When the time came to the end of the eighteenth century a new revolutionary atmosphere appeared in political, social, and literary spheres in the Western world.

Chapter Six: Women and Nature in Romantic Lyric Poetry

When the time came to the end of the eighteenth century a new revolutionary atmosphere appeared in political, social, and literary spheres in the Western world.

Along with the turmoil of French Revolution and Industrial Revolution, in England, we see the dawn of a new kind of poetics, which was later named Romanticism. In this new poetics, nature becomes a key factor and compared with the prominent position nature occupies, poems about woman are interspersed in the bulk of

Romantic lyrics. In this chapter, the main focus will be put on the idea of nature in the Romantic lyrics and before the detailed discussion of their love toward nature I will first discuss the woman image presented in the lyric poetry of this period. In my discussion of both woman and nature in Romantic lyrics, my focus will be put on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, who, I think, can represent the gist of the lyric poetry in this period.

In contrast to the innovative concept the Romantics have of nature, the woman image in their poems has no significant change. Actually the poem on woman or about woman basically follows the lyric tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and judging from their worship of Spencer, Sidney, Shakespeare and Milton, this tendency is quite understandable. There are many narrative poems concerning women, such as Wordsworth’s “The Female Vagrant,” “The Thorn,” “The Mad Mother,” “The Ruined Cottage,” “Ruth”; Coleridge’s “Christabel”; or Keats’s

“Lamia” and so on. Since my interest is in the lyrics I will not include the discussion of those narrative poems.

The Romantics basically propagate the literary heritage of the English

Renaissance, and their attitude toward women is also similar to that in the sonnets of

that period. Woman, as usual, is beautiful but cold and aloof and the male poet’s

love usually gets no return. Natural objects are used figuratively to depict woman’s beauty, and this figurative usage, as mentioned in those previous chapters, is a

deprivation of the subjectivity of both nature and woman, since this connection is only a projection of the male poet’s desire. Besides, woman’s inconstancy is always implied through the male poet’s suspicion, and through this degradation of woman, the male poet tries to show their chastity and therefore superiority to woman.

Woman is not an important element in Wordsworth’s poetry and whenever woman appears, most of the time she is silenced by the poet. For example, Dorothy, Wordsworth’s dear sister, as an important companion in both the poet’s real life and literary life, is always quiet in his poems. In “Home at Grasmere” Wordsworth shows his gratitude to Dorothy: “Where’er my footsteps turned, / Her voice was like a hidden Bird that sang; / The thought of her was like a flash of light / Or an unseen companionship, a breath / Of fragrance independent of the wind” (109-13). Dorothy seems to have no real physical existence to the poet; her voice is like that of the

“hidden” bird and the thought of her is like the light or the fragrant smell, hence an

“unseen” companionship. Consequently Dorothy seems a phantasmal figure in Wordsworth’s poetry. At the end of “Tintern Abbey” after the poet’s reminiscence of his past, he addresses to Dorothy, his companion there: “My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch / The language of my former heart, and read / My former pleasures in the shooting lights / Of thy wild eyes” (116-19). Being his dear friend, Dorothy, however, does not get autonomous identity in his poetry. Here, Wordsworth claims that he gets the language and pleasures of his former life in Dorothy’s voice and eyes and Dorothy is only the projection of the poet’s former self, “a kind of silent,

supplementary support to the speaker’s imagination” (Day 190). Being such an

important woman in Wordsworth’s life, Dorothy is still silenced. We cannot hear her

voice, nor know her thought in the whole poem. Dorothy is just, As Mellor puts, “a

less conscious being whose function is to mirror and thus to guarantee the truth of the poet’s development and perceptions” (Romanticism and Gender 19). The only function of Dorothy’s existence is to be the hidden and unseen companion of Wordsworth.

In the Lucy poems, Lucy again never speaks and we can only know her through the poet’s words. In those poems, Lucy is not treated as a living sentient being but is depicted as natural objects, as flowers, animals, stars, or even rocks and stones. She is “[f]resh as a rose in June” (“Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known” 6); she is “[a]

violet by a mossy stone” and “[f]air as a star” (“She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways” 5; 7); she is “sportive as the fawn” (“Three Years She Grew” 13); when she dies she “[r]olled . . . / with rocks, and stones, and trees” (“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” 7-8). Yet, she is never a living human being. The assimilation of Lucy to the natural objects “renders her a passive object of romantic contemplation; all the living feeling belongs to the poet” (Morris 25). If nature is female, woman is also

identified with nature in Wordsworth’s poetry and those female figures are never presented as unique individuals with complex personalities. The identity of both nature and woman is blurred through the poet’s imposition of his own feelings. In

“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” Lucy is even referred to as “a thing”. The poet says, “She seemed a thing that could not feel / The touch of earthly years” (3-4). As Morris has mentioned, “The feminine constructed as ‘a thing’ functions like a

narcissistic mirror to reflect the fullness and feeling of a subjective masculine humanity. To be male is to be human, to be female is to be other—‘a thing that could not feel’” (26).

In Coleridge’s lyrics, the connection between nature and woman is also common, and as the natural objects women are silenced in Coleridge’s poems. In

“Recollections of Love” Coleridge addresses the river Greta “maiden mild”, which

provides “Dear under-song in clamor’s hour” (30) to comfort the male poet. In “To the Evening Star” at first Coleridge praises the constant brightness of the star: “I hail, sweet star, thy chaste effulgent glow” (2). Then in the next two stanzas, while chanting his compliment of the star, the poet also questions the chastity of his loved lady: “O first and fairest of the starry choir, / O loveliest ’mid the daughters of the night, / Must not the maid I love like thee inspire / Pure joy and Calm Delight? / Must she not be, as is thy placid sphere / Serenely brilliant? (5-10). Coleridge wants the beloved lady as chaste and bright as the evening star and wishes that she will inspire pure joy and calm delight as the star. Here it is obvious that the metaphorical connection between the star and the woman just shows the projection of the poet’s desire. In “To An Unfortunate Woman at the Theater,” the maiden, who “Sitt’st behind those virgins gay, / Like a scorch’d and mildew’d bough, / Leafless ’mid the blooms of May!” (3-4), is lured and then forsaken by an untrue man. Then the poet provides a belated advice, saying that he has known originally that the man is not true and the poet definitely believes that the maiden will be wiser since “The strong plume in Wisdom’s pinion / Is the memory of past folly” (23-24). At the end, the maiden is compared to a mute and forlorn sky-lark and Coleridge believes “Soon with renovated wing / Shall she dare a loftier flight, / Upward to the Day-Star spring, / And embathe in heavenly light” (29-32). The forsaken maiden is silenced throughout the whole poem and we can only hear the poet’s unilateral thinking. In the very next poem “To An unfortunate Woman” the maid is a myrtle-leaf while the man is a partridge and this demonstrates the stereotyped images of passive woman and active man. When the partridge gets near, the myrtle-leaf loves “the dalliance of the gale” and then

Lightly didst thou, foolish thing!

