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WORDSWORTH LOVE OF NATURE LED HIM TO LOVE OF MANKIND
Nature has a dominant role in Wordsworth’s poetry. So, he is called the poet of nature. He finds out as well as establishes in his poems a cordial, passionate, impressive, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and inseparable relationship between nature and human life. According to him, all created things are parts of a unified whole. Actually, the love of nature leads Wordsworth to the love of man which is noticeable in many of his poems.
In ‘Tintern Abbey’, (composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour), through his personal experience, Wordsworth expresses his philosophy of nature and some relationships between man and nature.
According to Wordsworth, nature plays the role of giving joy to human heart, of purifying human mind and of a healing influence on sorrow stricken hearts. Wordsworth takes pleasure in contract with nature and purifies his mind, ‘in lonely rooms, and mid the din of towns and cities,’ with the memory of nature. Moreover, nature has not become ‘a landscape to a blind man’s eye’ to him. It indicates that the eyes of the city people are blind because they cannot get anything from nature.
As a poet of Nature, Wordsworth stands supreme. He is a worshipper of Nature, Nature’s devotee or high-priest. His love of Nature was probably truer, and more tender, than that of any other English poet, before or since. Nature comes to occupy in his poem a separate or independent status and is not treated in a casual or passing manner as by poets before him. Wordsworth had a full-fledged philosophy, a new and original view of Nature. Three points in his creed of Nature may be noted:
(a) He conceived of Nature as a living Personality. He believed that there is a divine spirit pervading all the objects of Nature. This belief in a divine spirit pervading all the objects of Nature may be termed as mystical Pantheism and is fully expressed inTintern Abbey and in several passages in Book II of The Prelude.
(b) Wordsworth believed that the company of Nature gives joy to the human heart and he looked upon Nature as exercising a healing influence on sorrow-stricken hearts.
(c) Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of Nature. He spiritualised Nature and regarded her as a great moral teacher, as the best mother, guardian and nurse of man, and as an elevating influence. He believed that between man and Nature there is mutual consciousness, spiritual communion or ‘mystic intercourse’. He initiates his readers into the secret of the soul’s communion with Nature. According to him, human beings who grow up in the lap of Nature are perfect in every respect.
Wordsworth believed that we can learn more of man and of moral evil and good from Nature than from all the philosophies. In his eyes, “Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn, and without which any human life is vain and incomplete.” He believed in the education of man by Nature. In this he was somewhat influenced by Rousseau. This inter-relation of Nature and man is very important in considering Wordsworth’s view of both.
In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth traces the development of his love for Nature. In his boyhood Nature was simply a playground for him. There is no reason and logic behind each purpose. His love for nature was only of physical passion and animal pleasure.
In second stage he loved only sensuous and outward beauty but the philosophy of nature, he began to love and seek nature but he was attracted purely by its sensuous or aesthetic appeal.
Finally his love for Nature acquired a spiritual and intellectual character, and he realized Nature’s role as a teacher and educator. In this stage he can now understand the hidden meaning of nature and can hear the still sad music of humanity. That is nature not only attract man with her beauty but also makes him conscious of the fact that there is something wrong in mankind which is responsible for all suffering.
Wordsworth believes in the Pantheistic view –God is all, and all is God. He feels the existence of a sublime divine spirit pervading all objects of nature – in the setting sun, the round ocean, the living air, the blue sky, the mind of man etc. He says- “A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts And rolls through all things.”
Thus, nature including man is related to God. Wordsworth regards childhood as the best time of human life which is very much close to nature as well as to God. He addresses the child ‘best Philosopher,’ ‘Mighty Prophet’ and ‘Seer blest.’ Because the child unconsciously knows those deep truths of life and nature which learned philosophers among men are trying find out ‘in darkness lost, the darkness of the grave.’ The cause of the child knows these well is that he has been a ‘Foster- child’ of nature, and has a direct vision of the divine glory. The cause of the child knows these well is that he has been a ‘Foster- child’ of nature, and has a direct vision of the divine glory. Moreover, being grown up, he has been sober, mature and philosophical, instead of his having the rapturous vision of childhood. He can perceive something nobler and wiser even in the humble and common objects of nature.
He says – “To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”

Some themes are related to his poetry that definitely leads him from love of nature to love of mankind.

1. Beneficial influence of nature throughout Wordsworth’s work nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human mind. All manifestation of the natural world-from the highest mountain to the simplest flowers elicits nobles-elevated thoughts and passionate manifestation. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development. A good relationship with nature help individual connects to both the spiritual and social world. As Wordsworth explains in THE PERLUDE a love of nature can lead to love of human being. Concept is that of him, 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 people who spend a lot of time in nature.
2. The power of Human Mind: Wordsworth praised the power of human mind using memory and imagination; individual could overcome difficulty and pain. In 1802 preface to lyrical ballad 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. These pleasures ultimately cause the love for mankind.
3. The splendor of childhood: William Wordsworth feels that the beauty of nature is not only the pleasures to present but also will give pleasure in future to mankind. The poet regards nature as the best mother, best nurse and great moral teacher. There is spiritual relationship between man and nature. Nature deeply influences human character.
Nature is source of purist thoughts and the persons who continuously breath in atmosphere, surely generate the love for mankind. His thoughts and imagination take influence from nature and then enforce it mankind.

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse
The guide, the guardian of my heart and soul
Of all my moral being

We see that Wordsworth is a worshipper of nature, a devotee of nature. He feels no problem in nature, while Shakespeare in his “under the green wood tree” shows some problem of nature. He ignores the negative aspect of nature which defers from our experience, while Shelley considers nature to be both “destroyer and preserver”. He regards nature as a preacher, teacher, father and healing power, while Byron in he “Don Juan” shows that Juan con not get rid of his mental problem even after going close contact with nature. Anyway his love of nature leads him to hear ‘still sad music of humanity’ and to welcome the beginning of French Revolution.
There have been greater poets than Wordsworth but none more original says A.C Bradley; Wordsworth chief originality is, of course, to be sought in his poetry of nature. It must not be supposed however that Wordsworth was interested only in nature and not in man at all. Man, in Wordsworth conception, is not to be seen apart him to the love of man. Scarcely a poem of his is solely concerned with nature and spiritually influence of nature on mind and personality of man. Wordsworth advises his sister, Dorothy, to put herself under the influence of nature and assures her that “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her”
Wordsworth did not prefer the wild and stormy aspects of nature like Byron, or the shifting and changeful aspect of nature and scenery of the sea and sky like Shelley, or the purely sensuous in nature like Keats. It was his special characteristic of concern himself, not with the strange and remote aspects of the earth and but nature in her ordinary, familiar, everyday moods. He did not recognize the ugly side of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ as Tennyson did. Wordsworth stressed upon the moral influence of nature and need of man’s spiritual discourse with her. So evaluating his treatment of nature, he can be said the poet of nature as well as poet of humanity which leads him to the love of mankind.

Topic: Wordsworth love of nature led him to love of mankind

Assignment: Poetry B

Submitted to: Mam Shamsa

Submitted by:
Jawaria Shoukat, Meesum Balooch, Syeda Fatima, Saba Khuram & Rabia Bashir

Dated: 03-03-2014

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MODERN LANGUAGES LAHORE CAMPUS