Is William Wordsworth ia poet of nature? Discuss.

"William Wordsworth is the Romantic poet most often described as a

"nature" writer; what the word "nature" meant to Wordsworth is, however, a
complex issue. On the one hand, Wordsworth was the quintessential poet as
naturalist, always paying close attention to details of the physical
environment around him (plants, animals, geography, weather). At the same
time, Wordsworth was a self-consciously literary artist who described "the
mind of man" as the "main haunt and region of [his] song." This tension
between objective describer of the natural scene and subjective shaper of
sensory experience is partly the result of Wordsworth's view of the mind as
"creator and receiver both." Wordsworth consistently describes his own mind
as the recipient of external sensations which are then rendered into its own
mental creations. (Shelley made a related claim in "Mont Blanc" when he
said that his mind "passively / Now renders and receives, fast influencings, /
Holding an unremitting interchange / With the clear universe of things
around".) Such an alliance of the inner life with the outer world is at the heart
of Wordsworth's descriptions of nature. Wordsworth's ideas about memory,
the importance of childhood experiences, and the power of the mind to
bestow an "auxiliar" light on the objects it beholds all depend on this ability
to record experiences carefully at the moment of observation but then to
shape those same experiences in the mind over time. We should also recall,
however, that he made widespread use of other texts in the production of his
Wordsworthian (Keats said "egotistical") sublime: drafts of poems by
Coleridge, his sister Dorothy's Journals, the works of Milton, Shakespeare,
Thomson, and countless others. Wordsworthian "nature" emerges as much a
product of his widespead reading as of his wanderings amid the affecting
landscapes of the Lake District.
His poems often present an instant when nature speaks to him and he
responds by speaking for nature. The language of nature in such instances is,
like the language Wordsworth uses to record such events, often cryptic and
enigmatic. The owls in the often-quoted "Boy of Winander" passage of The
Prelude hoot to a Wordsworthian child who answers first in their owl-
language and then with a poem that records only the mirroring image of an
"uncertain heaven," the dark sky reflected in a still silent lake. Wordsworth
longs for a version of nature that will redeem him from the vagaries of
passing moments, but he usually records those natural phenomena that
promise only the passing of time and the cyclical transience of natural
process. "Nutting" holds us up painfully against the ravaging of a pristine and
naturally spiritualized bower. The Lucy poems tells us that Lucy is back into
nature at her death, but that consolation seems small recompense for the
humanized "nature" of the loss. The Prelude wants to keep us in touch with a
childhood and subsequent adult identity realized within the natural world; at
the same time, however, this autobiographical epic leaves adult readers
feeling a long way from the "spots of time" of childhood. Nothing in
Wordsworth is simple or singular; like Milton, he is a poet who almost resists
the possibility of final or definitive interpretation. His view of nonhuman
nature is likewise open-ended. Wordsworth's "nature" points us away from
the closed world of theocentric symbol-making toward the unstable world of
postmodern meaning." (Ashton Nichols)

Wordsworth's Poetical Works Summary

and Analysis of "Ode; Intimations of
Immortality"
Full Title: "Ode; Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood"

