William Wordsworth Expostulation And Reply Poem

The reason Wordsworth wrote this poem was to express the beauty of all nature and how we take its beauty for granted. He is wishing to convey that we should acknowledge nature because we are nature and nature is in all of use. Also that we should admire its beauty

One of the many core tenets of the Romantic Period was the love and admiration of nature and its power. However, the way each romantic poet approached this idea varied extensively from their respective views and interpretations of nature. William Wordsworth, one of major pioneers of the Romantics, viewed nature from his own philosophical viewpoint as a formative influence superior to all. He believed in the education of man by Nature which was a prominent theme in his poems “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned.” In “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned,” Wordsworth’s use of natural imagery, metaphorical imagery, and criticism of conventional learning elevates the speaker’s message of learning from nature over academia.

Wordsworth was brought up in the Church of England and was a pious believer. However, in his poem, Wordsworth states that he would, “rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn,” than be disconnected with nature (9-10). This a further testament to Wordsworth’s commitment to nature and what he would be willing to give up in order to remain connected to it. In reference to Wordsworth’s statement that he would prefer paganism to disconnection Aubrey says, “Wordsworth is saying, presumably, that superstition is preferable to worldliness or apathy if it preserves the life of the imagination and our sense of nature as a living presence with purposes akin to our own.” In Wordsworth’s eyes, a life apart from the institution of belief he was raised in is much preferable to the death of all that nature embodies for

Wordsworth believed that nature had an enormous impact on the human mind. Wordsworth felt that nature was humanity’s teacher. The way Wordsworth’s philosophy and others philosophers of this time period, differs from that of the Enlightenment is that the philosophers of that era felt one

Bringing forth the fact that Wordsworth finds such “tranquil restoration” when he reminisces over these fond times and sights that it would also inhibit in him a feeling of “unremembered pleasure.” And though Wordsworth finds no sense of absolution with modern society, he doesn’t hate it for what it is. In fact, he simply just gives off this feeling that he simply doesn’t belong in cities or towns and instead jells more into natures embrace. Another reading post by Jaqueline coincides with Wordsworth’s views of the natural world. This is on full display when she herself mentions that she can heavily relate to the component of memory that that uses nature as a backdrop to fuel “current joys, hopefulness for the future, a sense of wholeness, healing and a knowledge.” The appreciation of such a connection is breathtaking and harkens back to the “aspect more sublime.” (37) which we also discussed in depth during last week’s lecture session. Jaqueline also brings up the fact that Wortdsworth doesn’t “mourn” the fact he has lost that connection to nature, that he simply must be happy with both who he is and how his nature with the world around him has matured since those days have come and passed. Exhuming the idea that Wordsworth has come to terms with the mankind’s overall evolution and relationship with the natural world. That is a past point brought up in my C3

As I was reading William Wordsworth’s poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” I connected many things from the poem to Romantic Literature. At the very beginning of the poem in the first few lines, it says the words: summer, winter, water, mountain springs, and cliffs. I automatically knew without having to read any further that this was going to be about nature. Nature is one of the main elements in Romantic Literature. The settings were always very detailed just like they are in the poem. The nature element also says that it is able to alter human perception and the way that one may feel. On line 56 of the poem, it says, “thou wander through the woods, how often has my spirit turned to thee.” This says that once you go outside,

William Wordsworth’s poetry was renowned for its connection to nature. As we learnt in class, his father became very ill when he traveled into nature and the

The human tendency, described in the poem, is to foolishly “waste our powers” on material items rather than taking time to enjoy nature. Mankind is obsessed with “getting and spending” that we have become “out of tune” with the rest of the world to the point we do not anything of nature at all. The majority of the poem is a tribute to nature’s beauty so that others can experience it once industrialization consumes it. The past and memory are captured in Wordsworth’s poem through the experience of nature and its destruction from a first-person perspective. The concern of preserving the past to the Romantic poets it to pass on experiences of something beautiful that many do not take the time to see, and will soon cease to

(“lonely rooms, and mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet”). Once again repetition is used to firmly imprint the idea in our mind of how essential this memory has been to his happiness during testing times, “How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee / … / How often has my spirit turned to thee”. The simplicity in which he aims to convey this idea relates back to his poetic purpose of recovering “the naked and native dignity of man” (Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1801), doing this required using “a selection of language really used by men” (Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1801). The use of repetition emphasises the point he is trying to convey, the audience is made focus on just how beneficial state of mind can be when we are in unpleasant circumstances. The first person narrative style places us in the shoes of Wordsworth, and we ponder the role positive thought has played in our own lives. With the poet himself, memories of nature sustained and restored him when weighed down by the burdens of the world, and we are compelled to question where he would be without

