When many people
think about either nature or poetry plants and sappy love poems often enter
their minds, but when the idea of the two concepts, nature and poetry, are
merged together what then is the outcome? Sappy poetry about a poet’s love of
plants? How about feelings much deeper that connect the two ideas together that
recall more emotion in the subtlety of referring to nature as a home away from
home? William Wordsworth, Charlotte Turner Smith, and John Keats tackle these
very questions in such superb ways that a reader may forget that they are
poetry that is mainly focused on nature. In each of the poets works there is a
sense of nostalgia and longing sure, but it is the way in which these poets
express and represent themselves through their writing that makes a reader want
to dig deeper into their works and find out what in their lives influenced such
great writing that could leave a person exhausted because the emotion is so
strong. Each poet more or less longed for a greater feeling of oneness in their
works but their ideas on aesthetic beauty and mortality that connect them even
more.
During the
romantic poetry movement wealthy men tended to dominate the genre but it was
Charlotte Turner Smith who would inspire the poetic works of many men who would
follow in her footsteps. Smith lived a life that many would not wish upon their
worst enemy but that is what made her work so great. It is in Smith’s final poem
“Beachy Head” where a true understanding of her is given. In the work Smith
gives what seems like differing voices the opportunity to present their stories
and memories but in a way that does not seem particularly cohesive as she hints
at political and social strife and then to her less than satisfying and unquestionably
challenging life and back again. It is however, when she gives herself a voice
in “Beachy Head” that all thoughts are clear and concise and most touching
especially when she states:
“I once was
happy, when while yet a child, I learn'd to love these upland solitudes/ And,
when elastic as the mountain air/ To my light spirit/ care was yet unknown/ And
evil unforeseen:Early it came/ And childhood scarcely passed/ I was condemned/
A guiltless exile, silently to sigh/ While Memory, with faithful pencil, drew/ The
contrast; and regretting/ I compar'd With the polluted smoky atmosphere…To
thunder on the coastHaunts of my youth!”
Here Smith is referring to fondness she
had of her life spent in living in the country before she was forced to move
into the city of London which like the smog infested skies in the city
eventually became a metaphor for her own life which forced her youth away from
her. In the course blog Enargeia claims “this seems like what she was trying to
say is that she was happy around such beauty in the town she lived in. but was
no longer happy in London,” but it is dlacey1127 who has a more powerful
assertion of Smith’s writing by making a greater connection with Smith’s
writings, “She talks about wanting her mind to return to a state of peace. She
describes nature so precisely that I can almost picture myself right there
watching everything happen by seeing what she sees through her writing.”
William
Wordsworth who was often heard of saying that Smith influenced his work was
author to some of the most amazing poems that allowed him to see nature as a
sanctuary and a place to fulfill an emptiness that life made void in his heart
as he aged. Unlike Smith however, Wordsworth was not as confusing in his
writing and was much clearer. In “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey” Wordsworth presents the tale of a troubled man who seems to be
attempting to escape his problems by running to a familiar place that had once
brought him much joy. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker acknowledges
that it has been five long years since he last visited England’s Tintern Abbey
and it is after this that he begins to reflect upon the profound effect his
last visit had on him. While in the beginning of the poem the reader is made to
believe that the speaker is alone on this journey, close to the poems end does
the reader figure out that the speaker is not alone visiting Tintern Abbey, but
unlike his sister, the speaker, is not admiring the structure of the
architecture but the scenery of nature instead. It is during these moments that
he uses the surrounding trees and murmuring waters to depict his more significant
memories of the Abbey. The speaker implies that if he were never to hear nor
see the most significant aspects of Tintern Abbey ever again that just being
there with his sister was enough for him. He also hints that by just being
there with her that his soul is no longer weary and that his love for the
nature of Tintern Abbey does not compare to that he has for his sister. Not
failing to mention, the speaker does admit that after such a lengthy emotional
journey of not experiencing the natural beauty of the land that the place
served as a sanctuary for him and the land itself for which he is eternally
grateful.
(Here is a
picture of Tintern Abbey with visible trees which were very significant to
Wordsworth’s poem.)
The
tone of the poem is nothing short of a combination of sorrow and hope and
nostalgia, as represented when he writes, “to them I may have owed another
gift…a blessed mood.” The “them” that he is speaking of are his memories. The
speaker takes on the personality of a troubled soul who is attempting to
rekindle a greatness within them that had been lost so long ago. The speaker
takes on the role of a teacher or a mentor because he is attempting to expose
not only the reader but his sister as well to the significance of Tintern
Abbey’s natural aesthetics. Wordsworth paints magnificent pictures with his
words as he describes the mountains and gloomy woods. Wordsworth uses symbolism
to bring the message of the poem full circle. “Which at this season, with their
unripe fruits, are clad in one green hue,” which exemplifies the speaker’s
journey of maturity as he voyages throughout the poem. The history behind this
poem is very important to the understanding of the poem. As discussed in class,
the poem was written during the French Revolution which had a profound effect
on Wordsworth as he was in love with a French woman and had a half French child
with her, but because he was British he had to leave them during the time of
unrest which weighed heavily upon him.
