Prof. Abdelhamid Fouda
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Wordsworth, the poet of nature
Nature was the source of all joy for Wordsworth.
Nature was the source of all joy for Wordsworth. Nature for him was a living personality just like a teacher, a guardian and a nurse. Abdul Ghani Dar writes.
Wordsworth is a nature poet, a fact known to every reader of Wordsworth. He is a supreme worshipper of Nature. Nature has a pivotal position in his poetry. Wordsworth's philosophy of nature can be understood within the following three parameters:
1) He conceived Nature as a living personality.
2) Nature as a source of consolation and joy.
3) Nature as a great teacher, guardian and nurse.
Wordsworth believed that in the living personality of nature a divine spirit, termed as mystical pantheism, is prevailing in all objects of Nature. This belief finds a complete expression in tintern abbey where he says that the spirit rolls through all the objects of Nature:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
He believed that between man and nature there is a mutual consciousness, spiritual communion or mystic intercourse. He takes his readers into the secret of the soul's communion with Nature. His belief is that human beings who grow up in the lap of nature are perfect and poised in every respect. Tintern Abbey, Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower and To a Highland Girl are his typical poems where this belief is expressed in a simple way. The Highland Girl, an emblem of female perfection, is born and bred in a natural environment.
Wordsworth looked upon Nature as exercising a soothing and healing influence on sorrow stricken hearts. He tells his sister Dorothy Wordsworth of the tranquilling effect of Nature on troubled minds. In Tintern Abbey he says:
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a 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…
So whenever the poet felt oppressed by fretful stir and tension of the world, he felt relief by thinking about Nature and it scenes.
Throughout his poetry Wordsworth emphasized and highlighted the belief that Nature is a great moral teacher, the best mother, guardian and nurse of man. For instance, in Three Years She Grew in Sun And Shower, he says:
Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle and restrain.
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her, for the willow bend,
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motion of the storm,
Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
His belief is that there is a direct spiritual communion between man and Nature. In Tintern Abbey, he says:
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
of all my moral being.
Wordsworth believed in the education of man by Nature. In this respect Wordsworth was influenced by Rouseau who was a great educationist of man by Nature. In The Tables Turned, Wordsworth urges his friend to leave his books and come out into open Nature which is a living book and since he can learn more about man and about moral good or evil and the vernal wood than from all the sages. So in The Tables Turned he says:
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife;
Come, here the woodland linnel,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There is more of wisdom in it.
And hark! How blithe the throstle sings?
He, too is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things
Let Nature be your teacher,
One impulse from a vernal wood,
May teach you more of man
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
According to Wordsworth Nature appears to have a formative influence superior to anything and thus influences and moulds human character. He tells his sister Dorothy that "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her (Nature)", that Nature can impress the human mind with quietness and beauty; that nature gives human beings lofty thoughts. He advises his sister to let the moon shine on her and winds blow on her, i.e., to enlighten herself under the Nature's influence.
Without learning from Nature-teacher, man's life is vain and totally incomplete. In the Prelude, Tintern Abbey and the Immortality Ode Wordsworth traces that evolution of the development of his love for nature. At the first stage (in the evolution of thought) Wordsworth found pleasure in roaming about in the midst of Nature. Like a deer he leaped about over the mountains, by the side of deep rivers and alone in the lonely streams. He wandered about wherever Nature led him. His wanderings in the midst of Nature are described by him as a "glad animal movement" and the joy he enjoyed in the midst of Nature is called a coarse pleasure. In Prelude Book 1 he says:
Oh, many a time, have I a five year child,
In a small mill-race severed from his stream,
Made one long bathing of a summer's day;
Basked in the Sun, and plunged and basked again.
Alternative, all a Summer's day, or Scoured
The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves,
…and from my mother's hut.
Had sun abroad in wantoness, to sport.
A naked savage, in thunder shower.
At the second stage, Wordsworth's love for Nature was purely physical, sensual and aesthetic. The Picturesque-Nature i.e., mountains, multi coloured and multi fragranced flowers and noisy water falls and murmuring streams haunted him thoughtlessly like a passion. In Tintern Abbey he says:
…..The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountains and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remote charm,
By thought Supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye,
Finally at the third stage Wordsworth's love for Nature attained a spiritual and intellectual model and he realized Nature's role as a guardian. He now became thoughtful as he had now seen the sufferings of mankind as he heard "the still, sad music of humanity". In the Immortality Ode he says:
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Wordsworth now as a pantheist found a latent but significant spiritual communication and communion between man and Nature. He realized the living presence of nature in all objects of nature i.e., the setting sun, in blue Sky and blue Oceans and blue cosmos etc. etc.