As a result of the French Revolution, Wordsworth used poetry to deal with the trauma caused by the Revolution (Heath, 2012). In the sestet of the poem, Wordsworth describes England’s glorified past where religion and politics emerged and England’s wealth and power were of a spiritual sort (Horton, 2010). In the poem Wordsworth (1807) talks about the Romanticist’s Milton, who is heroic and expresses contradicting viewpoints (Horton, 2010). Romanticism, which is part of the romantic era, is “a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms (2) : an aspect of romanticism b : adherence to a romantic attitude or style” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, 2015). The following are characteristics of romanticism: awe of nature, the interest in a common man and his childhood, and strong senses, emotions and feelings (Anon a, 2008). Firstly the themes of the poem will be discussed and linked to the characteristics of the romantic

This event made Wordsworth very depressed because he was taken anyway from his younger sister Dorothy, who he was very close with, and was forced to live with his mother’s side of the family, whom he was not close to. Wordsworth spent most of his days walking around the garden, sitting under trees, observing the birds that flew by, it was these times that developed Wordsworth passion for nature. In later years, this passion would show and grow within his poems, for example, his poem “The World is Too Much With Us” Wordsworth expresses how the world is changing nature and how if “we” as society does not try to fix the environment, it will be lost. Wordsworth continued to write about nature and the environment because it was what he was passionate about, what had helped him find some type of peace while living with his mother’s family. That is what the Romantic era was all about, it was what William Wordsworth made it all about: to push your boundary of thinking, to think and write with passion. This was one of Wordsworth's main characterics when thinking about his poems; nature. He would always use landscapes like “up-gathered now like sleeping flowers” to describe a mundane setting or a

It changed the way of living, which changed the way of thinking. Imagination was seen as one of the key features to describe one’s perspective of the world. Henry explains that the human imagination is some kind of desire - “a motive that drives the mind to discover things that it cannot learn by rational or logical thinking” (532). Logical thinking could not explain the importance in change, so something else had to be used. Imagination drives a person’s mind into deeper thought than does reason. He explains how life on earth dies off. “All earth was but one thought-and that was death” (Byron 42). Writing about an apocalyptic world, brings out the curiosity of people; therefore, people use imagination to put themselves in this situation to be able to understand. William quotes, “I see everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike” (532). Everyone has a different perspective. It is hard to be able to explain the writer’s writing without imagination and creativity. Readers don’t use reason to understand the poet’s intention. Using reason, just describes only one point of view. Henry states, “Romanticism turned away from the eighteenth-century emphasis on reason and artifice. Instead, the Romantics embraced imagination and naturalness” (529). During the period, they believed that “imagination, rather than mere reason, was the best response to the forces of change” (Henry 529). According to Henry, Wordsworth

In 1802, Wordsworth mɑrried his childhood friend, Mɑry Hutchinson. The next few yeɑrs were personɑlly difficult for Wordsworth. Two of his children died, his brother wɑs drowned ɑt seɑ ɑnd Dorothy suffered ɑ mentɑl breɑkdown. His politicɑl views suffered ɑ trɑnsformɑtion ɑround the turn of the century, ɑnd he becɑme increɑsingly conservɑtive, disɑppointed by events in Frɑnce ending in Nɑpoleon Bonɑpɑrte tɑking power.

Nakagawa agrees that Wordsworth’s essence of the poem is not just in the message, but also in the way it is written and analyses the structure in order to extract that hidden meaning.

Where Wordsworth focused too on love and nature at first, he then took on more spiritual subjects. Further, if we assume that Wordsworth’s imitation of “The Retreat” was intentional, then Vaughan may have even been a poetic model (in some sense) for Wordsworth later in life. True, Wordsworth is not generally considered a religious poet; he would never have originally considered Vaughan a model because of the latter’s extreme religiosity. Yet if these two poems don’t echo in godly gestures per se, they do in a more spiritual sense—and perhaps Wordsworth, as a man confronted with his own mortality, found Vaughan’s treatise on the spirit’s immortality a sympathetic sentiment. Thus by comparing the two, we also might better understand Wordsworth’s poetic progression.