Heave and flutter to his sighs,

While the flatterer, on his wing,

Woo’d and whisper’d thee to rise.

Gaily from thy mother-stalk

Wert thou danc’d and wafted high—

Soon on this unshelter’d walk

Flung to fade, to rot and die. (9-16)

Here the woman is silenced and defaced and we can only hear the poet’s description of the woman’s unfortunate experience metaphorically. In “Lewti” natural objects are shown as contrast to Lewti. Coleridge states at the beginning: “At midnight by the stream I roved, / To forget the form I loved. / Image of Lewti! from my mind / Depart; for Lewti is not kind” (1-4). Coleridge uses cloud, vapour in the sky to imply the treacherousness of Lewti. And then two white swans are used to depict Lewti’s white bosom and then at last Coleridge says: “I’d die indeed, if I might see / Her bosom heave, and heave for me! / Soothe, gentle image! Soothe my mind! / To-morrow Lewti may be kind” (80-83). Throughout the poem we hear only the male poet’s complaint of Lewti’s unkindness and treacherousness and the poet’s physical desire, and this seems the only function of woman.

In Coleridge’s opinion, true love dwells in the mind and he says in “Reason for Loves Blindness”:

I have heard of reasons manifold Why Love must needs be blind, But this the best of all I hold—

His eyes are in his mind.

What outward from and feature are

He guesseth but in part;

But that within is good and fair He seeth with the heart. (1-8)

Women, in Coleridge’s poems, seem unable to recognize true love, either because they are too naïve to tell from true or false as those mentioned above, or they are vain and look for the outward wealth or handsome looking. In “Separation” Coleridge blames women because they value higher the outward form than the inward worth:

“The dazzling charm of outward form, / The power of gold, the pride of birth, / Have taken Woman’s heart by storm— / Usurp’d the place of inward worth” (5-8). For Coleridge true love is much valuable than the outward form, wealth, or proud ancestry, so he says: “O! Asra, Asra! could thou see / Into the bottom of my heart, / There’s such a mind of Love for thee, / As almost might supply desert!” (13-16). In

“Farewell to Love” Coleridge accuses his love of blindness because she cannot see the truth of his heart: “While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving / To pleasure’s secret haunts, and some apart / Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving, / To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart” (5-8). At the end, Coleridge, as a result of disappointment, says: “O grief!—but farewell, Love! I will go play me / With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me” (13-14). Here, the thoughts are actually the thoughts of his love because in the first stanza he says:

“And as you shaped my thoughts I sighed or smiled” (4). So, he would rather say good-by to his love since thoughts will never betray him while the woman will.

Women seem stigmatized in Coleridge’s poems since they are either too foolish or too vain to know what true love is; while the male poet knows and holds true love.

The most extraordinary one among Shelley’s poems concerning woman is “The

Indian Girl’s Song” written in 1819, a dramatic lyric, which is sung by an imagined

East Indian girl. In this poem a woman’s voice is heard. This imagined East Indian

girl, different from those beautiful, aloof, treacherous, women common in English

poetry, is quite direct and passionate. After waking up from a dream of her beloved, she is led by a spirit to the boy’s chamber window. Then the natural scene reflects the girl’s mood and shows her willingness to die for her beloved: “The wandering airs they faint / On the dark silent stream— / The champak odours fail / Like sweet

thoughts in a dream; / The nightingale’s complaint— / It dies upon her heart— / As I must die on thine / O beloved as thou art!” (9-16). Then in the last stanza the girl tells directly to her beloved that she will die for his love: “O lift me from the grass! / I die, I faint, I fail! / Let thy love in kisses rain / On my lips and eyelids pale, / My cheek is cold and white, alas! / My heart beats loud and fast. / Oh press it close to thine again / Where it will break at last” (17-24). This poem shows that woman can be true and ardent but this kind of passionate, strong love seems to be found only in the foreign woman. This poem is a contrast to “When Passion’s Trance Is Overpast”

written in 1821, which reflects Shelley’s estrangement from Mary during their last years together. The poet says that when passion’s trance is overpast, then all wild feelings are in sleep and he can only imagine the love they once had from what is left behind:

When passion’s trance is overpast, If tenderness and truth could last Or live—what all wild feelings keep Some mortal slumber, dark and deep—

I should not weep, I should not weep!

It were enough to feel, to see

Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly . . .

And dream the rest—and burn and be

The secret food of fires unseen,

Could thou but be what thou hast been!

After the slumber of the year The woodland violets reappear;

All things revive in field or grove And sky and sea, but two, which move And form all other—life and love.— (1-15)

In another poem “When the Lamp Is Shattered” Shelley also mourns for the lost love.

A the beginning the lost love is compared to the shattered lamp, the scattered cloud, and the broken lute: “When the lamp is shattered / The light in the dust lies dead— / When the cloud is scattered / The rainbow’s glory is shed— / When the lute is broken / Sweet tones are remembered not— / When the lips have spoken / Loved accents are soon forgot” (1-8). When love leaves, there are only sad dirges left in the heart:

“The heart’s echoes render / No song when the spirit is mute— / No song—but sad dirges / Like the wind through a ruined cell / Or the mournful surges / That ring the dead seaman’s knell” (11-16). In Shelley’s opinion, after a couple falls in love, the stronger one will change first and then the weak one will suffer from the loss of love alone and Shelley deems that he is the weak one, and this is contradictory to the common idea of strong man: “When hearts have once mingled / Love first leaves the well-built nest— / The weak one is singled / To endure what it once possest” (17-20).

Here the weak one actually is the superior one since he is chaste while the strong woman is changeable. When love is left in the weak heart, the “frailest nest”, it will be rocked by passion and mocked by reason and then it will be left to laughter. It seems that the male poet is always the one who suffers from the woman’s

inconsistency while woman is always changeable and untrue.

Shelley’s opinion of woman changes as he meets another woman. After his

estrangement with Mary, Shelley once was very close to a couple, Edward and Jane Williams and his series of verse letters to Jane mark his special affection to Jane.

