Wordsworth As A Poet of Nature with Special Reference to Tintern Abbey

Wordsworth is highly renowned as a poet of nature. Tintern Abbey is one of his representative poems revealing a more profound philosophy and unified expression of his thoughts about nature. 

The poem is Wordsworth’s testimony to the change of his attitude towards nature. 

The poet has described the outer world in a highly emotional tone, emphasizing how it affected his inner self, reflecting his different stages of attitudinal growth towards nature.

Tintern Abbey records the evolution of the poet’s outlook and attitude towards nature since he first visited the River Wye bank during a tour. Wordsworth merely creates a word or picture of a remembered scene, but a mythic paradise, in the poem. 

For Wordsworth, paradise is the world that a mind can unify and harmonize completely. Moreover, there is harmony in the paradisal scene. 

Wordsworth is Recounting of His Boyhood Image while Observing Nature

Wordsworth recounted his boyhood image as he looked again at the river’s ‘steep woods and lofty cliffs.’ The recount of the world experienced by the young poet reveals the acceptance of disorder, violence, and even fear. 

The cottages, orchards, etc., are supplanted by the “Sounding contract, the tall rock, the mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood.” All these suggest the terror of the world, the awfulness of the unknown, and the mysterious. 

As a boy, his love for nature was an animalistic, pure, and healthy gladness for open spaces. It was simply a healthy boy’s delight in outdoor life. He enjoyed nature only through the senses; the sounding cataract haunted him like a passion, and his hungry soul fed itself on the beautiful colors and lovely forms of the mountains and the woods. 

At this stage, his love for nature had no philosophical or intellectual basis.

Youth to Older Age: Wordsworth’s Love for Nature Transforms from Sensuas Charm to Spiritual and Intellectual Observation

However, when Wordsworth matured, his attitude towards nature underwent a significant change. 

In his youth, his love for nature was characterized by “dizzy raptures” and aching joys, replacing the earlier, “coarser pleasures.” The love of nature in youth is purely sensuous, though deep and absorbing. The colors and shapes of mountains and woods were an appetite for him. 

In his youth, he was fascinated by the physical beauty and the sensuous charm of nature. However, as he was growing older, nature invoked in him the consciousness of “. . . still sad music of humanity,” which he developed with a philosophical mind, observing nature not with the painter’s eyes, but as an interpreter, deciphering the hidden meaning of it. 

The sunset clouds no longer appeal to him as a color-changing phenomenon but as a symbol of the rise and fall of nations and empires. At this stage, Wordsworth’s love for nature becomes spiritual as well as intellectual.

Wordsworth Finds A Resemblance between Nature and Human Misery

To the poet, the brook’s water and the water’s murmur suggest agonized cry of the suffering humanity. The experience of the world’s misery makes him nobler, gentler, and more sensible. His love of nature kills his heart with the love of humanity. 

Wordsworth still appreciates the external beauty of nature, but the inner beauty appeals to him more. He discovers in nature the existence of a living, all-embracing spirit, including the human mind. This concept of divine spirit existing in nature is called pantheism. 

However, Wordsworth still loves the objects of nature that appeal to his senses. He firmly believes that his purest thoughts are stimulated by nature, acting as the nurse, the guide, guardian of his heart, and the soul of his moral being. 

Wordsworth maintains that nature never betrays the heart that loves her; nature leads from joy to joy, feeling our mind’s wild greatness and beauty.

Conclusion

In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth recalls his feelings of joy on revisiting a scene of nature. He has gained “sweet sensations” from these nature objects during the hour of wariness and frustrations. He considers nature as a healing influence on troubled minds, emphasizing the moral function of nature. 

Regarding nature as a great moral teacher, he advocates spiritual intimacy between man and nature.

Celebrated critic Myers has rightly described Tintern Abbey as “the consecrated formulary of Wordsworthian faith.” The poem formulates the main aspects of Wordsworth’s nature cried in superb poetic diction; Tintern Abbey epitome of Wordsworth’s philosophy of nature and man.

Also, read this article as:

The three stages of Wordsworth’s growth as a poet of nature as recorded in Tintern Abbey

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