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Treatment of nature in poetry
Study of william wordsworth
Nature and poetry
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William Wordsworth said, “Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher” (Brainy Quote). According to the poet, we can gain all the knowledge necessary in life from nature. Wordsworth’s poem, “The World Is Too Much With Us,” can best be interpreted to mean that people have become too wrapped up in worldly things and have lost all appreciation for what nature has to offer.
William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland in England’s Lake District which is why he is known as one of the “lake poets” of the Romantic Era. He lost his parents at a very young age and lost touch with his sister, Dorothy, because of it. Wordsworth was a very intelligent man who received his education from St. John’s College, Cambridge and later, Durham University and Oxford. Afterward he went on a walking tour in France where he was inspired by the French Revolution. When he returned to England he was reunited with his sister and became friends with another great romantic poet, Coleridge. The two poets met often and eventually wrote Lyrical Ballads (Everett, Biography).
Wordsworth devoted his work to nature and the free flow of emotion which he called the “real language of men” (Fralin, Poetry Analysis). In “The World Is Too Much With Us,” Wordsworth appears to be speaking out against almost everybody during the Industrial Revolution. In an analysis of the poem, Szczepanski states that, “Wordsworth laments that people have come to view nature as a source of material wealth rather than as a good in itself” (Poetry Analysis). He criticizes them for focus more on “getting and spending” (2) and not on a connection with nature. Fralin’s interpretation of the poem is that Wordsworth was standing on the shore and yelling ...
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...ng oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity” (Brainy Quote).
Works Cited
"William Wordsworth." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2012. 27 February. 2012.
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Fralin, GK. "Poetry Analysis: The World is Too Much With Us by William
Wordsworth." Author's Den. AuthorsDen.com, 01 Dec 2008. Web. 27 Feb 2012. .
Everett, Glenn. "William Wordsworth: Biography."Victorian Web. VictorianWeb.org, 01 Jul
2000. Web. 27 Feb 2012. .
Szczepanski, Beth. “Poetry analysis: The World is Too Much with Us, by William
Wordsworth.” Helium. Helium.com, 16 Nov 2011. Web. 27 Feb 2012.
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When thinking about nature, Hans Christian Andersen wrote, “Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” John Muir and William Wordsworth both expressed through their writings that nature brought them great joy and satisfaction, as it did Andersen. Each author’s text conveyed very similar messages and represented similar experiences but, the writing style and wording used were significantly different. Wordsworth and Muir express their positive and emotional relationships with nature using diction and imagery.
John Muir and William Wordsworth use diction and tone to define nature as doing a necessary extensile of life. Throughout Muir’s and William’s works of literature they both describe nature as being a necessary element in life that brings happiness, joy, and peace. Both authors use certain writing techniques within their poems and essays to show their love and appreciation of nature. This shows the audience how fond both authors are about nature. That is why Wordsworth and Muir express their codependent relationship with nature using diction and tone.
Wordsworth desires nature only because of his separateness, and the more isolated he feels the mor...
William Wordsworth, like Blake, was linked with Romanticism. In fact, he was one of the very founders of Romanticism. He wrote poems are about nature, freedom and emotion. He was open about how he felt about life and what his life was like. Also, Wordsworth wrote poems about the events going on around him ? for instance the French Revolution. Mainly, Wordsworth wrote about nature, however, rarely used simple descriptions in his work. Instead, Wordsworth wrote complexly, for example in his poem ?Daffodils?.
Wordsworth visualized scenes while he was away, a way for him to feel a spiritual connection until he was able to return. Wordsworth states, “As a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But opt, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them” (Wordsworth 25-27). Wordsworth gives a sense of conformity and loneliness while being in the towns and cities. That he had his memories of when he was younger to keep him hopeful to return to nature and all the memories he had grasped the memories of. As the society today focuses merely on what they can profit from cities, Wordsworth understood the true meaning of memories. Memories today are mostly captured through social media, and in return being taken for granted. Wordsworth had nostalgic bliss as he replayed his memories, and knowing that in the future he could look back on that day and have the same feeling again. Social media today is destroying our memories and what we can relive in our minds as memories. We can know that when things are posted within social media it will get likes and be shared. However, there are not many people in society today that will remember the true essence of what nature has given to
For Wordsworth nature seems to sympathise with the love and suffering. of the persona, i.e. the persona. The landscape is seen as an interior presence rather. than an external scene, i.e. His idea is that emotions are reflected in the tranquillity of the nature. On the contrary, Coleridge says that poetry is.