And in these verses, Jane is always compared to beautiful natural objects. In “To Jane. The Invitation” Shelley addresses Jane “Best and brightest”, “Fairer far than this fair day” and “Radiant Sister of the day” and invites her “To the wild woods and the plains” (49). In “To Jane. The Recollection” at the beginning Jane is again

compared to beautiful days: “Now the last day of many days, / All beautiful and bright as thou” (1-2) and in this poem Shelley reminiscences the beautiful natural scene he and Jane have enjoyed recently. While he depicts the beautiful landscape he says:

“And still I felt the centre of / The magic circle there / Was one fair form that filled with love / The lifeless atmosphere” ( 49-52). The fair form undoubtedly is Jane.

In “To Jane (The Keen Stars Were Twinkling)” Shelley compliments on Jane’s singing and while juxtaposing the keen stars, the fair moon and Jane’s singing, Shelley

implies they are similar and at the end Shelley says: “Sing again, with your dear voice revealing / A tone / Of some world far from ours, / Where music and moonlight and feeling / Are one” (20-24). An unfinished lyric “Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici”, written about two or three weeks before Shelley’s sudden death, is believed to be inspired by Jane, and Jane this time is compared to the moon but in Shelley’s opinion, Jane is “far more true” than the moon. This connection between natural object and woman actually is a deprivation of the autonomy of both nature and woman. In this connection both woman and nature get no subjectivity and they just exist for the male, for the common element they share and the male desires.

In Keats’s poems, the woman image is quite similar to those sonneteers in

Elizabethan Age. Woman is always depicted as beautiful but aloof and cold-hearted.

In “Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain” Keats starts with a series of negative

adjectives to describe woman and ensures his love to that kind of woman:

Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain, Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies;

Without that modest softening that enhances The downcast eye, repentant of the pain That its mild light creates to heal again:

E’en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances, E’en then my soul with exultation dances For that to love, so long, I’ve dormant lain. (1-8)

However, Keats still loves a mild woman better because he says: “But when I see thee meek, and kind, and tender, / Heavens! how desperately do I adore / Thy winning graces;—to be thy defender / I hotly burn—to be a Calidore— / A very Red Cross Knight—a stout Leander— / Might I be loved by thee like these of yore” (9-14).

Then in the next stanza, Keats seems to value intelligence more than beauty, and this seems somewhat similar to sonneteers’ high regard of virtue. He says that he can forget the lure of outward beauty “but when I mark / Such charms with mild intelligences shine, / My ear is open like a greedy shark, / To catch the tunings of a voice divine” (25-28). In the last stanza, the beautiful woman becomes a weak lamb, desiring man’s protection: “God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats / For man’s protection” (31-32); and she is even taken as a gift sent by God: “Surely the

All-seeing, / Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing” (32-33). And the poet also admits that “there is no freeing / One’s thoughts from such a beauty” (36-37). From this poem we can get the desired woman in Keats’s mind: a woman who is mild, beautiful, and intelligent and who needs the man’s protection. In another poem

“To—” while chanting praise of a woman’s beauty, Keats again describes his inability

to resist this kind of temptation. The poet first “was snared by the ungloving of” the

lady’s hand and even after five years he still cannot forget that woman. “And yet I

never look on midnight sky, / But I behold thine eyes’ well memory’d light: / I cannot look upon the rose’s dye, / But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight” (5-8). Since the love is not returned Keats complains: “Thou dost eclipse / Every delight with sweet remembering, / And grief unto my darling joys dost bring” (12-14). In his

“Ode to Fanny” Keats seems not sure of Fanny’s love to him and his suspicion permeates the whole poem. In the third section Keats says: “But, pr’ythee, do not turn / The current of your heart from me so soon. / O! save, in charity, / The quickest pulse for me” (6-8). Afterwards, in section five, Keats stresses woman’s unchastity through the imagined question he puts in Fanny’s mouth: “Must not a woman be / A feather on the sea, / Sway’d to and fro by every wind and tide? / Of as uncertain speed / As blow-ball from the mead?” (4-8). Then in the next section, he begs Fanny:

“Then, loveliest! keep me free / From torturing jealousy” (VI: 7-8). At last Keats pleads:

Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above The poor, the fading, brief, pride of an hour;

Let none profane my Holy See of love, Or with a rude hand break

The sacramental cake:

Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;

If not—may my eyes close, Love! on their last repose. (VII 1-8)

It seems that Keats is always suspicious of Fanny’s chastity and is in fear of being

betrayed. This reflects man’s innate fear of woman and the chthonian nature woman

represents. Women in Romantic lyrics usually have no voice, no subjectivity and we

can only find them through the poets’ figures of speech. Woman image in the lyrics

does not improve much in the Romantic period.

As mentioned above, a significant one of those predominant ideas in the

Romantic poetics is the poets’ attitude toward nature. The importance they attach to nature is conspicuous and extraordinary. Most of the great Romantic lyrics begin with the description of natural scenes or landscapes. Nature, instead of being just rhetorical artifice as in the sixteenth-century sonnets and the early seventeenth- century lyrics, often becomes the immediate subject and important inspiration in Romantic lyrics as Keats in “I Stood Tip-Toe . . .” claims, “For what has made the sage or poet write / But the fair paradise of Nature’s light?” (125-26). The

Romantics also capture the sensuous nuance and describe natural phenomena with an accuracy of observation, which can find no match in the previous centuries.

Although the Romantics attach great importance to nature and regard nature as the most important inspiration for their poetry, yet “nature poetry”, once used to define Romantic Poetry, is a misnomer. Harold Bloom in The Visionary Company has questioned the idea that the Romantics are basically nature poets and Geoffrey Hartman in “A Poet’s Progress: Wordsworth and the Via Naturaliter Negativa,”

through the analysis of The Prelude has agreed to the critics who have “pointed to the deeply paradoxical character of Wordsworth’s dealings with nature and suggested that what he calls imagination may be intrinsically opposed to nature” (33). As a matter of fact, imagination is another dominant requisite, in addition to nature, in the

Romantic poetry; the Romantics believe that the primary power of imagination can

give readers the sense of wonder, which is a major function of poetry. M. H. Abrams

in The Mirror and the Lamp has scrutinized this shift of aesthetics from mimesis to

expressive theory. According to Abrams, from Plato to the eighteenth century, the

purpose of art is to imitate nature, just like the mirror reflecting the outside world, and

this is the so-called mimesis theory. In the Romantic period, the stress is “shifted

more and more to the poet’s natural genius, creative imagination and emotional

spontaneity” (21), and this introduces a new orientation into the theory of art, that is, the expressive theory. Abrams in The Correspondent Breeze also suggests that the greater Romantic lyric usually follows the structure of description-meditation-

description, in which the poets’ meditation is of more significance than the description of the landscape (77-79). It seems that the Romantic tradition must be made of imagination, not nature.

