Wordsworth’s Treatment of Nature:

As a poet of Nature, Wordsworth stands supreme. He is a worshipper of Nature, Nature’s devotee or high-priest. Wordsworth had a full-fledged philosophy, a new and original view of Nature.

He conceived of Nature as a living Personality. He believed that there is a divine spirit pervading all the objects of Nature. Wordsworth philosophy can be termed as mystical Pantheism. As a true pantheist he also says that all is God and God is all. Nature is the means through which a man can come into contact with God. This perception is particularly reverberated in Tintern Abbey, where he says with great devotion:

   “...And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something for more deeply infused,
Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:”

He finds the existence of God even in the mind of man. Wordsworth upholds that there is a pre-arranged harmony between the mind of man and the spirit in nature, which enables man to form a relationship or communication with nature.

     “Dust as we are immortal spirit grows like

Harmony in music, there is a dark

    Inscrutable craftsmanship which binds together

    Discordant elements and makes them cling together

        In a society.”  

The relationship is materialised when the mind of man forms a kinship with the thoughts of nature. And it is this cordial and intellectual junction between man and nature that helped to shape his belief that nature has the power to teach and educate human beings. The poet considers nature as a bountiful source of knowledge. He also believes that nature is the nurse and the protector of the mankind. Nature’s benignity considers only the welfare of human beings. In his words, nature is:

   “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.”

Wordsworth believed that the company of Nature gives joy to the human heart and he looked upon Nature as exercising a healing influence on sorrow-stricken hearts.  In Wordsworth’s belief, nature is capable of alleviating the tormented mind of man. The beautiful and frolicsome aspects of nature are an infinite source for healing power. To him the primrose and the daffodils are symbols to him of Nature’s message to man. A sunrise for him is not a pageant of colour; it is a moment of spiritual consecration. In his eyes, “Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn, and without which any human life is vain and incomplete.”

Cazamian remarks: “To Wordsworth, Nature appears as a formative influence superior to any other, the educator of senses and mind alike, the sower in our hearts of the deep-laden seeds of our feelings and beliefs. It speaks to the child in the fleeting emotions of early years, and stirs the young poet to an ecstasy, the glow of which illuminates all his work and dies of his life.”

In the Immortality Ode he tells us that as a boy his love for Nature was a thoughtless passion but that when he grew up, the ob­jects of Nature took a sober colouring from his eyes and gave rise to profound thoughts in his mind because he had witnessed the suffer­ings of humanity:

“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

When life becomes pungent and unbearable then the sweet and affectionate contact with nature and even the recollections of nature can eliminate the burden of desolation, anxiety and suffocation:

“But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensation sweet.
Felt in the blood and felt along the heart;
And passing even into the purer mind
With tranquil restoration...”

Again in Daffodils Wordsworth recalls:

          “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.

Unlike most descriptive poets who are satisfied with a static pictorial effect, Wordsworth never confines his verse within the vivid portrayal of the sights, sounds, odours, and movements of various elements of nature. He aims at attaining something higher and divine and leaving behind a record of his mystical experiences. So his poetry is not simply an artistic encapsulation of lovely and tranquil aspects of nature but also a comprehensive account of his mystical experiences.

Wordsworth, like a true mystic, sees life in all objects of nature. According to him, every flower and cloud, every stream and hill, the stars and the birds that live in the midst of nature, has each their own life.

Wordsworth honours even the simplest and the most ordinary objects of nature and human life.  For him nothing is mean or low, since everything that is present in the universe is touched by divine life.

To conclude we ought to say that Wordsworth never looked at nature like the way we do. With great devotion and enthusiasm, he sought to read the profoundest meaning of human life in nature. In the way of doing so he forged himself as a great poet of nature with a true mystical vision.