Relationship and love/ William Wordsworth

 William Wordsworth considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and the most interesting properties of nature. 'The fairest and most interesting properties of nature' are not the most beautiful and most picturesque aspects of natural scenery, but those aspects of the physical world which when they react on the sensitive mind of the poet, produces an awareness of some of the basic laws of the human mind. Wordsworth writes-

"The poet is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love."

As for the poet being 'rock of defence for human nature', this world seems to mean that the poet in virtue of his achievement of this kind of awareness, redeems man from triviality and from selfishness by demonstrating the importance of sympathy and the relation of the individual experiences to the sum of life. Wordsworth further expands-

"The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society."

He does this by revealing hte common psychological laws which underlie all sensation and all sensitivity and revealing it not by abstract discussion but by showing through the persuasive concrete illustration. The poet thus reveals the relationship of men both to each other and to the external world.

For Wordsworth, it is neither the edifying nature of the poet's world, nor the accuracy of his psychological observations, nor the smoothness and agreeableness of his versification which gives him pleasure; it is his ability to body forth in concrete and sensuous terms those basic principles illustrated alike in the mind of man and the workings of nature.

Wordsworth removes the instruction from the 'instruction and delight' formula of many 17th and 18th century critics, but saves himself from falling into a simple hedonistic theory by insisting on the moral dignity of pleasure and its universal significance in man in nature. He resolves the Platonic dilemma in a quiet new way. Poetry is not an imitation of an imitation, but a concrete and sensuous illustration of both a fact and a relationship which provides pleasure and at the same time shows the universal importance of pleasure. It does not debase men by nourishing their passions, for passions are but a means of knowledge. Passion, sensation and pleasure are, under the proper conditions, good and helpful things. conductive to knowledge and to love. It is an answer curiously Platonic in tone, though so un-Platonic in its assumptions.