8
TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)Q What does Wordsworth mean when he calls
nature “the anchor of my purest thoughts?”
Q Which lines in this selection best capture the
sublime aspects of nature?READING 27.
8 CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature8
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 95
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world 105
Of eye, and ear—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,^4115
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. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once, 120
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform 125
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings....The Progress of Industrialization
Like Wordsworth, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792–1822) embraced nature as the source of sublime
truth, but his volcanic personality led him to engage the
natural world with greater intensity and deeper melan-
choly than his older contemporary. A prolific writer and a
passionate champion of human liberty, he provoked the
reading public with a treatise entitled The Necessity of
Atheism(1811), the circulation of which led to his expul-
sion from Oxford University. His pamphlet on the subject
of the French Revolution, A Declaration of Rights(1812),
endorsed a radical creed for political equality: “A
Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights [in
the benefits and burdens of government].”
Shelley was outspoken in his opposition to marriage, a
union that he viewed as hostile to human happiness. He
was as unconventional in his deeds as in his discourse:
while married to one woman (Harriet Westbrook), with
whom he had two children, he ran off with another (Mary
Godwin). A harsh critic of Britain’s rulers, he chose perma-
nent exile in Italy in 1818 and died there four years later in
a boating accident.
Shelley’sDefence of Poetry(1821), a manifesto of the
writer’s function in society, hails poets as “the unacknowl-
edged legislators of the world.” Such creatures take their
authority from nature, the fountainhead of inspiration.
Shelley himself found in nature metaphors for the incon-
stant state of human desire. In “Ode to the West Wind” he
appeals to the wind, a symbol of creativity, to drive his
visions throughout the universe, as the wind drives leaves
over the earth (stanza 1), clouds through the air (stanza 2),
and waves on the seas (stanza 3). In the last stanza, he com-
pares the poet to a lyre, whose “mighty harmonies,” stirred
by the wind of creativity, will awaken the world. Then,
finally, he seeks his identity with the wind and nature
itself: “Be thou, spirit fierce/My spirit! Be thou me, impetu-
ous one!” By means of language that is itself musical,
Shelley defends the notion of poetry as the music of the soul.
Consider, for instance, his frequent use of the exclamatory
“O” and the effective use ofassonanceand tonal color in
lines 38 to 40: “while far below/The sea-blooms and the oozy
woods which wear/The sapless foliage of the ocean, know.”Shelley’s “Ode to the
West Wind”(1819)
1
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn”s being 1
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, 5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow(^4) Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy. Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill 10