Themes
The Beneficial Influence of Nature
Throughout Wordsworth’s work, nature provides the ultimate
good influence on the human mind. All manifestations of the natural
world—from the highest mountain to the simplest flower—elicit noble,
elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe
these manifestations. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance
of nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development.
A good relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both
the spiritual and the social worlds. As Wordsworth explains in The
Prelude, a love of nature can lead to a love of humankind.
In such poems as “The World Is Too Much with Us” (1807)
and “London, 1802” (1807)
people become selfish and immoral when they distance themselves
from nature by living in cities. Humanity’s innate empathy and nobility
of spirit becomes corrupted by artificial social conventions as
well as by the squalor of city life. In contrast, people who spend
a lot of time in nature, such as laborers and farmers, retain the
purity and nobility of their souls.
The Power of the Human Mind
Wordsworth praised the power of the human mind. Using
memory and imagination, individuals could overcome difficulty and
pain. For instance, the speaker in “Lines Composed
a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” (1798) relieves
his loneliness with memories of nature, while the leech gatherer
in “Resolution and Independence” (1807) perseveres
cheerfully in the face of poverty by the exertion of his own will.
The transformative powers of the mind are available to all, regardless
of an individual’s class or background. This democratic view emphasizes
individuality and uniqueness. Throughout his work, Wordsworth showed
strong support for the political, religious, and artistic rights
of the individual, including the power of his or her mind. In the 1802 preface
to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth explained the relationship
between the mind and poetry. Poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility”—that
is, the mind transforms the raw emotion of experience into poetry
capable of giving pleasure. Later poems, such as “Ode: Intimations
of Immortality” (1807), imagine nature as
the source of the inspiring material that nourishes the active,
creative mind.
The Splendor of Childhood
In Wordsworth’s poetry, childhood is a magical, magnificent
time of innocence. Children form an intense bond with nature, so
much so that they appear to be a part of the natural world, rather
than a part of the human, social world. Their relationship to nature
is passionate and extreme: children feel joy at seeing a rainbow
but great terror at seeing desolation or decay. In 1799,
Wordsworth wrote several poems about a girl named Lucy who died
at a young age. These poems, including “She dwelt among the untrodden
ways” (1800) and “Strange fits of passion
have I known” (1800), praise her beauty and
lament her untimely death. In death, Lucy retains the innocence
and splendor of childhood, unlike the children who grow up, lose
their connection to nature, and lead unfulfilling lives. The speaker
in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” believes that children delight
in nature because they have access to a divine, immortal world.
As children age and reach maturity, they lose this connection but
gain an ability to feel emotions, both good and bad. Through the power
of the human mind, particularly memory, adults can recollect the
devoted connection to nature of their youth.
Motifs
Wandering and Wanderers
The speakers of Wordsworth’s poems are inveterate wanderers:
they roam solitarily, they travel over the moors, they take private
walks through the highlands of Scotland. Active wandering allows
the characters to experience and participate in the vastness and
beauty of the natural world. Moving from place to place also allows
the wanderer to make discoveries about himself. In “I travelled
among unknown men” (1807), the speaker discovers
his patriotism only after he has traveled far from England. While
wandering, speakers uncover the visionary powers of the mind and
understand the influence of nature, as in “I wandered lonely as a
cloud” (1807). The speaker of this poem takes
comfort in a walk he once took after he has returned to the grit
and desolation of city life. Recollecting his wanderings allows
him to transcend his present circumstances. Wordsworth’s poetry
itself often wanders, roaming from one subject or experience
to another, as in The Prelude. In this long poem,
the speaker moves from idea to idea through digressions and distractions
that mimic the natural progression of thought within the
mind.
Memory
Memory allows Wordsworth’s speakers to overcome the harshness
of the contemporary world. Recollecting their childhoods gives adults
a chance to reconnect with the visionary power and intense relationship
they had with nature as children. In turn, these memories encourage
adults to re-cultivate as close a relationship with nature as possible
as an antidote to sadness, loneliness, and despair. The act of remembering
also allows the poet to write: Wordsworth argued in the 1802 preface
to Lyrical Ballads that poetry sprang from the
calm remembrance of passionate emotional experiences. Poems cannot
be composed at the moment when emotion is first experienced. Instead,
the initial emotion must be combined with other thoughts and feelings
from the poet’s past experiences using memory and imagination.
The poem produced by this time-consuming process will allow
the poet to convey the essence of his emotional memory to his readers
and will permit the readers to remember similar emotional experiences
of their own.
Vision and Sight
Throughout his poems, Wordsworth fixates on vision and
sight as the vehicles through which individuals are transformed.
As speakers move through the world, they see visions of great natural
loveliness, which they capture in their memories. Later, in moments
of darkness, the speakers recollect these visions, as in “I wandered
lonely as a cloud.” Here, the speaker daydreams of former jaunts
through nature, which “flash upon that inward eye / which is the
bliss of solitude” (21–22).
The power of sight captured by our mind’s eye enables us to find
comfort even in our darkest, loneliest moments. Elsewhere, Wordsworth
describes the connection between seeing and experiencing emotion,
as in “My heart leaps up” (1807), in which
the speaker feels joy as a result of spying a rainbow across the
sky. Detailed images of natural beauty abound in Wordsworth’s poems, including
descriptions of daffodils and clouds, which focus on what can be
seen, rather than touched, heard, or felt. In Book Fourteenth of The
Prelude, climbing to the top of a mountain in Wales allows
the speaker to have a prophetic vision of the workings of the mind
as it thinks, reasons, and feels.
Symbols
Light
Light often symbolizes truth and knowledge. In “The Tables
Turned” (1798), Wordsworth contrasts the
barren light of reason available in books with the “sweet” (11)
and “freshening” (6) light of the knowledge
nature brings. Sunlight literally helps people see, and sunlight
also helps speakers and characters begin to glimpse the wonders
of the world. In “Expostulation and Reply” (1798),
the presence of light, or knowledge, within an individual prevents
dullness and helps the individual to see, or experience. Generally,
the light in Wordsworth’s poems represents immortal truths that
can’t be entirely grasped by human reason. In “Ode: Imitations of
Immortality,” the speaker remembers looking at a meadow as a child
and imagining it gleaming in “celestial light” (4).
As the speaker grows and matures, the light of his youth fades into
the “light of common day” (78) of adulthood.
But the speaker also imagines his remembrances of the past as a
kind of light, which illuminate his soul and give him the strength
to live.
The Leech Gatherer
In “Resolution and Independence,” the ancient leech gatherer
who spends his days wandering the moors looking for leeches represents
the strong-minded poet who perseveres in the face of poverty, obscurity,
and solitude. As the poem begins, a wanderer travels along a moor,
feeling elated and taking great pleasure in the sights of nature
around him but also remembering that despair is the twin of happiness.
Eventually he comes upon an old man looking for leeches, even though
the work is dangerous and the leeches have become increasingly hard
to find. As the speaker chats with the old man, he realizes the
similarities between leech gathering and writing poetry. Like a
leech gather, a poet continues to search his or her mind and the
landscape of the natural world for poems, even though such intense
emotions can damage one’s psyche, the work pays poorly and poverty
is dangerous to one’s health, and inspiration sometimes seems increasingly
hard to find. The speaker resolves to think of the leech gatherer
whenever his enthusiasm for poetry or belief in himself begins to
wane.
