let me speak first of wordsworth as a poet of nature. the peculiar and precious quality of his best work is that it is done with his eye on the object and his imagination beyond it.
nothing could be more accurate, more true to the facts than wordsworth’s observation of the external world. there was an underlying steadiness, a fundamental placidity, a kind of patient, heroic obstinacy in his character, which blended with his delicate, almost tremulous sensibility, to
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make him rarely fitted for this work. he could look and listen long. when the magical moment of disclosure arrived, he was there and ready.
some of his senses were not particularly acute. odours seem not to have affected him. there are few phrases descriptive of the fragrance of nature in his poetry, and so far as i can remember none of them are vivid. he could never have written tennyson’s line about
“the smell of violets hidden in the green.”
nor was he especially sensitive to colour. most of his descriptions in this region are vague and luminous, rather than precise and brilliant. colour-words are comparatively rare in his poems. yellow, i think, was his favourite, if we may judge by the flowers that he mentioned most frequently. yet more than any colour he loved clearness, transparency, the diaphanous current of a pure stream, the light of sunset
“that imbues
whate’er it strikes with gem-like hues.”
but in two things his power of observation was unsurpassed, i think we may almost say, unrivalled:
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in sound, and in movement. for these he had what he describes in his sailor-brother,
“a watchful heart
still couchant, an inevitable ear,
and an eye practiced like a blind man’s touch.”
in one of his juvenile poems, a sonnet describing the stillness of the world at twilight, he says:
“calm is all nature as a resting wheel;
the kine are couched upon the dewy grass,
the horse alone seen dimly as i pass,
is cropping audibly his evening meal.”
at nightfall, while he is listening to the hooting of the owls and mocking them, there comes an interval of silence, and then
“a gentle shock of mild surprise
has carried far into his heart the voice
of mountain torrents.”
at midnight, on the summit of snowdon, from a rift in the cloud-ocean at his feet, he hears
“the roar of waters, torrents, streams
innumerable, roaring with one voice.”
under the shadows of the great yew-trees of borrowdalek he loves
“to lie and listen to the mountain flood
murmuring from glaramara’s inmost caves.”
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what could be more perfect than the little lyric which begins
“yes, it was the mountain echo
solitary, clear, profound,
answering to the shouting cuckoo
giving to her sound for sound.”
how poignant is the touch with which he describes the notes of the fiery-hearted nightingale, singing in the dusk:
“they pierce and pierce;
tumultuous harmony and fierce!”
but at sunrise other choristers make different melodies:
“the birds are singing in the distant woods;
over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
the jay makes answer as the magpie chatters;
and all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.”
wandering into a lovely glen among the hills, he hears all the voices of nature blending together:
“the stream, so ardent in its course before,
sent forth such sallies of glad sound that all
which i till then had heard, appeared the voice
of common pleasure: beast and bird, the lamb,
the shepherd’s dog, the linnet and the thrush
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vied with this waterfall, and made a song,
which while i listened, seemed like the wild growth
or like some natural produce of the air
that could not cease to be.”
wordsworth, more than any other english poet, interprets and glorifies the mystery of sound. he is the poet who sits oftenest by the ear-gate listening to the whispers and murmurs of the invisible guests who throng that portal into “the city of man-soul.” indeed the whole spiritual meaning of nature seems to come to him in the form of sound.
“wonder not
if high the transport, great the joy i felt,
communing in this sort through earth and heaven
with every form of creature, as it looked
towards the uncreated with a countenance
of adoration, with an eye of love.
one song they sang, and it was audible,
most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
o’ercome by humblest prelude of that strain,
forgot her functions and slept undisturbed.”
no less wonderful is his sense of the delicate motions of nature, the visible transition of form and outline. how exquisite is the description of a high-poising summer-cloud,
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“that heareth not the loud winds when they call;
and moveth all together, if it move at all.”
he sees the hazy ridges of the mountains like a golden ladder,
“climbing suffused with sunny air
to stop—no record hath told where!”
he sees the gentle mists
“curling with unconfirmed intent
on that green mountain’s side.”
he watches the swan swimming on lake lucarno,—
“behold!—as with a gushing impulse heaves
that downy prow, and softly cleaves
the mirror of the crystal flood,
vanish inverted hill and shadowy wood.”
he catches sight of the fluttering green linnet among the hazel-trees:
“my dazzled sight he oft deceives,
a brother of the dancing leaves.”
he looks on the meadows sleeping in the spring sunshine:
“the cattle are grazing,
their heads never raising,
there are forty feeding like one!”
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he beholds the far-off torrent pouring down ben cruachan:
“yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;
its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,
frozen by distance.”
now in such an observation of nature as this, so keen, so patient, so loving, so delicate, there is an immediate comfort for the troubled mind, a direct refuge and repose for the heart. to see and hear such things is peace and joy. it is a consolation and an education. wordsworth himself has said this very distinctly.
“one impulse from a vernal wood
may teach you more of man
of moral evil and of good
than all the sages can.”
but the most perfect expression of his faith in the educating power of nature is given in one of the little group of lyrics which are bound together by the name of lucy,—love-songs so pure and simple that they seem almost mysterious in their ethereal passion.
“three years she grew in sun and shower,
then nature said, ‘a lovelier flower
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on earth was never sown;
this child i to myself will take;
she shall be mine, and i will make
a lady of my own.
myself will to my darling be
both law and impulse; and with me
the girl, in rock and plain,
in earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
shall feel an overseeing power
to kindle or restrain.
...
the stars of midnight shall be dear
to her; and she shall lean her ear
in many a secret place
where rivulets dance their wayward round,
and beauty born of murmuring sound
shall pass into her face.’”
the personification of nature in this poem is at the farthest removed from the traditional poetic fiction which peopled the world with dryads and nymphs and oreads. nor has it any touch of the “pathetic fallacy” which imposes the thoughts and feelings of man upon natural objects. it presents unconsciously, very simply, and yet prophetically, wordsworth’s vision of nature,—a vision whose distinctive marks are vitality and unity.
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it is his faith that “every flower enjoys the air it breathes.” it is also his faith that underlying and animating all this joy there is the life of one mighty spirit. this faith rises to its most magnificent expression in the famous lines composed a few miles above tintern abbey:
“and i have felt
a presence that disturbs me with the joy
of elevated thought; a sense sublime
of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean and the living air,
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
a motion and a spirit, that impels
all thinking things, all objects of all thought,
and rolls through all things.”
the union of this animating spirit of nature, with the beholding, contemplating, rejoicing spirit of man is like a pure and noble marriage, in which man attains peace and the spousal consummation of his being. this is the first remedy which wordsworth finds for the malady of despair, the first and simplest burden of his prophecy of joy. and he utters it with confidence,
“knowing that nature never did betray
the heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
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through all the years of this our life, to lead
from joy to joy: for she can so inform
the mind that is within us, so impress
with quietness and beauty, and so feed
with lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
the dreary intercourse of daily life,
shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
our cheerful faith that all which we behold
is full of blessings.”
