The Natural World

In my interpretation of the romantic poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Coleridge, I see a common distinction between Man and Nature. The three poets refer to the soul as immortal and descendent from heaven. Upon birth, man’s spirit is bound to his body and is then subjected to the suffering of humanity. In Wordsworth’s, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, he says:

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!

This passage, and what follows it, indicates his belief that the soul is born pure and becomes accustomed to the hardships of life. Blake has a similar feeling in his two contrasting collections, Songs of Innocence, and, Songs of Experience. The contrast is shown by the “innocent” verses reflecting closeness with God, and the “experience” is expressed by observing the harshness and cruelty of humanity. Nature is given special importance as a bridge between the body and the soul. The Earth and our bodies are both created by God. Our body experiences physical sensations and emotions and suffering; over time, this separates us from the pure experience of beauty in nature and Heaven. Nature remains unchanged and is the source of our happiness. Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode, exemplifies this perfectly:

O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair and luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne’er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady! Is the spirit and that power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud—
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colors a suffusion from that light.

This makes the point: the “sensual and the proud” will not experience the “new Earth and new Heaven” the way the “pure of heart” will. Joy comes from that purity, and by “wedding Nature to us” we are able to rejoice in ourselves.