The
full circle theme seems to be a common thread amongst Wordsworth’s writings
especially in the context of this course. During the course a great number of
Wordsworth’s works were read beginning with ““Lines Written a Few Miles Above
Tintern Abbey” and finished with The Prelude which seemed to be a full circle compilation of his life. In a blog
post entitled Tintern Abbey 2.0 M. also sees the two works as synonymous pieces,
“so while reading Prelude, I was struck
with the same feeling that I did when I read "Tintern Abbey" for the
first time.” M. goes on to further connect the two works by lines from The
Prelude, "There are in our existence spots of time / which with
distinct preeminence retain/ a fructifying virtue" (298-290). M. also
attributes the footnotes to their understanding of the nostalgic claims in the
two works and how they worked together, “and then read the footnote for line
294 that informs the reader that "Tintern Abbey" had been written six
months prior "Tintern" focused more on trying to relive the
experience in times of need, yet "Prelude" is more about the act of
remembering and the memory itself.”
In the course blog Keats like the
two poets mentioned above set off a firestorm in his poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Many readers, myself included, could not fathom what it was about this
particular urn to draw so much of his attention to make him want to write a
poem about it. After many readings
however, the understanding was made clear. In, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John
Keats attempts to bring the cliché saying that a picture is worth a thousand
words to life through his speaker, who stares at the many images depicted on
the urn and ponders what the legend may hold for men and women for whom the
story develops. As each stanza unfolds, the thoughts of the speaker deepen and
become more complicated due to the various newly founded ideas that surface for
him with each glance at the urn as he elaborates on his various thoughts of the
concentrated representations on the urn.
(The subject of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)
“Rooted in
awareness of pain and flux, Keats’s odes of 1819 reveal the poet’s desire to
escape the painful actual and seek repose in beauty, in the ideal” (Wigod). It
is through each glance that the reader is able to question the true meaning of
the urn’s pictures which leads him to believe
that “ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and
all ye need to know’”. However, it seems
as though Keats or perhaps his speaker are living in a state of untruth through
that statement because it leaves out all the truths that are not beautiful but
are downright ugly and more realistic to life and not those that exist in a
perfectly unaltered universe because the images on the urn never progress.
Hanner Nanner points out in a blog post that the lack of progress allows for
the beautiful moments captured on the urn to never be destroyed as they refer
back to the poem,
“The first set of lines that always stick out to me come from the
second stanza: "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter;
therefore, ye soft pipes, play on." While Keats may be talking about the
piper who can never finish his song, as depicted on the urn, this has always
been a sort of symbol for optimism for me. While a song may never be heard as
it is intended, it can also never be ruined.”
“Once upon a time there was a
general consensus that Romantic poets flooded their work with a sincerity that
enabled readers to feel a privileged access to the growth of a poet’s mind, the
fears that he might cease to be, the delight that came sudden on his heart.”
(Labbe) In Labbe’s assessment it is easy to picture Smith, Wordsworth, or Keats
as they each seemed to battle mortality only in differing ways as Smith almost
seemed to be waiting impatiently, Wordsworth seemingly indifferent but not
quite ready to accept the idea, and Keats who doing all he could to run in the
opposite direction from death. Each poet used there writing as a way to fill a
void left in their lives by looking back on the nature that they loved so
dearly to gather an understanding of themselves along the way. Smith was
desperately clinging to one of the last fond memories of her time as a girl
before her life became something that she could no longer control. Wordsworth
on the other hand was hurting over being away from his loved ones at such a
time when seeing them again seemed almost highly unlikely and the place that
brought him any joy was Tintern Abbey’s nature. Even though the urn was not
physically nature scenes on the urn involved nature that the speaker in Keats’
poem clung to in hopes that nothing change but rather stay the same, and while
the other two poets understood that seasons come and go and death is only
another step Keats ran from it. They all found beauty in their picturesque view
of nature even though each view differed from the other.
Works Cited
3. Labbe, Jacqueline M. Smith, Wordsworth, and the Model of the Romantic
Poet. Modeling the Self: Subjectivity and Identity in Romantic and
Post-Romantic Thought and Culture Numéro 51. August 2008.
4. Wigod, Jacob D. PMLA, Vol. 72 No. 1 March 1957, pp. 113-121.
