Dorothy,
moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water) in 1813, where he spent in the rest of his
life.
From the age of 50 his creative began to decline. Wordsworth abandoned his radical faith and became a
patriotic, conservative public man. In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southgey (1774-1843) as “England's poet laureate”.
Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850 and was buried at St. Oswald's church in Grasmere. His widow Mary
published his lengthy autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death. Then it
was recognized as his masterpiece.
→ In conclusion, Wordsworth’s life was an unfortunate life/destiny/fate and It had strong effects on his
works. That was a key factor which led him to become a great romantic poet.
2.2. Major works
Wordsworth was a well-known romantic poet with many lyric poems. Almost works described the poet's
love of nature and revolve around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief. He gave prominence to emotion
in poetry. He said : “the poetry as the spontanueous overflow of powerful fellings”.
ü Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
· "Simon Lee"
· "We are Seven"
· "Lines Written in Early Spring"
· "Expostulation and Reply"
· "The Tables Turned"
· "The Thorn"
· "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"
ü Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)
· Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
· "Strange fits of passion have I known"[14]
· "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"[14]
· "Three years she grew"[14]
· "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal"[14]
· "I travelled among unknown men"[14]
· "Lucy Gray"
· "The Two April Mornings"
· "Nutting"
· "The Ruined Cottage"
· "Michael"
· "The Kitten At Play"
ü Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
· "Resolution and Independence"
· "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" Also known as "Daffodils"
· "My Heart Leaps Up"
· "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
· "Ode to Duty"
· "The Solitary Reaper"
· "Elegiac Stanzas"
· "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
· "London, 1802"
· "The World Is Too Much with Us"
The Excursion (1814)
Laodamia (1815, 1845)
The Prelude (1850)
Guide to the Lakes (1810)
3. Daffodils
The poem “Daffodils” was also known with the title “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. It was a lyrical poem
written by William Wordsworth in 1804. It was first published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes, then it was released
in 1815 in “Collected Poems” with four stanzas. “Daffodils” is considered as one of the most popular poems of the
Romantic Age.
It was inspired by an April 15, 1802 event, in which Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, came across a “long
belt” of daffodils on a walk near Ullswater Lake in England. The poet was wandering in the forest and enjoying the
fascinating nature around him, when suddenly he saw a crowd of golden daffodils by the lakeside. The daffodils was
so beautiful that he was compelled to gaze at these flowers playing with pleasure in the wind. His sister, Dorothy later
wrote in her journal as a reference to this walk: “I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones
about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and
reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked
so gay ever dancing ever changing…”. And “Daffodils” expressed the poet’s excitement, love and praise for a field
blossoming with daffodils.
The poem is a sonnet, 24 lines, including four six – line stanza. Each stanza is formed by a quatrain, then a
couplet, to form a sestet and a ABABCC rhyme scheme. For example the rhyming scheme of the first stanza is
ABAB ( A – cloud and crowd; B – hills and daffodils) and ending with a rhyming couplet CC ( C – trees and beeze).
By the way, the poem can convert into a continous flow of expressions without a pause.
Just reading the first stanzas, we can feel the time and space in which William wrote “Daffodils” :
I wander’d 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.
The first line makes nice use of simile : “as a cloud”. It opened with the narrator walking in the state of
worldly detachment, his wandering. That is a romantic poet in a romantic emotion too. In a dreamy, disinterested state,
poet gazed and thought about life and himselft. He saw a crowd of golden daffodils by the lakeside, they “Fluttering
and dancing in the breeze”. The author used personification to describe beauty of daffodils. They becomed to have
action and mind like people. Those lines are as beautiful as a picture. If Wordsworth didn’t have love of nature, he
couldn’t write good verses.
In the 2nd poem, he continued describing daffodils:
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
The figure of simile is subtly used : “as the stars that shine”. The golden daffodils were compared with the
stars shining and twinkling on the galaxy. By that way the poet immortalized daffodils. And this is in contrast to
transitory nature of life examined in other works. They seemed to become more beautiful in Wordsworth’s poem.
