The romantic poets and their preoccupation with nature.

It has been said that the romantic poets were preoccupied with nature, both for its simple pleasures and as a conduit to the divine. Each of the poets viewed and used nature in a variety of ways, dependant on their personal philosophies. Arriving on the literary landscape at a time in which the industrial era was well underway and at the end of the age of reason, poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge saw lessons in nature. Both of them took this further, viewing nature as a guide and teacher. On the other hand, Keats used nature as a metaphor to describe human feeling and experience. Shelley viewed nature and human culture as parts of a greater whole, at times the natural world replacing a religion he no longer believed in. With that in mind, were the romantic poets simply preoccupied with nature, or was this infatuation part of a rebellion and exploration of the rapidly changing world around them?

William Wordsworth could perhaps be considered the foremost nature lover of the prominent English romantics. Shelley, in To Wordsworth (1816, p. 863), describes him as a ‘Poet of Nature’, a title that seems quite apt after but a brief scan of his works. Andrew Hubbell writes of critics using the term ‘Wordsworthian eco-poesis’, creating a standard of nature poetry with which to compare all others (2010, p. 14). In the poem The tables turned (1798, p.765), Wordsworth is either proclaiming, or being called himself, by the sun, to ‘Let Nature be your Teacher.’ Keeping in mind the importance of the poet’s use of syntax (Stephens, 1992), the capitalisation of nature and teacher in this line signifies the importance the poet is placing on both these roles. Through the blank verse poem Lines (1798, p.765), Wordsworth conveys how nature, and his view above Tintern Abbey in particular, due to its ‘beauteous forms’, keeps him refreshed, claiming through ‘hours of weariness, sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;’ see him through these times. More than providing restful space for the mind, nature is also viewed by Wordsworth as a teacher, muse and path to divinity. In book 1 of The Prelude (1850, p. 781) he states he ‘grew up / Fostered alike by beauty and by fear’ in his ‘belovéd vale’. The rest of this conversational poem outlines a number of experiences and awakenings he encountered as he grew towards a man and poet. Throughout he tells of developing a deeper appreciation of the nature that surrounded him and which he found offered more than just a place to gambol as a child. The methods, or ‘means which Nature deigned to employ’, used to educate him are alluded to from lines 340 to 356. Through nature he is able to have a vision of the duality of existence. Nature’s ‘Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles / Discordant elements, makes them cling together / In one society’ coupled with ‘hurtless light / Opening the peaceful clouds’ guides his ‘immortal spirit’ as it grows. Severe or light the lesson is taught ‘as best might suit her aim’. Wordsworth sees in nature the face and hand of the divine, guiding through life and informing his works.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was another that saw the dual purpose of nature as both a means to find relaxation as well as a teacher or muse. He describes his ‘love of nature’ as one of his ‘original tendencies’ (1817, p. 7) and claims that ‘Nature recites and recalls…by a perpetual revelation’ the existence of God. Coleridge imbues aspects of nature with emotion and human action. In The Aeolian Harp (1796, p. 805) he describes clouds as ‘Slow saddening round,’ and the ‘desultory breeze’ as able to caress the song of a lute ‘Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover’. This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1800, p. 807) reveals his frustration at being unable to journey through nature with friends due to an accident. He is able to picture them as they ‘Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, / To that still roaring dell, of which I told’, while aggravated by the loss of this opportunity to converse with both his friends and nature. All is not lost however, as nature reveals herself in a way that ‘Comes sudden on my heart’. This last stanza reveals his belief in nature as more than a thing to be viewed or used. ‘Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure; / No plot so narrow, be but nature there,’ harkens to the spirit of nature, as guided by God, and its personified quest to ease and guide the receptive mind and soul. The consequences of life coming between Coleridge and nature, is shown in the words of Dejection: An Ode (1802, p. 828):

But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.

This loss leads to ‘viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,’ symbolising the darkness he feels by the breakdown of his relationship and the resulting inability to view the calming beauty of nature, therefore feeling a loss in his connection to the divine.

