Wordsworth's romanticism

[Maxos]

I believe it's worth saying a word about Wordsworth.

I shall give some guidelines to understand Wordsworth's poetic theory:

1) religion of nature: The poet's aim is to reach the complete intimation of the reality that lies hidden under the surface of things thanks to nature's intellectual benefits

from Tintern Abbey:

"These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

...that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

2) poetry as the result of reelaboration of feelings and their revival at an higher intellectual level

from Lyrical ballads:

I wandered lonely as a cloud:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


from the preface:
"I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

3) object: Nature and simple incidents of common life.

preface: "Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated"

4) style/language:

preface: "The language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves fro
m the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation."

from the Lucy Poems:

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:"

[Nerd]

I love wordsworth and his great emphasis on the "emotion recollected in tranquility." He puts so much stress on passion and emotion -- it's very refreshing. Verily, where would we be without such fervent minds?

[Maxos]

In USA! ih ih ih!

[Nerd]

Wordsworth wasn't American -- he was British. Emerson was from 'these here parts', though. ha.

by the way -- work on your comic relief. ;) ha.

[Maxos]

Emerson? The footballer playing in Juventus?

I did not understand your post, really.

[mono]

Indeed, I have always loved the founding Romanticism in William Wordsworth's poetry, along with that of his life-long friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Some of my favorites:

She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
-----

The Sun Has Long Been Set


The sun has long been set,
The stars are out by twos and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and the trees;
There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,
And a far-off wind that rushes,
And a sound of water that gushes,
And the cuckoo's sovereign cry
Fills all the hollow of the sky.
Who would go `parading'
In London, `and masquerading',
On such a night of June
With that beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses?
On such a night as this is!

-----

Ode

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore -
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday -
Thou child of joy
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel -I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herselfis adorning
This sweet May-morning;
And the children are culling
On every side
In a thousand valleys far and wide
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm: -
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
- But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his `humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind, -
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like a day, a master o'er a slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lies upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: -
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us -cherish -and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither -
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We, in thought, will join your throng
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forbode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Emerson? The footballer playing in Juventus?
One of the most brilliant minds, in my opinion, to have lived:
http://www.online-literature.com/emerson/

[smiling_girl]

somebody know the significance of the nature in Wordsworth's ode: Intimations... related to pantheism?

[Miranda]

I am not a great fan of Wordsworth's poetry, although I do like the nature poems you have posted here. But if you would like to research further into Wordsworth's background and the scenery and sort of life that inspired his poetry In the Lake District of England. Penguin Classics publish extracts from his sister's diary which tells of their daily life because they lived together. It is really great to be able to put the poems together with the diary and gives you insight into how the poems came to be written and the work that went into them. The book is called "Home At Grasmere' by Dorothy and William Wordsworth - edited by Colette Clark.

Miranda

[Sitaram]

somebody know the significance of the nature in Wordsworth's ode: Intimations... related to pantheism?

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood


http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2352.html



Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being.... with a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature.


No one likes to think that there will come a time when they cease to be. If we can project ourselves, meaning our spirit, our thoughts, our emotions, into the beauty of Nature, then we may console ourselves with some notion that our spirit shall persist within the material world, after our physical body is gone. Perhaps this is in part the origin of pantheistic thinking.

One might wonder why Wordsworth would find Christianity lacking in consolation and assurance of eternal life and would feel compelled to resort to artistic expressions of animism and pantheism.

I am interested in Pantheism and Panentheism.

I would like to learn more about Wordsworth's expressions of Pantheism.

It is important to realize that the term Pantheism was coined by a Christian thinker to denote something considered heretical and wicked.



http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_pantheism.htm



Pantheist (pan=all; theos=god) is a term coined in 1705 by John Toland for someone who believes that everything is God. On this basis in 1732, the Christian apologist Daniel Waterland used the noun "pantheism" for the first time, condemning the belief as "scandalously bad... scarce differing from... Atheism."


http://www.meta-religion.com/World_Religions/Pantheism/pantheism.htm



Panentheists believe that God is present in the sensible universe, but also extends beyond it. These include the neo-Platonist Plotinus and most Christian and Islamic pantheists such as Meister Eckhart, Ibn Al'Arabi or Attar.



http://www.poemhunter.com/william-wordsworth/quotations/poet-3067/page-7/



No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.


This verse has been the subject of a literary dispute centering on Wordsworth's pantheism: is the death of the girl (Lucy) terrible because she is as inanimate as the earth's inert objects, or consoling because she is one with nature?