The speaker begins by declaring that there was a time when nature seemed
mystical to him, like a dream, "Apparelled in celestial light." But now all of
that is gone. No matter what he does, "The things which I have seen I now
can see no more."
In the second stanza the speaker says that even though he can still see the
rainbow, the rose, the moon, and the sun, and even though they are still
beautiful, something is different...something has been lost: "But yet I know,
where'er I go, / That there hath past away a glory from the earth." The
speaker is saddened by the birds singing and the lambs jumping in the third
stanza. Soon, however, he resolves not to be depressed, because it will only
put a damper on the beauty of the season. He declares that all of the earth is
happy, and exhorts the shepherd boy to shout.
In the fourth stanza the speaker continues to be a part of the joy of the season,
saying that it would be wrong to be "sullen / While Earth herself in adorning,
/ And the Children are culling / On every side, / In a thousand valleys far and
wide." However, when he sees a tree, a field, and later a pansy at his feet,
they again give him a strong feeling that something is amiss. He asks,
"Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the
dream?"
The fifth stanza contains arguably the most famous line of the poem: "Our
birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." He goes on to say that as infants we
have some memory of heaven, but as we grow we lose that connection:
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" As children this connection with
heaven causes us to experience nature's glory more clearly. Once we are
grown, the connection is lost. In the sixth stanza, the speaker says that as
soon as we get to earth, everything conspires to help us forget the place we
came from: heaven. "Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial
palace whence he came."
In the seventh stanza the speaker sees (or imagines) a six-year-old boy, and
foresees the rest of his life. He says that the child will learn from his
experiences, but that he will spend most of his effort on imitation: "And with
new joy and pride / The little Actor cons another part." It seems to the
speaker that his whole life will essentially be "endless imitation." In the
eighth stanza the speaker speaks directly to the child, calling him a
philosopher. The speaker cannot understand why the child, who is so close to
heaven in his youth, would rush to grow into an adult. He asks him, "Why
with such earnest pains dost thou provoke / The years to bring the inevitable
yoke, / Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?" In the ninth stanza
(which is the longest at 38 lines) the speaker experiences a flood of joy when
he realizes that through memory he will always be able to connect to his
childhood, and through his childhood to nature.

Hence is a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the might water rolling evermore.
In the tenth stanza the speaker harkens back to the beginning of the poem,
asking the same creatures that earlier made him sad with their sounds to sing
out: "Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!" Even though he admits
that he has lost some of the glory of nature as he has grown out of childhood,
he is comforted by the knowledge that he can rely on his memory. In the final
stanza the speaker says that nature is still the stem of everything is his life,
bringing him insight, fueling his memories and his belief that his soul is
immortal: "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do
often lie too deep for tears."
Analysis
"Ode; Intimations of Immortality" is a long and rather complicated poem
about Wordsworth's connection to nature and his struggle to understand
humanity's failure to recognize the value of the natural world. The poem is
elegiac in that it is about the regret of loss. Wordsworth is saddened by the
fact that time has stripped away much of nature's glory, depriving him of the
wild spontaneity he exhibited as a child.
As seen in "The world is too much with us," Wordsworth believes that the
loss stems from being too caught up in material possessions. As we grow up,
we spend more and more time trying to figure out how to attain wealth, all
the while becoming more and more distanced from nature. The poem is
characterized by a strange sense of duality. Even though the world around the
speaker is beautiful, peaceful, and serene, he is sad and angry because of
what he (and humanity) has lost. Because nature is a kind of religion to
Wordsworth, he knows that it is wrong to be depressed in nature's midst and
pulls himself out of his depression for as long as he can.
In the seventh stanza especially, Wordsworth examines the transitory state of
childhood. He is pained to see a child's close proximity to nature being
replaced by a foolish acting game in which the child pretends to be an adult
before he actually is. Instead, Wordsworth wants the child to hold onto the
glory of nature that only a person in the flush of youth can appreciate.
In the ninth, tenth and eleventh stanzas Wordsworth manages to reconcile the
emotions and questions he has explored throughout the poem. He realizes
that even though he has lost his awareness of the glory of nature, he had it
once, and can still remember it. The memory of nature's glory will have to be
enough to sustain him, and he ultimately decides that it is. Anything that we
have, for however short a time, can never be taken away completely, because
it will forever be held in our memory.