On account of the antithetic character between the two dominant elements, the external nature and the internal imagination, there seems always a tug-war between nature and mind in the Romantic poetry as Paul de Man in his essay on the Romantic image “Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image” has mentioned that the

fundamental ambiguity that characterized the poetics of romanticism results from the theme of imagination linked closely to the theme of nature (24). In the following part, I would explore the Romantics’ dialectic love between nature and

mind/imagination from the ecofeminist perspective. I will focus on Wordsworth’s poems since, as a leading character, his ideas take the lead and are quite influential to other poets and in the discussion of the rest poets, their difference from Wordsworth will be stressed.

Since nature is an important element, “Mother Nature” and “Mother Earth” are common expressions in Romantic poetry. According to ecofeminists, this

metaphorical connection between nature and mother seems to emphasize and praise

the maternal characteristics of natural environment, laying stress on the bountiful

resources of the earth which seem never to be exhausted. This symbolic connection

between nature and motherhood finally results in human exploitation and devastation

of the natural environment. To the Romantics, what they get from nature is the

spiritual nourishment, and the mother/child relation seems dominant in Romantic

lyrics. The ecofeminists also fight against the value dualisms and value hierarchies

in Western tradition since value dualisms and value hierarchies result in a “logic of domination,” which justifies subordination on the grounds that superiority justifies subordination and the oppressive and patriarchal conceptual frameworks maintain and perpetuate the twin domination of women and nature (Warren Ecological Feminist Philosophy xii). Therefore, how to break down these value dualisms and give back

autonomy to those which have been dominated becomes important challenge to ecofeminists.

In addition, Camille Paglia in Sexual Personae suggests that the connection of women with nature results from their similar procreative power, which is chthonian to the male.

In Paglia’s opinion, nature is chthonian and art represents human beings’

effort to give form and order to this daemonic nature. She also makes use of Nietzsche’s idea of the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus in Greek culture and views Dionysus as the ruler of the chthonian and as the potential subversive power against the rigid social norms, which can be represented by Apollo. She argues that

“western personality and western achievement are, for better or worse, largely Apollonian. Apollo’s great opponent Dionysus is ruler of the chthonian whose law is procreative femaleness” (12). She further argues that “nineteenth-century aestheticism, a vision of a glittering crystalline world, is a flight from the chthonian swamp into which nature-loving Wordsworth inadvertently led Romanticism” (93).

These ideas, I think, are quite insightful and provide a possible perspective for reading Romantic poetry.

In Wordsworth’s poetry nature is always considered to be female and he believes in the maternal love of nature. He uses the female pronoun “she” to depict nature and in “Expostulation and Reply” he uses “Mother Earth” to mean the natural

1

The ideas, illustrated before in Chapter V, come from the first chapter “Sex and Violence, or Nature

and Art” in Paglia’s book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

(New York, 1990).

environment. Besides, in “The Immortality Ode” the concept that nature is the mother to care for men is even more clearly presented:

Earth fills her lap with pleasure of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came. (77-84)

In Wordsworth’s opinion, there is a maternal bond between child and nature as he says in The Prelude: “Among his infant veins are interfused / The gravitation and the filial bond / Of nature that connect him with the world” (II. 242-44). Nature is like a mother, feeding her child, the poet, with beautiful scenes. Wordsworth

acknowledges the mother-like nourishing power of nature and this connection between mother and nature also results Wordsworth’s demanding attitude toward nature as Alan Richardson puts, “The image of nursing recurs throughout Romantic literature precisely because it graphically represents the male child’s absorption of his mother’s sympathetic faculty even as his primary affective bond is established” (17).

In addition, Wordsworth also worships nature as the Supreme Being. As a precursor of the Romantic poetry, Wordsworth begins the worship of nature. To Wordsworth, nature sometimes seems to be the power that makes the world meaningful, so he thus hails nature: “O Power Supreme! / Without whose care this world would cease to breathe” (The Prelude X. 420-21). In “The Tables Turned”

Wordsworth emphasizes the dominant power of nature by saying:

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. (25-32)

The poet denies the operation of human mind and thinks that our meddling intellect would destroy the beauteous forms of nature. Wordsworth seems to suggest that we should just watch and receive what nature shows us with no attempt to use art to depict or science to dissect nature. This viewpoint somewhat corresponds with some of the keynote ideas in ecofeminism, which argues against anthropocentric

domination of nature. Similarly, in “Expostulation and Reply” Wordsworth promotes “wise passiveness”: “That we can feed this mind of ours / In a wise passiveness” (23-24). Nature seems to be regarded as the great mentor and we can enrich our mind through passive acceptance of nature. Besides, in “My Heart Leaps Up” Wordsworth even worships nature with religious sentiment and wishes that his days “to be / Bound each to each by natural piety” (7). It is often believed that in his younger days he advocates the “religion of nature”. This reverence for nature seems to distinguish Wordsworth from poets in the previous centuries. This attitude toward nature also distinguishes the Romantic poets from those in the previous periods since they show reverence to nature and even treat nature as something superior to human beings and have faith in the power of nature.

Wordsworth also protests against brutal treatment of natural creatures. For

example, in “Hart-Leap Well” Wordsworth describes a race between a hart and a

knight and after being chased by the knight on the horseback (and this is the third horse that labors in the race) for a long time the hart exhausts his strength and before he dies he spares no effort to leap down a lofty brow to a fountain, which is believed to be his native place, and breathes his last there. The hart’s striving bravery is admired and glorified, but what is more important is Wordsworth’s comment at the very end of the poem: “One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, / Taught both by what she [nature] shews, and what conceals, / Never to blend our pleasure or our pride / With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels” (177-180). Wordsworth may be somewhat human-centered in calling the hart “the meanest thing” but his idea here that we human beings should not build our pleasure on the sorrow of other creatures is quite praiseworthy. In “The Waterfall and the Eglantine” Wordsworth expresses his idea that all living creatures should live peacefully together. At the beginning of the poem, the briar-rose seems to be repressed by the waterfall: “The Flood was

tyrannous and strong; / The patient Briar suffer’d long” (15-16). Then in order to change the situation, the briar tries to persuade the waterfall from destroying him.

He emphasizes the happy life they once had and the pleasure the waterfall brought to him and he says: “Nor was it common gratitude / That did your cares repay” (29-30).

Then the briar ensures the waterfall the repayment:

When Spring came on with bud and bell, Among these rocks did I

Before you hang my wreath to tell That gentle days were nigh!

