William Wordsworth as a Nature Worshipper
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“WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AS THE WORSHIPPER OF NATURE”
INTRODUCTION
There's nothing quite like poetry for singing a paean to nature. Among the many celebrated nature poets, William Wordsworth is probably the most famous. What sets his work apart from others is that his poetry was, in fact, an act of nature-worship. Wordsworth perceived the presence of divinity and healing in nature, the presence of a higher spirit that he considered a `balm' to weary souls.
His poem, Tintern Abbey, depicts with much lucidity the unity that he found in all animate and inanimate objects -"A presence that disturbs me with the joy...a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused," the peace that they bring to him -"To them I may have owed another gift...that blessed mood...In which the heavy and the weary weight, Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened" and his confession to his worship--"I, so long a worshipper of Nature, hither came / Unwearied in that service with far deeper zeal / Of holier love".
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.
With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine . In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791. During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French
“WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AS THE WORSHIPPER OF NATURE”
INTRODUCTION
There's nothing quite like poetry for singing a paean to nature. Among the many celebrated nature poets, William Wordsworth is probably the most famous. What sets his work apart from others is that his poetry was, in fact, an act of nature-worship. Wordsworth perceived the presence of divinity and healing in nature, the presence of a higher spirit that he considered a `balm' to weary souls.
His poem, Tintern Abbey, depicts with much lucidity the unity that he found in all animate and inanimate objects -"A presence that disturbs me with the joy...a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused," the peace that they bring to him -"To them I may have owed another gift...that blessed mood...In which the heavy and the weary weight, Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened" and his confession to his worship--"I, so long a worshipper of Nature, hither came / Unwearied in that service with far deeper zeal / Of holier love".
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.
With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine . In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791. During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French