Charcteristics of Wordsworth Poetry

Memory
For Wordsworth, the power of the human mind is extremely important. In several of
his poems he begins in a negative or depressed mood, and then slowly becomes
more positive. The most important use of memory, however, is to maintain
connections.As Wordsworth begins to consider his own mortality memory is again a
huge comfort, because he realizes that even after he has died he will be able
to live on in the memory of his family and friends, just as those who have
passed on before him are in his memory. Wordsworth is especially heartened
to know that his sister Dorothy, with whom he spent countless hours, will remember
him fondly, carrying him with her wherever she goes.

Mortality
In Wordsworth's poems, morality doesn't necessarily stem directly from religion, but
rather from doing what is right by oneself, by humanity, and by nature. In "London,
1802" Wordsworth complains that man's morals are in a state of constant decline,
but the morals he is talking about have more to do with following the natural
process of life - being free and powerful, not tied down by city living or common
thoughts. The most important lesson a person can learn, according to Wordsworth,
is to be true to his own impulses and desires, but not greedy. A person should be
available to help his fellow man, but should not be consumed by other peoples'
needs. He should be in communion with nature, with humanity, and with himself.
In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" Wordsworth is comforted
by the thought that he will live on after his death, because his sister Dorothy
will remember him lovingly.
Humanity
One of Wordsworth's greatest worries is the descent of humanity. As man moves
further and further away from humanity he seems to be losing more and more of his
soul. Often when Wordsworth is in nature he is saddened because he is forced to
think about the people trapped in cities, unable or unwilling to commune with
nature. In "The world is too much with us" Wordsworth worries that the
world is too full of people who have lost their connection to divinity, and
more importantly, to nature: "Getting and spending we lay waste our powers, /
Little we see in Nature that is ours."

Transcendence and Connectivity

The idea of transcendence did not gain full speed until the Romantic Movement

moved to America, but Wordsworth was certainly a fan of the idea long before then.
"Transcendence" simply means "being without boundaries. " For Wordsworth,
this means being able to connect with people and things outside of oneself,
especially in terms of nature. It was Wordsworth's supreme aspiration to
metaphorically transcend the limitations of his body and connect
completely with nature. Mankind's difficulty accepting the beauty that nature has
to offer saddened Wordsworth; he found the loss of such a gift difficult to accept.

Religion

Religion, while not as prevalent as in the poetry of the Enlightenment, does have a
place in much of Wordsworth's poetry. Often religion is included simply to help
Wordsworth's more pious readers understand the level of his commitment to and
faith in nature. Wordsworth uses religious imagery and language in his poems in
order to convey his ideas about the power of nature, the human mind, and global
interconnectivity.

Imagination
Wordsworth associates imagination with the creative power or the
poetic principle. He selects incidents from humble and rustic life for the themes of
his poetry. He throws over them a colouring of imagination to make them appear in
an unusual light. Imagination is thus a transforming power. It has the ability to
change the usual and the ordinary in an unusual and uncommon way. Poetry is a
modified image of man and nature. The poet is able to impart the glory and
freshness of a dream to ordinary things of nature. He can present in his poetry the
light that never was on land and sea.
He is able to do so through the creative faculty of imagination. It is thus an
active power. The poet is not a passive reflector of the images formed from nature.
Wordsworth holds that the poet is a man who not only feels strongly but also
thinks long and deeply. He is able to treat absent things as if they are present. He
can imaginatively visualise objects which are not present before his eyes in their
concrete forms. Poetry originates in emotion that is recollected in
tranquillity.
The recollection of emotions enables the poet to see the object which evokes
the emotions. Imagination enables the poet to look deep into the heart and
soul of things. It is through the imaginative faculty that he arrives at the general
truths basic to human nature. Through the imaginative power, the poet is able to
present emotions which he has not directly experienced. But he presents them in
such a way that they seem personally experienced.
Imagination is a faculty which transforms the external world in a
creative manner. It is a power that enables the poet to arrive at a realization of
the connection between the particular and the eternal. It helps the poet to dig
deep into the core of human existence and to get at universal truths.
These appeal to us quite instinctively. This is what separates the poetic truth from
scientific truth. Imagination transforms the apparent world into a world of higher
import. The poet conceives the essential nature of his object and sees it in its basic
reality. He is a philosopher.
Wordsworth never ignores the importance of thought and reason. He calls
imagination a higher reason reason in her most exalted mood. He stresses on
the importance of imagination in the process poetic creation. For him, it is the most
important gift that a poet can have. Imagination to him is a divine power. It is
the vision and the faculty divine. It transfigures sense impressions. It makes the
poet a visionary. To Wordsworth, imagination is inventive, serious and superior. It is
active and half-creates the world it perceives. The faculty of mind which creates is
the faculty of the imagination. To Wordsworth, the mind has two facultiesthe
passive fancy and the active imagination. Fancy merely reflects the external world.