And in the sultry summer hours

I shelter’d you with leaves and flowers’

And in my leaves now shed and gone

The linnet lodg’d and for us two

Chaunted his pretty songs, when you Had little voice of none. (31-40)

Later, the eglantine keeps on begging for the favor:

But now proud thoughts are in your breast—

What grief is mind, you see.

Ah! would you think, ev’n yet how blest Together we might be!

Together of both leaf and flower bereft Some ornaments to me are left—

Rich store of scarlet hips is mine, With which I in my humble way Would deck you many a Winter’s day, A happy Eglantine!” (21-50)

Though at the end the Eglantine seems unable to survive the flushing of the flood; yet, this idea of reciprocity between living creatures is really innovative and enlightening.

As a precursor in the British Romantic period Wordsworth, because of his love of both nature and imagination causes paradoxical attitudes among critics. In “Two Roads to Wordsworth” M. H. Abrams suggests that modern critics yield two

Wordsworths, one is the simple Wordsworth, who is a simple, forthright, great poet of natural man and the world and affirmative poet of life, love, and joy; the other is the problematic Wordsworth, who is complex, paradoxical, self-divided, poet of

chiaroscuro, or even darkness. The Wordsworth analyzed so far seems to be the

simple Wordsworth, who affirms his love to nature. Jonathan Bate in Romantic

Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition has applied ecological

criticism to Wordsworth’s poetry and argued for Wordsworth’s nature poetry. Bate

claims that Wordsworth’s poetry is what we need now in this time of ecological crisis

since Wordsworth enables his readers better to enjoy or to endure life by teaching them to look at and dwell in the natural world (4); that is, he can teach the readers

“how to walk with nature” (8). Besides, Bate also puts emphasis on how readers may derive some fresh use or pleasure from Wordsworth’s nature poetry. In the first chapter “The Language That Is Ever Green” Bate affirms the importance of nature for Wordsworth and argues that Wordsworth’s language in his pastoral is ever green. In the third chapter “The Moral of Landscape” Bate argues that Wordsworth sacralizes nature and nature’s sanctity must be reaffirmed in our contemporary structure of values (62-84). It is true that Wordsworth’s nature poetry can help readers derive pleasure from nature and I have been attracted by his beautiful description of the natural scenes since the first time I got to know his poems. And it is also true that Wordsworth always worships nature as a religion and praises every beauteous form in it. Yet, is nature’s sanctity or the pleasure that nature can give is what we really need now, on the verge of ecological crisis? It seems that Bate is arguing for the simple Wordsworth but it is not the complete Wordsworth. According to Abrams, some critics think behind the manifold surface particularities of Romantic poems there is a single submerged plot: “the sustained struggle of the poet’s consciousness (operating in the mode often called ‘imagination’) to achieve ‘autonomy,’ or absolute

independence from that adversary which is not itself—namely, ‘nature,’ the world of sensible objects” (86). I would like to scrutinize the problematic Wordsworth to see how he struggles in a dialectic love between nature and his mind and how he tries to make his imagination independent of nature.

In discussion of the complex Wordsworth, a fragment: “Nutting” is very

important because it can represent a turning point in Wordsworth’s attitude toward

nature. Different from the amiable and loving attitude toward nature, Wordsworth’s

attitude in this poem is quite complex and paradoxical. In this poem, Wordsworth

talks about the experience of his nutting of the hazels. There are some opposite interpretations of this poem: some critics view it positively as the necessary step in the poet’s development of imagination and others view it as a typical enactment of male dominance. Inspired by some ideas mentioned in Janice Haney Peritz’s “Sexual Politics and the Subject of ‘Nutting’: Questions of Ideology, Rhetoric, and Fantasy” I will read this poem in terms of mother/child relationship in psychoanalysis. This fragment at first was intended to be one of the “spots of time” in The Prelude but subsequently it was taken out and was published in the 1800 edition of the Lyrical Ballads. This background knowledge assures us of the importance of the “Nutting”

event in the growth of the poet’s mind. In the first half of the poem, with sexual terms Wordsworth shows the rude masculine domination of the natural scene.

. . . . O’er pathless rocks, Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets, Forcing my way

, I came to one dear nook

Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign Of devastation; but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, A virgin scene

! . . . (14-21)

Peritz suggests that this bower scene is pre-Oedipal and accordingly it represents the first stage of the three stages a child will experience after birth, which is related to Lacan’s idea of a child’s growth famous in psychoanalysis. In this first stage, according to Lacan, the child is born into the order of the real, which is the order preceding the ego. In this order the child experiences a pure plenitude or fullness

2

Italics mine.

3

Italics mine.

and the child feels one with the mother and there is no feeling of separation between self and other. Morris Dickstein uses Spencer’s Bower of Bliss to expound

Wordsworth’s unvisited nook in this poem and suggests that the difference of

Wordsworth’s bower is that it is deeply concerned with the idea of Bildung (32-33).

Hartman sees the boy’s destruction of the bower as a necessary step in the growth of the poet’s mind (Wordsworth’s Poetry 73-75). I agree this event is an important step in the growth of the poet’s mind because he starts to form the perception of self and sets up his ego and he starts to know the difference between (him)self and the

(m)other, that is, nature. However, in my opinion, it is not the pre-Oedipal stage but a turning point from the first stage to the second one, the mirror stage. Here we can see the male poet’s merciless ravage and sullying of the virgin scene, which represents his forming of his subjectivity and his separation from the Mother Nature. Later Wordsworth seems to regret his rudeness and in the last part of the poem he thus puts it:

Ere from the mutilated bower I turned Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, I felt a sense of pain when I beheld

The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.—

Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand

Touch—for there is a spirit in the woods. (50-56)

He finally realizes that “there is a spirit in the woods” and he seems to recognize the autonomy of nature. This event metaphorically begins his separation from nature and the development of the autonomy of his imagination. “It is a necessary initiation, and a sexual one, that brings the boy into contact with the vital spirit of nature”

(Dickstein 34).

Actually Wordsworth has undergone a complex process in his interaction with nature and the role of nature changes in different phases of his life. In the eighth book of The Prelude, just as in “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth divides his own life into three stages.

The first stage is in his boyhood when, as Wordsworth says, there are the “coarse pleasures of my boyish day, / And their glad animal movements” (“Tintern Abbey” 73-74). At that time animal activities and trivial pleasure are his main pursuit and little Wordsworth holds only the physical responsiveness to nature. This may be similar to the pre-Oedipal, the real stage of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Nature at that time fills his mind with beautiful and sublime forms to cause him to love them and Wordsworth does not feel the difference or separation between him and nature.

