A History of English LiteratureFletcher, Robert Huntington
History
A History of English Literature
Fletcher, Robert Huntington
English literature -- History and criticism
Wordsworth, as we have said, is the chief representative of some
(especially one) of the most important principles in the Romantic Movement;
but he is far more than a member of any movement; through his supreme
poetic expression of some of the greatest spiritual ideals he belongs among
the five or six greatest English poets. First, he is the profoundest
interpreter of Nature in all poetry. His feeling for Nature has two
aspects. He is keenly sensitive, and in a more delicately discriminating
way than any of his predecessors, to all the external beauty and glory of
Nature, especially inanimate Nature--of mountains, woods and fields,
streams and flowers, in all their infinitely varied aspects. A wonderfully
joyous and intimate sympathy with them is one of his controlling impulses.
But his feeling goes beyond the mere physical and emotional delight of
Chaucer and the Elizabethans; for him Nature is a direct manifestation of
the Divine Power, which seems to him to be everywhere immanent in her; and
communion with her, the communion into which he enters as he walks and
meditates among the mountains and moors, is to him communion with God. He
is literally in earnest even in his repeated assertion that from
observation of Nature man may learn (doubtless by the proper attuning of
his spirit) more of moral truth than from all the books and sages. To
Wordsworth Nature is man's one great and sufficient teacher. It is for this
reason that, unlike such poets as Keats and Tennyson, he so often views
Nature in the large, giving us broad landscapes and sublime aspects. Of
this mystical semi-pantheistic Nature-religion his 'Lines composed above
Tintern Abbey' are the noblest expression in literature. All this explains
why Wordsworth considered his function as a poet a sacred thing and how his
intensely moral temperament found complete satisfaction in his art. It
explains also, in part, the limitation of his poetic genius. Nature indeed
did not continue to be to him, as he himself says that it was in his
boyhood, absolutely 'all in all'; but he always remained largely absorbed
in the contemplation and interpretation of it and never manifested, except
in a few comparatively short and exceptional poems, real narrative or
dramatic power (in works dealing with human characters or human life).
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