William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
'The Prelude' is important in giving one of the most succinct of Wordsworth's accounts of the development of his attitude to Nature - moving from the animal pleasure of childhood through adolescent passion for the wild and gloomy to adult awareness of the relation of our perception of the natural world; but its poetic interest lies in its brilliant combination of the lyric and the meditative, the exaltation of reminiscence into poetry through the proper handling of 'Relationship and Love'.
Nature in Wordsworth's poetry is not regarded as a background for his pictures of men, nor as a mere mirror refecting the feelings of man, but rather as a wonderful power around us calming and influencing our souls. An essentially Wordsworthian feature of his treatment of Nature is his intense spirituality revealed in these lines of 'Tintern Abbey'-
'She can so inform the mind that is within us, so impress, with quietness and beauty, and so feed with lofty thoughts...'
Similar idea is beautifully and effectively expressed in these lines of Book I of 'The Prelude'-
'The immortal spirit grows
like harmony in music.
There is a dark invisible workmanship
that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
in one society.'
According to Wordsworth, the best in man comes out during his companionship with Nature. Infact, Nature has the power to draw out from within us those hidden powers that go to build what we essentially are! Wordsworth's strong conviction that 'the child is the father of man' is an extension of his feelings for Nature. He felt that he owed what he was in maturity to his childhood, spent in the free natural surroundings of hills, groves and streams. Thus, Wordsworth had developed from passive admiration of Nature to the possession of an active creative power induced by Nature.
Wordsworth insists that through contact with Nature, the heart is exalted and made happy. Such happiness and exaltation is moral and in such a moral condition the heart can do no wrong. 'Wordsworthian Nature and Worsworthian Man appear akin.'
As a poet of nature, Wordsworth stands supreme. He is "a worshiper of Nature": Nature devoted or high -priest. Nature occupies in his poems a separate or independent status and is not treated in a casual or passing manner. Tin tern Abbey is a poem with Nature as its theme.
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