As the poet says: “How nature by extrinsic passion first / Peopled the mind with forms sublime or fair, / And made me love them” (The Prelude I. 545-47). And this kind of experience nourishes his mind and helps him become a poet. In

Wordsworth’s opinion, the presence of nature mysteriously fills the surface of the universal earth with symbols and feelings and therefore makes the earth abundant like a sea:

Ye Presences of Nature in the sky And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!

And Souls of lonely places! Can I think A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed Such ministry, when ye through many a year Haunting me thus among my boyish sports, On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,

4

See The Prelude (1850) “Book Eighth” ll. 340-364, and “Tintern Abbey” ll. 66-111. However, in

“Tintern Abbey,” the second stage, when nature is “all in all” to Wordsworth, is subdivided into two

periods of time. One is the time when his love of nature “had no need of a remoter charm, / By

thought supplied, nor any interest / Unborrowed from the eye” (81-83). The other is the time when he

adds thought to sense.

Impressed upon all forms the characters Of danger or desire; and thus did make The surface of the universal earth

With triumph and delight, with hope and fear, Work like a sea? (The Prelude I. 464-75)

When he becomes older nature becomes the main concern to him as Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey” recollects his first visit of that place:

. . . when like a roe

I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep river, and the lonely stream, Wherever nature led: more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarse pleasures of my boyish day,

And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all. (67-75)

In his post-adolescent’s days nature is all in all to Wordsworth, but he seems to be driven to nature by something he dreads instead of by his love of nature.

Nevertheless, nature still fills his mind with love and feeling:

. . . . The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By though supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye. (76-83)

Here comes the second stage of his life, when the “incidental charms” in his

childhood grow weaker and nature, “intervenient till this time / And secondary, now at length was sought / For her own sake” (The Prelude II. 200-03). Now he enjoys nature as if to satisfy a physical appetite, without adding thought to the senses.

During the five-year interim, however, Wordsworth has experienced the purifying power of “these beauteous forms” of nature and so he has owed to them “In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; / And passing even into my purer mind, / With tranquil restoration” (“Tintern Abbey” 27-30). This may be considered the mirror stage in the growth of the poet’s mind; that is, he begins his separation from the mother/nature and he realizes that mother/nature and himself are two different identities. “Nutting” should be a poem concerning this phase of his growth.

When Wordsworth revisits the same place five years later, he realizes: “—That time is past, / And all its aching joys are now no more, / And all its dizzy raptures”

(“Tintern Abbey 83-85). The joy and rapture brought by pure physical sensations are gone. Now nature to him is not only the external objects but something interacts with his inward mind, his soul. With the assistance of nature, Wordsworth sees the meaning of the external world and recognizes the wholeness behind the miscellaneous shapes. Therefore, all the external things mingle into one song. “One song they sang, and it was audible, / Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear, / O’ercome by humblest prelude of that strain, / Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed” (The Prelude II. 415-18). Steeped in nature, Wordsworth learns to feel the life of things

by heart instead of by the bodily senses. Only when the bodily senses are no longer

dominant, can the poet see the wholeness behind the sundry scenes. As Wordsworth

says in “Tintern Abbey”:

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. (43-49)

In Wordsworth’s opinion, the external forms, through the mutual influence between him and nature, are no longer objective because they can arouse reciprocal power in the poet’s mind. This is the third stage and this is the important stage for the building of Wordsworth’s imagination and Wordsworth the poet gradually develops the autonomy of his imagination.

In this phase of lifetime, Wordsworth thinks that he is both a receiver and creator in this kind of reciprocal relationship with nature. Nature presents beautiful scenes before him, and at the same time, man’s mind or imagination gives life to the outside world. He says: “For feeling has to him imparted power / That through the growing faculties of sense / Doth like an agent of the one great Mind / Create, creator and receiver both, / Working but in alliance with the works / Which it beholds . . . .” (The Prelude II. 255-60). According to Wordsworth, in this phase when nature becomes

“all in all” to him, he still possesses his infantile creative sensibility, which sometimes

is capricious and uncomfortable with the general rule. Yet, by subordination to

nature, this creativity can be stabilized. The poet reports: “A plastic power / Abode

with me; a forming hand, at times / Rebellious, acting in a devious mood; / A local

spirit of his own, at war / With general tendency, but, for the most, / Subservient

strictly to external things / With which it communed” (The Prelude II. 362-68). On

the other hand, however, nature also must be subordinate to his creative sensibility

and then every outward shape to him is full of life. The poet remembers, “An auxiliary light / Came from my mind, which on the setting sun / Bestowed new

splendour” (The Prelude II. 368-70). Under the influence of this light from his mind, the birds, the breezes, the fountains “obeyed / A like dominion” and “[h]ence my obeisance, my devotion hence, / And hence my transport” (The Prelude II. 376-77).

Wordsworth always emphasizes the great influence of nature on his poetic spirit and he also reiterates the reciprocal relationship and the mutual interdependence between nature and him, the poet. He admires the power of nature but as a poet he also values his own imagination and this conflict between nature and his imagination becomes the main theme in The Prelude, Wordsworth’s autobiographical epic and his crowning achievement, also titled Growth of a Poet’s Mind.

In Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787-1814, Hartman has scrutinized the conflict between imagination and nature presented in The Prelude. Here I would stress on the

climatic ascent of Mount Snowdon in the last book of The Prelude because I hold a different understanding from that of Hartman’s. Hartman thinks that the whole event represents “a true ‘mounting of the mind’; it is also a culmination evidence that imagination and the light of nature are one” (Wordsworth’s Poetry 60). Actually, in my opinion, the ascent of Snowdon represents Wordsworth’s idea that the higher mind of human beings is more powerful than the power of nature since only the mind can give life to the outside world.

In the beginning of the Fourteenth Book, the poet states that in order to see the sunrise from the summit of Snowdon, at couching time he starts to climb the

mountain with a youthful friend and a guide. While ascending, the mist soon

surrounds them. After a while, the poet chances to climb ahead of the others, and he

consequently sees first the earth brightened by a light which shines on the ground like

a flash. As he looks up, “The Moon hung naked in a firmament / Of azure without

cloud, and at my feet / Rested a silent sea of hoary mist” (The Prelude XIV. 40-42).

