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  • Essay / The Role of Nature in the Poetry of William Wordsworth

    In the poems of William Wordsworth, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and central role within them. For Wordsworth's poetry, interaction with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an eternal individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth himself a feeling of consolation. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary parts of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, viewing the world as a calming being of which he is a part, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divine aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its splendor, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is always comforted by the belief that all things happen in the hands of divinity and the just and divine order of nature itself. In William Wordsworth's poem, Resolution and Independence, Wordsworth describes the moods of the poem through the description of nature. The first appearance of the speaker, himself, is shown in (line 15); where he calls himself a seduced traveler, as he states: “The pleasant season has employed my heart” (line 19). We see the traveler as a bright and cheerful person as Wordsworth's characteristics of nature as a means of description continue throughout the poem. As the poem progresses, the speaker's attitude changes (line 26), where he tells us that his mood is depressed. It is here that the speaker introduces himself as “a happy child of the earth” (line 31); as again Wordsworth...... middle of paper ...... / The unfinished sheepfold can be seen / Besides the noisy stream of Greenhead Ghyll', showing the growth of human beings in a notion relating to nature .William Wordsworth has respect and great admiration for nature. This is quite evident in his three poems; the Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey and Michael in that his philosophy on divinity, immortality and the innocence of humans are elucidated in his relationship with nature. For Wordsworth himself, nature has a mind, a soul of its own, and to know is to experience nature with all one's senses. In his three poems there are many references to seeing, hearing and feeling one's surroundings. He speaks of the hills, the woods, the rivers and streams and the fields. Wordsworth understands that in each of us there is a natural resemblance to ourselves and to the background of nature..