Imagination has the poetic power to confer, abstract and modify the original
impressions in order to give them a fresh significance. True knowledge is obtained
through insight. Imagination gives us the unified vision of reality. Wordsworth relates
truth and poetry through imagination. It is the mental power that transforms the
literal to the figurative.
The Solitary Reaper, Tintern Abbey, the Immortality Ode and To the
Cuckooall seem to have been composed according to emotions
recollected in tranquillity. These are intensely felt and well contemplated poems.
The imagination is at its highest. The poet recreates the whole atmosphere and
recreates it with the help of his imagination. He can recall his childhood passion for
the Cuckoo which was a voice, a mystery and an invisible thing.

WORDSWORTH AS A REVOLUTIONARY POET

Like many of the young Romantics, Wordsworth was greatly affected by the French
Revolution, which he saw as an upwelling of democracy against the tyrannies of the
past. In 1791 he traveled to Paris and had an affair with a young French Republican,
Annette Villon, which led to the birth of an illegitimate daughter. (Wordsworth had
intermittent contact with them in later years.) Returning to England, he proclaimed
his world-weariness with the pollution and crowded environs of London, and with
Coleridge moved to the Lake Country of England where he could be inspired daily by
the sublime views of nature the countryside offered him. A big fan of Burke's Essay
on the Sublime, Wordsworth and his sister often took long "rambles" across the
countryside to expose the poet's sensibilities to the grandeur of nature; when he
returned to Dove Cottage, their home, he would then plunge into reflective writing
about the effects nature had on him. These led to works such as Lines Written
Above Tintern Abbey and eventually to his long poetic autobiography, The Prelude:
or The Growth of the Poet's Mind. (See especially lines 89-112 of Tintern Abbey for
Wordsworth's reflections on hearing "the still, sad music of humanity(" in the
presence of the sublime.) In Tintern Abbey the stanza of lines 23-50 explains the
Romantic mode of seeing "into the life of things" through reflection. His view of
nature is encapsulated in lines 103-112 as it connects nature with the development
of the "moral sense" of the poet. (In Romantic poetry, Nature in its various forms-Spring, the West Wind, etc.--replaces the role of the Deity in earlier poetry because
of this identification of Nature with the moral sense.)
Revolution also shapes Wordsworth's more conventional poetry, his sonnets (pp.
233-36). In them we see him railing against the Whig-driven commercialization of
the new middle class ("The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and
spending, we waste our powers") and his disgust over the situation in London
("Milton! thou shouldnt be living at this hour: / England has need of thee: she is a
fen"_).