Because of the stretching mist, the Atlantic is covered by the solid vapour. This mist is the symbol of the poet’s imagination, his creative power and “[this] creative energy can be blinding and bewildering” (Prickett 97), since the poet’s creativity can be a kind of usurpation of the natural surroundings. The poet thus describes: “Far, far beyond, the solid vapours stretched, / In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes, / Into the main Atlantic, that appeared / To dwindle, and give up his majesty, / Usurped upon far as the sight could reach” (The Prelude XIV. 45-49). Under the power of the poet’s imagination, even the big Atlantic gives up his majesty. Though the roar of the waters can be heard from a rift, yet no one can see the torrents. Opposite to the Atlantic, the sky, however, is clear without any encroachment, except “the clear presence of the full-orbed Moon, / Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed / Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay / All meek and silent” (The Prelude XIV. 53-56). After the vision dissolves into the air, the poet himself reflects in tranquility, and regards the Moon as “the emblem of a mind

That feeds upon infinity, that broods Over the dark abyss, intent to hear Its voices issuing forth to silent light In one continuous stream; a mind sustained By recognitions of transcendent power, In sense conduction to ideal form,

In soul of more than moral privilege. (The Prelude XIV. 70-77)

In Wordsworth’s opinion, a mind which is nourished by “the transcendent power” can convert sensory objects into ideal forms, and “the transcendent power” is imagination.

Amid awful and sublime circumstances, nature can make the outward things endowed

with “interchangeable supremacy,” so that even least sensitive men can see, hear,

perceive, and feel. The sea of mist, for example, has changed the scene of Snowdon and occupies the sovereignty of the real sea. Nature makes the interaction between the outside world and the mind possible. Yet, at the same time, nature is also subordinate to imagination, which, according to Wordsworth, can endow nature with life. Wordsworth thinks that only people with higher minds have imagination, the glorious faculty, and they always deal with the universe in this spirit. With this faculty, the minds can project “kindred mutations” to the outside world, and create a

“like existence,” so that “they build up greatest things / From least suggestion” (The Prelude XIV. 101-02). These higher minds live in a world of life because they can

give life to the outside world; they can transcend the bodily senses and communicate with the spiritual world; therefore, they can reach eternity. The poet explains:

Such minds are truly from the Deity,

For they are Powers; and hence the highest bliss That flesh can know is theirs—the consciousness Of whom they are, habitually infused

Through every image and through every thought And all affections, by communion raised

From earth to heaven, from human to divine. (The Prelude XIV. 112-18) No doubt, Wordsworth cherishes nature and the role nature plays as his poetical inspiration; yet after a long dialectical struggle between nature and mind, he finally still holds human mind in a higher regard. The Prelude ends with the Restoration of Imagination:

. . . the mind of man becomes

A thousand times more beautiful than the earth

On which he dwells, above this frame of things

(Which, ’mid all revolutions in the hopes

And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) In beauty exalted, as it is itself

Of substance and of fabric more divine. (XIV. 450-56)

For Wordsworth the mind is more magnificent than nature. Therefore, in his letter to Wrangham of January, 1816, Wordsworth himself writes:

Throughout, objects . . . derive their influence not from properties inherent in them, not from what they are actually in themselves, but from such as are bestowed upon them by the minds of those who are conversant with or affected by those objects. Thus the Poetry . . . proceeds whence it ought to do, from the soul of Man, communicating its creative energies to the images of the external world.

In “Prospectus to The Recluse” he consequently says “… the Mind of man—/ My haunt, and the main region of my song” (40-41). In the same poem Wordsworth also expresses his belief that Paradise can be regained by the marriage of the “intellect of Man” and “this goodly universe”:

How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted:--and exquisitely, too—

Theme this but little heard of among men—

The external World is fitted to the Mind;

And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish:--this is our high argument. (63-71)

It should be noticed that nature here is not the nature of the universe in itself but the

nature in its relation to man. Wordsworth wants to praise the glory of nature but he

also cannot forget the molding ability of his mind, or imagination. De Man mentions in “Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image” that there is a “fundamental

ambiguity” or “tension” that “never cease to be problematic” in Romantics attempts to link the polarities of imagination and nature (24). Accordingly, in most of

Wordsworth’s poems on nature and mind, we see the conflict, instead of marriage, between the two. As Geoffrey Hartman says:

One part of him said, leave nature and cleave to imagination. The other part, fearing that imagination could not be cleaved to, indeed that it would take him beyond human-heartedness even out of this world, answered, cleave to nature and leave vision and romance, those errors of the childhood of poetry. (Wordsworth’s Poetry)

Therefore, The Prelude, though deals chiefly with nature, is a study of the imagination, and how nature serves the need of the human spirit.

Besides, in “Prospectus to The Recluse” Wordsworth expresses his belief that the marriage between nature and mind can help man regain the lost paradise:

Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields—like those of old Sought in the Atlantic Main—why should they be A history only of departed things,

Or a mere fiction of what never was?

For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. (47-55)

In The Visionary Company Bloom analyzes the inter-relationship between mind and

nature in Wordsworth’s poems and suggests that imagination in Wordsworth’s works

is expected to be a bridge between the poet, the subject and nature, the object; that is, imagination should integrate nature and the poet. Therefore, in his career as a poet, Wordsworth tries to wed “the discerning intellect of Man” to “this goodly universe.”

However Wordsworth’s attempt seems to be a failure, though his poems are great and beautiful. In my opinion, Wordsworth does not really wed the mind to “this goodly universe.” He just appropriates nature through his subjective thinking or

imagination and his description of nature is based on the anthropocentric bias. In his poems the masculine imagination always speaks for the feminine nature.

The most conspicuous anthropocentric appropriation of nature can be seen in Wordsworth’s belief in “this goodly universe” and the opposition between human suffering and natural comfort presented in his poems. An obvious example is in

“Intimation Ode” in which Wordsworth postulates the idea that we human beings come from the imperial palace of heaven and the process of growing is the process of forgetting. In Wordsworth’s opinion, “The Child is Father of the Man” (“My Heart Leaps Up” 6) because the child is closer to the glory and freshness of the

pre-existence and growing up is a process of loss. In order to help human beings forget the glory of our pre-existence, the earth, or the nature, Wordsworth believes, tries her best to give us pleasure:

Earth fills her lap with pleasure of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Forster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came. (77-84)

The glory that is lost can never be found again but Wordsworth is not pessimistic; he thinks, “Though nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; / We will grieve not, rather find / Strength in what remains behind”

(“The Intimation Ode” 177-80). Part of what remains behind in which he can find strength is “years that bring the philosophic mind” (“The Intimation Ode” 186). To Wordsworth, the philosophic mind, the discursive understanding, is one of the means that help the poet find the lost visionary gleam he once knew. Maybe because of this belief, Wordsworth makes every effort to exhibit the beauteous nature.

Thus nature is always endowed with happiness and pleasure in Wordsworth’s poems. He intentionally ignores the wild, violent, uncontrollable side of nature.

