“The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide and guardian of my heart and soul,
Of all my moral beings.”
William Wordsworth, the giant of the English Romantic Revival:
The great giant of the English Romantic Revival stands alone with full-fledged philosophy and his new and general view of Nature. He looked at it as a living personality and enjoyed its benign and delightful personality. He discovered in it a divine spirit interpenetrating every object of Nature. This belief of Wordsworth, known as mystical pantheism, was expressed in his famous poems “Tintern Abbey” and “Prelude.” In these poems, he spiritualized Nature and looked at it as a great moral teacher, a great educator of the senses and the mind, a guardian, a great nurse of man’s inner being, and a great healer of wounds.
He thinks nature can lead us,
“from joy to joy”, ” inform the mind that is written within us, so impress with quietness and beauty and so feed with lofty thoughts.”
He discovered a unifying divine power working through all the objects of Nature, and keeping them in harmony. The same power ran through the heart of man, and hence he found a profound harmony between man and Nature.
The poet Wordsworth established a responsive contact and communicative link with Nature. It was so because he used to dwell upon the moral influence of Nature on the human mind and the need of man’s spiritual intercourse with her.
Influence of Hartley’s Philosophy:
The poet was greatly influenced by Hartley’s philosophy that association shapes our personality. Similarly, the poet believed that the company of Nature shapes one’s moral life. So, he thought that the touch of nature’s pure and tender aspects can make one pure and holy. Thus, Nature meant a lot to Wordsworth, and this philosophy of Nature, with its manifold ramifications/influences which occupies an independent status in his poetry.
By common consent, “Tintern Abbey, “”Immortality Ode, “and “The Prelude” are the three summits of Wordsworth, revealing his great philosophy of Nature in different ways. “Tintern Abbey is the essence of the long autobiographical poem “The Prelude” because the poet theorizes about the blissful impact of Nature on his psyche. In his “Tintern Abbey,” the poet gives an account of his own development of feelings for the sights and sounds of Nature, development from innocent to sensational and then sensuous and spiritual response to the sights and sounds of Nature.
Discovering Different Aspects of Nature through his age and experiences:
In his childhood, the poet used to look upon the sights and sounds of Nature as his innocent playmate. He, at that time, wandered aimlessly about here and there, wherever Nature led him, and enjoyed simply carefree life in the open air. He then roamed about in Nature like a doe frisking over the mountains and along the lonely streams and the deep river more with an attitude of reverence and fear than with a mood of love. And his wanderings in Nature were his glad animal movements, “giving him the coarser/rude/indelicate pleasure of his boyish days.”
As he grew up, he developed a kind of sensual relationship with sights and sounds, and scents of Nature. The shapes and colours of woods and mountains were an appetite to him. The sounding cataract and the noisy water-fall haunted him like a passion. He then loved the beauties of Nature with an unreflecting passion, and experienced a sort of “aching joys” and “dizzy raptures” in his contact and association with Nature as if at this stage of his youth Wordsworth looked at and felt drawn towards the exciting physical beauty of Nature not yet developing any spiritual insight into the life and spirit of things.
Then the poet dwells upon the final stage of development of his attitude to Nature, the stage of his profound intimacy with Nature. At this mature stage of intimacy, he now discovered a hidden significance and a profound meaning in the beauties of Nature.
He now felt the overwhelming presence of divine beauty in each and every object of Nature. Like a pantheist, he found divine light interpenetrating /shining through each and every object of Nature like the light of the setting sun, the round ocean, the blue sky, and all the things and beings all around as if Nature is the source of all his noble thoughts.
“The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide and guardian of my heart and soul, Of all my moral beings.”
This is how Wordsworth sums up the healing, the education, and the blissful influence of Nature on the human mind, and also the power of Nature to mould the personality of a human being.
Mysticism in Wordsworth:The poet also records some of his rare moments of spiritual and mystic communication of fusion with the central spirit of Nature. In such a moment of ecstasy, the poet felt the power of Nature to induce/persuade him into that serene and blessed mood when he forgets his physical self or entity and becomes “all soul”, and felt relieved of the presence and burden of the gross material world. And this, stage of the profound intimacy with Nature, according to Wordsworth, was something that followed his experience of the sad music of humanity, which most probably came out of the tragic drama of the French Revolution.
In the concluding part of “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth invites his bosom friend, his sister Dorothy, to surrender to the healing and purifying influence of Nature. He also expresses and voices same of his typical beliefs that Nature provides an enduring retreat from the horrors of experience in our daily life, that she has purifying and enabling effect on man that she never betrays the heart that loves her rather she leads us from “joy to joy”, and thus she impresses us with quietness and beauty and feeds us with lofty thoughts. The poet also attempts to instill into his friend a deeper sense of his life and spirit in the objects of Nature, which are capable of a vital companionship/fellowship with different moods of human beings, and giving them consolation in their crisis.
The different stages of Wordsworth’s attitude to Nature look like the different stages of man’s relationship with woman. In childhood, they roam about here, there, and everywhere aimlessly and carelessly like innocent playmates getting charmed, sometimes surprised. As they attain youth, they get excited by each other’s physical charm and beauty. They enjoy the thrill of physical love. As the tempest of physical intensity of passion over, they develop an intellectual and spiritual relationship with each other. They now find the deeper meaning in their relationship. Almost the same things happen in Wordsworth with Nature.
Likewise, in “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth records the change of his attitude to the sights and sounds of Nature in another nature-lyric called “Immortality Ode.” In his childhood, as the poet admits, he used to see the innocent divine beauty in natural objects.
Growing up in age and experience, he couldn’t see that noble beauty in natural objects; rather, he could see deeper intellectual and spiritual beauty in Nature. And this idea, he expresses in terms of his metaphysical doctrine of reminiscence, which says that in our childhood, we have a fresh memory of our prenatal heavenly existence, so we see heavenly beauty in natural objects. But as we grow up in age and experience, that memory of our divine existence fades away, and we fail to see divine light in things around us. A different light, however, we see, that is, a deeper intellectual and spiritual light in natural objects, and that is an ample recompense.
In this Ode, the poet wants to mean that in his boyhood, his love for Nature was a thoughtless passion, but as he grew, he discovered a new meaning and significance in the beauties of Nature. The objects of Nature now took a sober coloring form and produced deeper and nobler thoughts in his mind. And it all happened following his witnessing the suffering of humanity.
As the poet aptly says:
“To me, the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts and do often lie too deep for tears.”
Conclusion:Wordsworth was a great poet of nature. In his poetry, he deals with the different aspects of nature in such an extraordinary manner that when we go through his poems, we can’t help but feel oneness with nature. His unique concept of nature feeds the nature lovers with lofty thoughts and provides them with mental solace. Wordsworth’s poetry reflects a deep spiritual connection with nature. He sees it as a force that shapes human character and offers moral guidance. His concept of nature is still unparalleled in the firmament of the literary world.
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