In contrast to the above poets, John Keats is more inclined to use nature as a subject or metaphor than viewing it as the inspiration above all others. Aspects of nature fulfil the purpose of poetic adjective and imagery, such as the lines ‘Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;’ and ‘Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,’ from When I Have Fears (1818, p. 906). Where Wordsworth may have turned to a mountain stream to convey his meaning, Keats searched mythology, particularly Greek, for his symbolism. This is not to say that the natural world was not important to Keats. In his Ode to Phsyche (1819, p. 933), it seems just as significant the ‘two fair creatures, couchèd side by side’ are ‘In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof’, coupled with the other natural imagery, as is what they actually do. The fourth stanza has Keats comparing his thoughts to that of a tree:

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Keats goes on to describe how he will landscape his mind providing a space that ‘shall be for thee all soft delight’. The concept of the eternal nature of the human experience is expressed through the collective memory of the nightingale, in Ode to a Nightingale (1819, p. 935). Richard Fogle contends that Keats is using the nightingale to portray ‘a state of intense aesthetic and imaginative feeling, too poignant for long duration, which arise with the song of the bird and vanishes when the song is done’(1947, p. 81). This idea highlights the use of nature by Keats to work through thoughts and concepts, without the need to deify the natural as many of his contemporaries obviously did. While Keats appreciates natural beauty, it is to be used more to express humanness rather than the divine.

The last of the poets this essay will discuss is Percy Bysshe Shelley, which brings the conversation back to one who is most definitely in the nature loving ranks. This is not to state that Shelley engages in the deification of the natural world, rather he demonstrates an appreciation that would not be out of place in this modern era. Although it is debated, it would seem that in the words of Mont Blanc (1817, p. 866) Shelley is identifying the conflict between what he sees in nature and a Christian faith. Michael Erkelenz states that Shelley believes that faith in a deity has brought only ‘misery and ruin’ (1989, p. 103). On line 127, Shelley announces ‘Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:--the power is there, / The still and solemn power of many sights, / And many sounds, and much of life and death.’ He adds to this further in the same stanza ‘The secret Strength of things / Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome / Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!’. Kapstein believes Mont Blanc is an attempt by Shelley to reconcile ‘the nature of mind, the nature of knowledge, the nature of reality, and the relation of the human mind to the universe’ with his ‘doctrine of necessity’ (1947 p. 1046). This doctrine forms the basis of Shelley’s atheism and Kapstein reads a defiance even in the wisdom and power of the mountain, as the last three lines change the meaning by displaying ‘in contradiction of what he has been saying for a hundred and forty-one lines he brings the poem to an anti-climax.’ Rather than an anti-climax, these lines could also be seen as a final declaration of the supremacy of man’s thinking and spirit above any deity, whether based in nature or religion, which would relate back to the opening lines ‘The everlasting universe of things / Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,’ confirming the human brain as the true source of wisdom.

This selection of poets each had his views of the natural world. Wordsworth and Coleridge, with a very similar appreciation of God working through their natural surroundings to reach them, took immense pleasure in nature. More than that, it would seem they see in nature the actions of God’s holy spirit, guiding them and offering succour in dark times. Keats on the other hand, made little reference to the divinity of nature, seeking instead to understand the workings of the mind, using nature as metaphor when it suited his purpose. At the other end of the spectrum, Shelley at times uses nature to confirm his lack of belief in a divine being, though still seeing many lessons in the natural world. In the end, it is incredibly simplistic to say that the romantic poets had an obsession with nature. Each used or felt guided by nature in different ways. The thing they all had in common though, was the ability to gracefully use nature in a way to come to terms with the world around them.

References

Erkelenz, M 1989, 'Shelley's draft of `Mont Blanc' and the conflict of faith’', Review Of English Studies, 40, 157, pp. 100-103, Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 11 September 2013.

Ferguson, M., Salter, M. and Stallworthy, J. 1996. The Norton anthology of poetry. New York: W.W. Norton.

Fogle, RH 1947, 'A Note On Keat's Ode To A Nightingale', Modern Language Quarterly, 8, 1, p. 81, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 September 2013.

Hubbell, J 2010, 'A Question of Nature: Byron and Wordsworth', Wordsworth Circle, 41, 1, pp. 14-18, Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 September 2013.

Kapstein, IJ 1947, 'The Meaning of Shelley's 'Mont Blanc'', Pmla, 4, p. 1046, JSTOR Arts & Sciences III, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 September 2013.

Stephens, J 1992, Reading the Signs: sense and significance in written texts, Kangaroo Press Pty Ltd, Kenthurst NSW.