Romantic Poets and the Natural World

Wow, this is some serious poetry reading! I've enjoyed reading Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge this week, but I must admit it's been just slightly taxing on the brain! It’s safe to say that reading poetry is an art in itself. There is reading, then re-reading, then trying to find similarities and differences, and most importantly, trying to make sense of what you've read, and only hoping you come CLOSE to what the poet intended. I'm not sure I've succeeded but it has been an interesting challenge.

The class blog background on these poets and their collaborations and "rebellions" helped bring the readings into better focus (not 20/20, but better than my initial readings!). I can see many of the major themes we've discussed, including childhood, and the ever-present Nature. I can understand that Nature has multiple meanings, including God and his design of the universe, as well as the natural world.

So on to the discussion for this week's blog. What importance does the natural world hold for these three Romantic poets? I would have to say it is of extreme importance. The poems are filled with images, memories, and observations of the beauty found in the natural world. Wordsworth's "Ode" starts straight off with his lamenting about a time when "meadow, grove, and stream//The earth, and every common sight//To me did seem//Appareled in celestial light." He goes on to describe visions of rainbows, roses, the moon, sunshine, birds, lambs, the wind, land and sea. Of course he is lamenting that these things no longer seem as glorious as they did in childhood, but the poem would not be the same without the vivid descriptions of the beauty that is found in nature. One of his poems that wasn’t assigned this week but is one of my favorites is “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Once read, you will always remember the beauty of the dancing daffodils. But I digress….

The natural world figures prominently for Blake as well. This is obvious just by looking at some of the titles of his poems in our text. The poems from Songs of Innocence are pleasant enough, but I tried harder to appreciate the natural world Blake describes in his Songs of Experience. “A Divine Image” made a huge impression on me. Humans don’t come out looking very pretty in this one. For better or worse, this is reality. Every line describes the most evil, primitive, “unGod-like” aspect of what it means, as a human, to live in the natural world. Juxtaposed against the title, the lines of the poem carry an infinite weight. We were made in God’s image, but the reality of having free-will in the natural world brings horrifying consequences.

Coleridge also uses natural world imagery, as we discovered by comparing his “Dejection: An Ode” to Wordsworth’s Ode. Again, there are images of the moon, sky, clouds, stars, the earth, and wind. The “Correspondent Breeze” wind-metaphor explains the winds at the outset of the poem, and gives the poem a sense of direction I hadn’t realized until reading this background. I have to say that his “Frost at Midnight” gave me a little chill (pardon the pun!). It is a beautiful, sweet poem that I consider to have been written for his infant son, as gentle and protective as any mother could write. The natural world abounds, beginning with the title. The frost, “unhelped by any wind” (the intentional non-use of the breeze metaphor?) is the backdrop and impetus for the poet’s dream-like reminiscences of his childhood. This leads him to address his infant son, sleeping by his side, and to wish for him a life filled with greater heights than the poet has achieved. He hopes the child will “wander like the breeze" (there’s the metaphor), by lakes and shores, mountains, and that “all seasons shall be sweet to thee.” That last paragraph is teeming with natural world images (summer, greenness, redbreast, snow, bare branch, apple tree, sun-thaw, and the quiet Moon).

I hope I’ve done some justice to the understanding of these poems. Again, it is a challenge to read these poems and imagine you’re somewhere on target. I wouldn’t dream I’ve hit the bullseye, but I certainly enjoy the aim!