As Raymond Dexter Havens says:

. . . it seems strange that Wordsworth could have closed his eyes to the many aspects of the physical world which are unpleasant or which do not fit in with his preconceptions. We have seen that he ignored sudden,

cataclysmic changes, such as floods, fires, and earthquakes, as well as the short life of most plans and animals, and dwelt upon the permanence, moderation, and regularity of nature. (114)

Havens, however, does not explain the reason that Wordsworth deliberately ignores the unpleasant aspects of the physical world. In my opinion, Wordsworth makes use of some aspects of natural scenes to create a preferable world, in which the mind, by means of imagination, builds a secluded natural nook inside him and help him evade

“the sad music of humanity”. We can find quite a few examples in Wordsworth’s

poems that play “the sad music of humanity”. In some of Wordsworth’s famous

ballads, such as “Michael,” “The Ruined Cottage,” “The Female Vagrant,” “The

Thorn,” “The Mad Mother,” “The Last of the Flock,” “Ruth,” human suffering and

grief is depicted. The political and social upheaval, caused by French Revolution

and Industrial Revolution, at that time resulted in agitation and disquiet, which must have depressed Wordsworth a lot. Thanks to the nourishing and comforting nature, Wordsworth can find peace in his mind. In “To My Sister” Wordsworth asks his sister and brother to come out to the field to enjoy the greenness of spring:

Love, now an universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing,

From earth to man, from man to earth, --It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more Than fifty years of reason;

Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season. (21-28)

So, the mind should drink from “the spirit of the season” to get the nourishment that is

“more than fifty years of reason” and this is the function of those beauteous natural objects. In “Lines Written near Richmond, upon the Thames at Evening” the contrast between the grief and pain in the human world and the gleam and peace in the natural scene is deliberately presented. While viewing the beautiful sunset upon the Thames in a summer, Wordsworth says:

Such views the youthful bard allure, But, heedless of the following gloom, He deems their colours shall endure

’Till peace go with him to the tomb.

--And let him nurse his fond deceit, And what if he must die in sorrow!

Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,

Though grief and pain may come to-morrow? (9-16)

After viewing such a beautiful, dream-like natural scene, the youthful bard, “heedless of the following gloom”, is lured to believe that he can have this peace even after his death. To Wordsworth the natural world has the immortality that man lacks but forever pursuits and only through the purgation of the natural scene can man possibly get close to that immortality, which comforts him and soothes his sorrow. Therefore Wordsworth invokes the Thames:

Glide gently, thus for ever glide, O Thames! That other bards may see, As lovely visions by thy side

As now, fair river! Come to me.

Oh glide, fair stream! For ever so;

Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,

’Till all our minds for ever flow,

As thy deep waters now are flowing. (17-24)

Wordsworth, the subject, addresses the river, the object and asks its favor to enrich the human mind and make it flow forever. The gap between the subject and the object is quite common in Wordsworth’s poetry and he has never really succeeds in bridging the gap. Sometimes the beauty and peace in the natural world reminds Wordsworth of the sorrowful human world, which is a sharp contrast to the comfort nature can bring. In “Lines Written in Early Spring” Wordsworth says:

I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did nature link The human soul that through me ran;

And much it griev’d my heart to think What man has made of man. (1-8)

And in the next four stanzas of this poem, in order to stress the distinction between nature and the human world, Wordsworth says:

Through primrose-tufts, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle trail’d its wreathes;

And ’tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopp’d and play’d:

Their thoughts I cannot measure, But the least motion which they made, It seem’d a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there.

If I these thought may not prevent, If such be of my creed the plan, Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man? (9-24)

Wordsworth supposes that the flowers, the birds, and the budding twigs present a

picture of pleasure and enjoyment. Through the interaction between his mind and nature he finds an immanent presence, which exists in the elements of the external world. In Wordsworth’s poetry, this immanent presence, this sense of life in natural objects, instead of a metaphor for rhetoric, is regarded almost as literal truth. Yet, how does he know the feeling of those natural objects? Actually Wordsworth

projects his own pleasure caused by the landscape onto those flowers, birds and twigs.

Wordsworth intentionally personifies those natural objects to create a beautiful and peaceful nook in his mind to evade the sorrow in the human world. Maybe as Havens suggests, “At times Wordsworth’s personification of external nature merges with, or is expressed in a way that suggests, belief in Mother Earth . . .” (74).

However, in ecofeminist point of view, the personification of natural objects represents a kind of human domination over nature since we impose on the natural world the human standard of value. Undoubtedly Wordsworth has a great regard for nature’s surpassing power and deliberately juxtaposes the comforting nature with the suffering human world, but through imagination, his mind chooses, cuts, and

reorganizes the natural scene to create a secluded and secure spot in him to soothe his grief and sorrow felt in this human world. As Val Plumwood says, when criticizing pantheism, “Nature is treated as fully sentient and as having, through its possession of spirit, human qualities. In this case there is no recognition of difference. Nature is anthropomorphized in fact or fancy, and the human is taken as the basic model.

Such a position does not succeed in genuinely escaping a dualistic model” (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature 127). This is obviously his subjective appropriation of

nature.

Wordsworth’s anthropocentric appropriation of nature can also be seen in the

subjective wording he uses in depicting natural scenes. For example in the first

stanza of “Resolution and Independence” Wordsworth thus describes the scene:

There was a roaring in the wind all night;

The rain came heavily and fell in floods, But now the sun is rising calm and bright;

The birds are singing in the distant woods;

Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;

The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;

And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. (1-7)

The wind and the rain are depicted quite objectively, but how is the sun calm, how does the Stock-dove brood, and why is the noise of water pleasant? Of course, it is because the poet feels so. No doubt, all literary works are somewhat subjective and this subjective depiction does not prevent Wordsworth from being a great poet.

What I am trying to stress is that when the poet imposes his subjective judgment on the natural world, it implies that he still holds a human-centered attitiude in facing nature. Wordsworth seldom depicts nature objectively in his poems and he also seldom describes his immediate response to a landscape as he believes that good poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reason, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion . . . is gradually produced and does itself actually exist in the mind.”

Therefore his poetry is often the consequence of his contemplation of an emotion and a natural scene becomes meaningful only after his contemplation. This process is depicted in the famous “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. At first Wordsworth

personifies the daffodils so he saw “a crowd” “a host” of golden daffodils, “dancing in

the breeze” (6), “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance” (12), and they “Outdid the

sparkling waves in glee” (14). This personification is actually the subordination of

nature since all these descriptions are just the poet’s projection of his own mood onto

the external world. As Frederick A. Pottle in “The Eye and the Object in the Poetry