Wordsworth's Poetry

Romanticism was a philosophical, artistic, literary and cultural era which began in the late eighteenth century. The Romantic era was a period of great change and emancipation and allowed artistic freedom, experimentation and creativity.
Romanticism shifted the emphasis from logic, reason and rationality as valued in the Enlightenment era, to emotion, passion and individuality and the importance of the individual’s experience in the world and celebrated the importance of feelings and the imagination.
The effects of the Revolution in later years led Romantic writers to write of the Emperor of France’s cruelty, escaping to nature to flee the real world and its problems.
William Wordsworth became one of the most influential poets of the Romantic period displaying throughout his poetry his love of nature which he discovered at a young age.
Wordsworth’s poems often present an instant when nature speaks to him and he responds by speaking for nature.
“Tintern Abbey” explores the ways in which observing natural beauty can deepen human pleasures and natural awareness and can act as a consolation for one’s soul.
The unrhymed scheme of “Tintern Abbey” is fluid and natural, a technique added to the appreciation of natural beauty upheld by Wordsworth in his travels through nature. Wordsworth also emphasises throughout the poem the way in which the natural scene provides serenity and peace and fills him with joy for his return to London.
The contrast made between the beauty of the valley in “Tintern Abbey”, to that of the ‘fretful stir’ of the city provides the audience with an understanding of the vast difference between both environments, to allow the audience to appreciation the persona’s yearning for the Wye.
Wordsworth personifies nature as a healing force. This emphasises the positive effect nature has had on his mental and emotional wellbeing whilst living in the city: “the nurse, the guide, the guardian”.
For Wordsworth, memory plays a central part in his poem “Tintern Abbey”.
In “Tintern Abbey”, Wordsworth says of the remembrance of such beautiful forms and the way they rejuvenate him: “I have owed to them,/ In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,/ Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,/ And passing even into my purer mind/ With tranquil restoration”.
The continuation of Wordsworth’s appreciation of memory is also demonstrated in his poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud”. In this poem the power of nature observed by Wordsworth acts as consolation for his soul: “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”.
Wordsworth’s poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, describes how his loneliness is cured by nature, and more specifically a field of daffodils. “I wandered lonely as a cloud” allows the audience to share the same connection with nature as Wordsworth did, and are able to experience the same fascination Wordsworth encountered on his first confrontation with the field of daffodils.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud” personifies nature as uplifting and happy and as a therapeutic source: “fluttering and dancing in the breeze”. This reflects the same ideals as “Tintern Abbey”, along with the ideals of the Romantics that nature was a way to escape the problems of the Revolution.
The rhyming scheme of “I wandered lonely as a cloud” mimics the natural gait of Wordsworth through the daffodils: “Beside the lake, beneath the trees,/ Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”. The stressed and unstressed syllables of the poem reflect the heaviness of the city, and the feeling of relaxation obtained through nature. In both “Tintern Abbey” and “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, Wordsworth takes the liberty of emphasising the Romantic ideals of emotion, nature and imagination and through his poetry explored the implications of the French Revolution.