In a Nutshell (click here) (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&program=CS%20Lewis%20and%20Public%20Life&id=515)



C. S. Lewis recounts the various stages of his conversion, which he once described as follows: "My own progress had been from 'popular realism' to Philosophical Idealism; from Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity"(Regress, 9). Although he does not explicitly identify his own pantheism with Wordsworth's, Lewis clearly indicates that it inspired or at least influenced his own. This stage is the first in which Lewis really accepts the idea of an active divine spirit: it is therefore crucial to his conversion to Christianity. Moreover, this stage is powerfully and long experienced by Lewis: according to Hooper, it lasted for most of the 1920s and therefore Lewis' twenties (Lewis converted in 1929). In 1924, for example, Lewis gave a paper to the Philosophical Society on "The Hegemony of Moral Values", in which "he accepted the primacy of a spiritual reality, which was essentially one of divine immanence rather than transcendence--the spirit within man and all reality, rather than a personal Father above him". This is, of course, pantheism in a nutshell and succinctly describes Wordsworth's philosophy in The Prelude. Wordsworth identifies this spirit as one which "rolls through all things" but is best perceived in solitude and in nature ("Tintern Abbey").


The notions of immanence vs. transcendence become very import in all these matters. A religion of transcendence sees a God with a personality as a Father or Sovereign who is above and outside of the world of matter and atoms. Immanence sees each and every particle and atom as being a microcosm containing God or spirit.

http://www.enotes.com/far-away-text/72811


Wordsworth's pantheism is a subtilized animism, but there are moments when his feeling is like that of the child or savage when he is convinced that the flower enjoys the air it breathe.


There is a passage in Isaiah, which has always troubled Sitaram, where God says:



For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.




What troubles Sitaram most about this is that God admits to having thoughts which means that God shares something in common with human beings, not different in kind but differing only in degree. God is admitting to having consciousness.

For me this opens a whole can of worms. Some of the problems and issues which arise from this have a bearing on pantheism.

By the way, in my searches, I have come across the following questions on Wordsworth which look very useful:

http://www.ajdrake.com/teachers/teaching/questions/wordsworth_various_2003_drake.htm


Pantheism is classified by Christian theologians as a heresy.

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/lqcw.html



In Coleridge's writings around the turn of the century, and in "The Eolian Harp" particularly, the text "comes to close to the heresy of pantheism" (Norton 326). In "The Eolian Harp," the narrator wonders,


"And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the soul of each, and God of all?" (44-48)


These lines of Coleridge anticipate Rupert Sheldrake's theories on Morphic Resonance


I (Sitaram) like to think that I came up with one or two original thoughts in my life. One of them is the recognition of a hint of pantheism in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Perhaps someone else beat me to the punch on this insight. Or, perhaps I am mistaken in construing a certain passage of Revelation as pantheism.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/3425/page311.htm



The ninth occurance of the word "hunger" is 9.) Revelation 7:16 "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.". Here we see that time and space, heaven and earth, pass away, and all souls dwell in the very fabric of God, which now becomes their space, light, raiment, sustenance and all things. These souls literally dwell in "the bosom of Abraham".

The verses 'The Kingdom of God is WITHIN' and 'in my Father's house are many mansions' are thought provoking verses. I recently learned that it may also be translated "the kingdom of heaven is AMONG you" , which has very different implications.

If we look at the Book of Revelation, in the chapters surrounding ch. 10.... (where it says...'God shall wipe away every tear').... we see that THERE SHALL BE TIME NO LONGER (CH 10, verse 6), and "heavens and earth shall be rolled up as a scroll" (no more SPACE).

So, time and space ceases, and God becomes raiment, light, air, food, etc. An image which is faithful to St. Paul's words, "..in HIM we live and move and have our being--Acts 17:28" and, Acts 17: 27 "That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us."

This passage, Ch. 10:6 in Revelation, depicts time and space itself passing away, and all dwell WITHIN God, within the "fabric of God" so to speak.

We do see in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man that Lazarus is "in the bosom of Abraham", which is metaphorical, but supports the notion of what is described in Revelation

What is interesting is that Christianity condemns notions of Pantheism, that God IS the universe; yet in the final analysis, based on what the Book of Revelation describes, God literally BECOMES the Universe, once the Universe passes away.

In light of the above understanding of Revelation, it would seem that the "many mansions" are WITHIN God Himself.



In his short monograph, "On the Nature of the Psyche", Carl Jung describes the "psychoid" aspect of matter, which strives to evolve consciousness. In a sense, the human race is matter which contemplates itself and the world around it. Just as matter strives to evolve consciousness, so, conversely, conscious beings feel a desire to return to that inert material state; an instinct which Freud termed the death wish.

Nietzsche does warn us that whenever we stare into the Void, the Void stares back into us. Once we begin to say that matter has a psychoid aspect and strives to evolve consciousness, then we have a form of pantheism on our hands. And we have the converse notion that consciousness or psyche or spirit is of a material or biochemical nature.

[wooo]

if you ever go to the lake district it is easy to see where Wordsworth got his inspiration! amazing!