How glorious and plentiful these daffodils were! Maybe this was also the first time he had come across such
an immense field of daffodils along the shore. It was impossible for us to count them, but the author could still feel
how many flowers were stretching as far as the eyes can see:
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Particularly, the author reversed usual syntax and hyperbole in : “Ten thousand saw I at a glance”. That was
capable of emphasizing quantities of daffodils. In the last of the 2nd poem, Wordsworth used personification “Tossing
their heads in sprightly dance” again. And in the next several lines the 3th poem:
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee
Through characterized daffodils, we can find that nature has its own soul. These light-hearted daffodils,
weaving in unision with each other in the wind. And the author compared them with waves. Through the lake’s
sparking waves danced beautifully, the daffodils seemed to do much better than them. That reinforced beauty
of daffodils. William lifted him out of his soul and placed him in a higher state in which the soul of nature and the
soul of man were united into a single harmony. Apparently, he felt dazed with so many daffodils around him and there
was no limitation between his vision and the long belt of golden flowers.
The poet felt happy and pleasant when he saw golden flowers smiling in the sunshine:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
Perhaps to him, the daffodil’s charm was a gift which God granted.
Many years later, the daffodil’s beauty still haunted Wordsworth. Whether he stayed in empty or thoughtful mood,
the images of daffodils came to mind and flashed upon his eyes:
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
In the last stanza, it is revealed that this scene is only a memory of the pensive speaker. This is marked by a
change from a narrative past tense to the present tense as a conclusion to a sense of movement within the poem:
passive to active motion, from sadness to blissfulness. The memory of daffodils was etched in the author’s mind and
soul forever. When the poet was feeling lonely, dull or depressed, he thought of daffodils and cheered up. He
desired to dance with the daffodils:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
The above two lines weren’t composed by Wordsworth but by his wife, Mary. Wordsworth considered them
the best lines of the whole poem. They showed love of daffodils.To him, daffodils are close friends who come to
console and encourage him. And images of daffodils would never seem to fade in Wordsworth’s mind.
The title, “Daffodils” appears as a simple word that reminds us about the arrival the spring season, when the
filed is full of daffodils. Daffodils are yellow flowers, with amazing shapes and charming fragrance. But daffodils
in Wordsworth’s poem is also an artistic symbol. They symbolize the nature and the joys and happiness of life. The
poem uses descriptive language throughout the stanzas. The wording is simple and melodious.
This poem was one of the Wordsworth’s greatest works of Romanticism. The poem showed us natural
beauty and the potential of nature towards people. He would like to call us to come back to the nature and enjoy it.
The soul of nature and the soul of man were united into a single harmony.
In summary, through the analysis of poem in the aspects such as language, a lot of literary devices, narrator,
rhyming scheme, images, symbols ... we can recognize its beauty as well as profound human values. Reading
“Daffodils”, I love our nature and life more and more. This poem will be long lasting in spite of the world’s up and
down.
–
Historical Background of Renaissance
Te word’ Renaissance’ was first used by Jules Michelet, a French historian (1780-1874). First of all,
‘Renaissance’ means not only ‘the revived interest in Greek and Roman literatures’ but also ‘the discovery of the
world and human beings’. More than that, it implies ‘the awakening of men’s mind, the awakening of individual
spirit and secularism’.
1. Renaissance: the revived interest in Greek and Roman literatures
It is obvious that, in the Middle Ages, people did read and study Greek and Roman literatures, but the number of
readers of these literatures was very limited among scholars and literary men. Now, thanks to Petrarch’s and
Boccacio’s enthusiasm in propagating the spiritof humanism in Greek and Roman literatures, and thanks to the
invention of the printing machine, the number of readers of ancient writers increased greatly and the
reading and studying of Greek and Roman literaturesbecame an interest. In this period, the spiritof
humanismbecame assimilated with the studying of those literatures.