William Wordsworth is a British poet who is associated with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was seven years old, and he was an orphan at 13. This experience shapes much of his later work. Despite Wordsworth’s losses, he did well at Hawkshead Grammar School, where he firmly established his love of poetry. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry.
Moreover, searching for the different mechanics in each of these poems makes it easier for the reader to analysis and interpret them. To begin, in “The World is Too Much with Us” the way the punctuation is fit into the poem is different since there are many semicolons between each line and one period suggesting that the poem is actually one long sentence. Then I believe the speaker to be someone who acknowledges that he too has lost connection with nature since he’s been preoccupied with other things in the world. This is proven throughout the whole poem since he talks in first person using the word “I.” The tone of this poem is angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied because of how the world has changed. The rhyme scheme is also another appealing mechanic here too since Wordsworth only uses fou...
Wordsworth truly emphasized the influence nature had on human morals and emotion. He spiritualised nature and regarded the environment as a philosophical moral teacher, as a mother and even guardian, as the one true elevating influence that was greater than any other. He believed that between man and Nature there is mutual consciousness and understanding, as well as a spiritual connection. According to him, human beings who grow up in the lap of Nature like he did were the ideal humans, the perfect kind. Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of Nature as this pastoral influence. “They are second only to nature, which is "the breath of God." (Wordsworth 221). It was his special characteristic to concern himself, not with the strange and remote aspects of the earth, and sky, but nature in ordinary, familiar, everyday moods.Wordsworth stressed upon the moral influence of Nature and the need of man’s spiritual discourse with it “Great and benign, indeed, must be the power/ Of living nature,” (Wordsworth 167). He did not recognize the scary, hideous side of nature, only its
Nature inspires Wordsworth poetically. Nature gives a landscape of seclusion that implies a deepening of the mood of seclusion in Wordsworth's mind.
One of the most famous poets in literary history is that of William Wordsworth. He lived between the years of 1770-1850. He was a very strong poet and many of his works have some degree of a pessimistic view to them. They could be understood after the hard life he led. He saw the French Revolution at its height and wrote several poems about it. He had an illegitimate daughter with a woman in France. When he returned back to England he married Mary Hutchinson, who gave him two sons and another daughter.
During Wordsworth time as a poet he made it his mission to have poetry be read by not only the aristocrats but also now the common man something that has never been done. In both poems Wordsworth makes his poems relatable by incorporating themes that everyone can relate to even if they haven’t personally had that experience, although both poems do differ when it comes down to structure and form but also when trying to convey a message, these poems are important because these ideas have never been done before and now even the average Joe can finally participate in a conversation about poetry and this brings two world together.
Through the poems of Blake and Wordsworth, the meaning of nature expands far beyond the earlier century's definition of nature. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." The passion and imagination portrayal manifest this period unquestionably, as the Romantic Era. Nature is a place of solace where the imagination is free to roam. Wordsworth contrasts the material world to the innocent beauty of nature that is easily forgotten, or overlooked due to our insensitivities by our complete devotion to the trivial world. “But yet I know, where’er I go, that there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
Wordsworth is deeply involved with the complexities of nature and human reaction to it. To Wordsworth nature is the revelation of god through viewing everything that is harmonious or beautiful in nature. Man’s true character is then formed and developed through participation in this balance. Wordsworth had the view that people are at their best when they are closest to nature. Being close creates harmony and order. He thought that the people of his time were getting away from that.
"The Poetry of William Wordsworth." SIRS Renaissance 20 May 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 06 February 2010.