Poet of nature
Wordsworth is, indisputably, the greatest poet of Nature. There is a
systematic development in his attitude towards nature. At first he loves Nature

for its external loveliness. He appreciates it through his senses and revels in the
colour, the smell and the form of natural objects. He loves sounding cataract for its
sound, and the rose for its beauty. This is the stage of thoughtless youth. Later on
he begins to worship Nature for its inner meaning. He now looks on Nature
as an embodiment of the Divine Spirit. In other words he spiritualizes Nature.
He thinks that Nature is not lifeless but possesses a life and spirit. He further
believes that there is a spirit in nature as well as in the mind of man. It is possible
for man to have communion with Nature. Anyone who communes with her would
gain in power, beauty and holiness. He says in ode on the Intimations of
Immortality:
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
He regards Nature as the nurse of his moral being and worships it as a
teacher, guide and friend. He describes Nature in such a way as to suggest that
nature can mould and ennoble human life. He places nature on a high pedestal.
Nature is like a goddess who compels admiration and worship.
Wordsworths philosophy of Nature, being systematic, is based on some
well-defined, fundamental principles. Nature is instinct with life. In other words,
there is an indwelling spirit behind every flower, tree and river, and indeed
every commonplace object of Nature. According to Wordsworth, Nature
exercises a two fold influence upon man. It is to man first impute and then law. As
an impute, she inspires the human mind; as a law, she restrains and chastens mans
thoughts and emotions. There is a pre-determined harmony between the
Spirit of Nature and the mind of man. The deep and essential harmony
between Man and Nature works in two ways;
1.

It enables Nature to communicate its message to Man.

2.

It enables Man to repeat on the message.

Wordsworth realizes the deep spiritual significance of Nature through

three successive stages;
(a) The sensuous

(b)

The intellectual

(c) The moral and spiritual.

Wordsworths love of Nature becomes at the last stage holy. He loves
Nature as a devotee loves his God. No poet of Nature has been more truthful than
Wordsworth in his representation of the various objects of Nature. He paints natural
objects but never reads his emotions in them. He offers us the bird and the flower,
the tree and the river, the wind and the rain just as they are. He sees nothing ugly
or mean. He exalts and glorifies even the most ordinary things of life and Nature. He
recognizes the sentient and personal life of Nature and not merely her physical
growth or outward changes. In his childhood, the flowers, the streams, the hill and
even the winds are regarded as his companions.
Let us now study the two important poems of Wordsworth, namely, Tintern
Abbey and Immortality Ode to expound the observations made above. We see
Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey as a worshipper of Nature. He shows his romantic
passion for nature. He gives highly emotional descriptions of the effects of the outer
world upon his inner life. The main theme of the poem is the poets relationship with

Nature and his indebtedness to her. In fact, we know everything about Wordsworth
as a poet of Nature from Tintern Abbey. He recounts how Nature influenced him,
brought him peace and tranquillity of mind even when he was in the din and bustle
of the city. We find him as the poet and mystic of Nature. He describes how the
contemplation of Nature brought to him a blessed mood and miner vision that
enabled him to see into the life of things. He gives the different stages of
development of his love for Nature. He takes delight in Nature. He achieves a
contact with the still sad music of humanity. And finally he feels an all-pervading
spirit in her. In this poem he clearly states his faith in Nature: Nature never did
betray the heart that loved her. This poem reveals his mysticism and pantheism.
Nature becomes the passion for the picturesque:
In Immortality Ode the poet faces a crisis in his life. He has been a worshiper of
nature. But with the advance in years, he seems to lose his close contact with
nature. He remembers that there was a time when meadow, grove, stream, the
earth and every common sight was a matter of glory and a fresh dream. He has now
arrived at a stage of his life when he says:
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. He further acknowledges
that the rainbow, the rose, the moon, the starry might, the sunshine are all the
same but he feels that there has past away a glory from the earth.
He is visited by sad thoughts but he has given vent to his sorrow and feels
relieved. He has recovered his former composure. And I again am strong. The
winds, the earth, the sea all are filled with joy. The poet invites the shepherd-boy to
share his delight. He feels the heavens laugh, the earth is adorning itself and the
children are culling fresh flowers in a thousand valleys far and wide. But he asks:
where is that loveliness, that beauty and delight which used to haunt everything in
his childhood. Wordsworth, as the poem proceeds, gives an explanation as to why
this loss of touch with Nature has happened. He has survived with this timely
expression of his grief and takes courage in the thoughts that even though he has
suffered a loss, other gifts of life have followed. Thus he has got a consolation.