2.Renaissance: the discovery of the world and human beings
The Renaissance was a great age of geographical and scientific discoveries.In geographical field, Christopher
Columbus discovered America; Amerigo Vespucci and Vasco da Gama discovered the Philippines; Magellan
travelled around the world and discovered several lads and islands. These great geographical discoveries opened
new horizonsand bright prospects for European people; they longed to discover other continents and people.
In scientific field, Newton discovered ‘Law of Gravity’, Galileo and Copernicus discovered the stars and the stellar
systems, and Kepler discovered the orbits of planets. These scientific discoveries had deep influence on the concepts
of the Middle Ages about the position ad destiny of men in the Universe.
In the Middle Ages, men completely lost their values and position. The Church of Rome taught them that men were
symbols of evils and sins, that they wereslaves in this temporary world. They lived and waited for their
emancipation from this earthly hopeless life. They lived and preparedthemselves for future life in
paradise
In the Renaissance, men were reborn. They began to accept this world with a much more optimistic
attitude. They enjoyed their present life and realized this earthly life was beautiful ad interesting, that men ha the
right to live and enjoy everything on earth.
3.Renaissance: the awakening of men’s mind, the awakening of individual spirit and secularism
Middle Ages men despised materialisticand sexual desires. Renaissancemen were quite different: new land
discoveries, new luxurious life, new economic political and social life all created new will and eagerness
in them. Spiritually, they began to lead a revolt against the strict, cramped and austere pattern of life in the Middle
Ages.In this age there was also a great shift in the outlook. The thought of the Middle Ages was
essentially God-centred. But humanism, by its very nature, placeda new importance on created things. This
emphasis on the importance of temporal things led to a de-emphasis of God and the eternal life. Renaissance men
were no more subordinated to God. Their happiness was here, on earth, and it depended on their own strength and
ability to achieveit. Men were their own guides to truth ad happiness.
William Shakespeare’s works
Scholars distinguish three periods in William Shakespeare’sworks:
1.The early period (roughly from 1590 to 1600), during which he wrote mainly gay comedies and dramatic
histories. This is the period of optimism of William Shakespeare.
2.The middle period (roughly from 1600 to 1608), during which he wrote great tragedies and bitter
comedies. This is the period of maturity of William Shakespeare.
3.The late period (roughly from 1609 to 1612), during which he wrote legendary and lyrical plays, and
tragic comedies.
Hamlet
-
Prince of Denmark
Critique
Hamlet is without question the most famous play in the English language. Probably written in 1601 or 1602, the
tragedy is a milestone in Shakespeare’sdramatic development; the playwright achieved artistic maturity in this work
through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces: moral integrity and the need to
avenge his father’s murder.
Shakespeare’s focus on this conflict was a revolutionary departure from contemporary revenge tragedies, which
tended to graphically dramatize violent acts on stage, in that it emphasized the hero’s dilemma rather than the
depiction of bloody deeds. The dramatist’s genius is also evident in his transformation of the play’s literary
sources—especially the contemporaneous Ur-Hamlet—into an exceptional tragedy. The Ur-Hamlet, or
“original Hamlet,” is a lost play that scholars believe was written mere decades before Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
providing much of the dramatic context for the later tragedy. Numerous sixteenth-century records attest to the
existence of the Ur-Hamlet, with some references linking its composition to Thomas Kyd, the author of
The Spanish Tragedy. From these sources Shakespeare created
Hamlet, a supremely rich and complex literary work
that continues to delight both readers and audiences with its myriad meanings and interpretations. In the words of
Ernest Johnson, “the dilemma of Hamlet the Prince and Man” is “to disentangle himself from
the temptation to wreak justice for the wrong reasons and in evil passion, and to do what he must do at last for the
pure sake of justice.... From that dilemma of wrong feelings and right actions, he ultimately emerges, solving the
problem by attaining a proper state of mind.” Hamlet endures as the object of universal
identification because his central moral dilemma transcends the Elizabethan period, making him a man for
all ages. In his difficult struggle to somehow act within a corrupt world and yet maintain his moral
integrity, Hamlet ultimately reflects the fate of all human beings.