Wordsworth as a Nature Poet

Wordsworth as a Nature Poet

Wordsworth or “the Muse of Poetry” well known as “a priest of Nature”, who shows:

“……………….the light of setting sun,
And the round ocean, and the blue sky,
The living air and the mind of man”.

English poetry before Wordsworth was the poetry of town and drawing room but Wordsworth drew the attention of the readers towards rills and hills, skies and stars, rivers and trees. In his poetry he adopted Rousseau’s slogan “Return to nature” but in his return to her he never grew morbid like Rousseau or animal like D.H. Lawrence. He says “love he had found in huts where poor men lives”, and his poetry is the “language of conversation among middle and poor classes of the society”, and as a poet he is “a man speaking to men”. So, he today remains the living voice crying in its wilderness prophetic protest, not only against the unhealthiness civilization but also against the drop brutality of the machine world. The poem World is too Much With Us about the people who are out of tune with nature. In the present poem Wordsworth shows us a beautiful image of nature:
“…….sea that bares her bosom to the moon/The winds that will be howling all hours And now up gathered like the sleeping flowers”.
Tintern Abbey is the complete philosophy of Wordsworth and the most reflective poem of English literature. In this poem he says that nature is:
“……..the nurse/The guide and guardian of my heart and soulAnd all of my moral being”.
In the same poem he advices his sister Dorothy that nature takes us “joy to joy” and it “never betray the heart of that loves her”. In Immortality Ode, he says , when he was a boy his love towards nature was a thoughtless passion but now the object of nature takes sober colouring in his eyes because he sees the “still sad music of humanity” “To me the meanest flower that blows can give the Thought that often do lie too deep for tears”.
Thus, we see that Wordsworth love for nature underwent various charges. It starts form the delight of childhood and culminated into the worship. In sum, nature was never dead for Wordsworth, but it is full if breath of infinite breath. One may add to it, we cannot see the Nature with Wordsworth’s eyes.