Wordsworth's Poetical Works Themes

Nature
"Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your Teacher." No
discussion on Wordsworth would be complete without mention of nature.
Nature and its connection to humanity makes an appearance in the vast
majority of Wordsworth's poetry, often holding a poem's focus, and has
become the cornerstone of the Romantic Movement primarily because of
him. For Wordsworth, nature is a kind of religion in which he has the utmost
faith. Nature fills two major roles in Wordsworth's poetry:
1. Even though it is intensely beautiful and peaceful, nature often causes
Wordsworth to feel melancholy or sad. This is usually because, even as he
relishes in his connection with nature, he worries about the rest of humanity,
most of who live in cites completely apart from nature. Wordsworth wonders
how they could possibly revive their spirits. In the end, however, he often
decides that it is wrong to be sad while in nature: "A poet could not but be
gay, / In such jocund company."
2. Nature also gives Wordsworth hope for the future. Form past experience
Wordsworth knows that spending time in nature is a gift to his future self,
because later, when he is alone, tired and frustrated in the busy, dirty city, he
will be able to look back on a field of daffodils he once spent time in and be
happy again.
Memory
For Wordsworth, the power of the human mind is extremely important. In
several of his poems he begins in a negative or depressed mood, and then
slowly becomes more positive. The most important use of memory, however,
is to maintain connections. For instance, in poems like "Line Composed a
Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" and "I wandered lonely as a cloud"
Wordsworth is in nature (his favorite place to be) and he is happy, but he
becomes even happier when he realizes that he never actually has to leave his
memories behind. Once he has returned to the daily gloom of the city, he will
be able to remember the time he spent among nature and make himself happy
again: "And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils."
As Wordsworth begins to consider his own mortality memory is again a huge
comfort, because he realizes that even after he has died he will be able to live
on in the memory of his family and friends, just as those who have passed on
before him are in his memory. Wordsworth is especially heartened to know
that his sister Dorothy, with whom he spent countless hours, will remember
him fondly, carrying him with her wherever she goes.
Mortality
Wordsworth's fascination with death frequently shows up in his poetry. The
Lucy Poems, for instance, are a series of poems about a young girl who
may or may not have been a figment of Wordsworth's imagination, and who
ultimately dies. Wordsworth looks at the event from several angles. In "She
dwelt among the untrodden ways" he focuses on the unexpectedness of her
death, and the unpredictability of life and death in general. In "Three years
she grew" Wordsworth creates a fanciful rationale for her death: Nature
became entranced by her and promised to give her an incredible life, but once
all of her promises were fulfilled Lucy had to die. In "We are Seven"
Wordsworth looks at a young girl who had six siblings but now lives at home
with only her mother, because two of her siblings have died and the others
have moved away. The little girl seems not to understand death throughout
the poem, but in the end the reader learns that she may have a clearer
understanding than the speaker. In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above
Tintern Abbey" Wordsworth is comforted by the thought that he will live on
after his death, because his sister Dorothy will remember him lovingly.
Humanity
One of Wordsworth's greatest worries is the descent of humanity. As man
moves further and further away from humanity he seems to be losing more
and more of his soul. Often when Wordsworth is in nature he is saddened
because he is forced to think about the people trapped in cities, unable or
unwilling to commune with nature. In "London, 1802," for instance,
Wordsworth makes a plea to the poet John Milton to return and teach
humanity how to regain the morality and virtue it once had. Similarly, in
"The world is too much with us" Wordsworth worries that the world is too
full of people who have lost their connection to divinity, and more
importantly, to nature: "Getting and spending we lay waste our powers, /
Little we see in Nature that is ours."
Transcendence and Connectivity
The idea of transcendence did not gain full speed until the Romantic
Movement moved to America, but Wordsworth was certainly a fan of the
idea long before then. "Transcendence" simply means "being without
boundaries." For Wordsworth, this means being able to connect with people
and things outside of oneself, especially in terms of nature. It was
Wordsworth's supreme aspiration to metaphorically transcend the limitations
of his body and connect completely with nature. Mankind's difficulty
accepting the beauty that nature has to offer saddened Wordsworth; he found
the loss of such a gift difficult to accept.
Morality
In Wordsworth's poems, morality doesn't necessarily stem directly from
religion, but rather from doing what is right by oneself, by humanity, and by
nature. In "London, 1802" Wordsworth complains that man's morals are in a
state of constant decline, but the morals he is talking about have more to do
with following the natural process of life - being free and powerful, not tied
down by city living or common thoughts. The most important lesson a person
can learn, according to Wordsworth, is to be true to his own impulses and
desires, but not greedy. A person should be available to help his fellow man,
but should not be consumed by other peoples' needs. He should be in
communion with nature, with humanity, and with himself.
Religion
Religion, while not as prevalent as in the poetry of the Enlightenment, does
have a place in much of Wordsworth's poetry. Often religion is included
simply to help Wordsworth's more pious readers understand the level of his
commitment to and faith in nature. Wordsworth uses religious imagery and
language in his poems in order to convey his ideas about the power of nature,
the human mind, and global interconnectivity.