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Project Work of English
On
Pantheistic elements in wordsworthian poetry

Submitted To:-
Dr. Pratyush Kaushik
Faculty of Political Science


Submitted By: -
ANKIT ANAND
Roll No. 916
1st Year B.A. LL.B. (Hons)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my guide
Dr. Pratyush Kaushik for his exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement
throughout the course of this research. The blessing, help and guidance given by him time to
time shall carry me a long way in the journey of life on which I am about to embark.
I also take this opportunity to express a deep sense of gratitude to Dr. Pratyush Kaushik for
providing me this research topic and for her cordial support, valuable information and
guidance, which helped me in completing this task through various stages.
Lastly, I thank almighty, my parents, brother and friends for their constant encouragement
without which this assignment would not be possible.













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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction.........................................................................................................................4
Aims and Objectives...........................................................................................................6
Hypothesis...........................................................................................................................7
Research methodology........................................................................................................7
Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet....................................................................................8-11
Nature Worshipping......................................................................................................11-15
Wordsworthian Style.....................................................................................................15-18
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................19-20
Bibliography.......................................................................................................................21












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Introduction

The term pantheism is a modern one, possibly first appearing in the writing of the Irish
freethinker John Toland (1705) and constructed from the Greek roots pan (all)
and theos (God). Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an
expression of Gods nature. It comes from pan meaning all, and theism, which means
belief in God. So according to pantheism, God is everything and everything is God. A
doctrine which identifies God with the universe or regards the universe as a manifestation of
God.It involves a denial of God's personality and expresses a tendency to identify God
and nature. But if not the name, the ideas themselves are very ancient, and any survey of the
history of philosophy will uncover numerous pantheist or pantheistically inclined thinkers;
although it should also be noted that in many cases all that history has preserved for us are
second-hand reporting of attributed doctrines, any reconstruction of which is too conjectural
to provide much by way of philosophical illumination.
At its most general, pantheism may be understood positively as the view that God is identical
with the cosmos, the view that there exists nothing which is outside of God, or else negatively
as the rejection of any view that considers God as distinct from the universe.
However, given the complex and contested nature of the concepts involved, there is
insufficient consensus among philosophers to permit the construction of any more detailed
definition not open to serious objection from some quarter or other. Moreover, the label is a
controversial one, where strong desires either to appropriate or to reject it often serve only to
obscure the actual issues, and it would be a sad irony if pantheism revealed itself to be most
like a traditional religion in its sectarian disputes over just what counts as true pantheism.
Therefore pantheism should not be thought of as a single codifiable position. Rather it should
be understood as a diverse family of distinct doctrines; many of whom would be surprised
and, indeed, disconcertedto find themselves regarded as members of a single household.
Further, since the concept has porous and disputed boundaries there is no clear consensus on
just who qualifies, no definitive roll-call of past pantheists. Given this situation the range of
things that may be usefully said about all pantheisms is perhaps limited, but nonetheless a
variety of concepts may be clarified, the nature of contentious issues explored, and the range
of possible options more precisely mapped out.
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Pantheism in religion, literature, and philosophy
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There are several different ways to think about pantheism. (1) Many of the world's religious
traditions and spiritual writings are marked by pantheistic ideas and feelings. This is
particularly so for example, in Hinduism of the Advaita Vedanta school, in some varieties of
Kabbalistic Judaism, in Celtic spirituality, and in Sufi mysticism. (2) Thirdly, as it is in this
article, pantheism may be considered philosophically; that is, a critical examination may be
made of its central ideas with respect to their meaning, their coherence, and the case to be
made for or against their acceptance. (3) Another vital source of pantheistic ideas is to be
found in literature, for example, in such writers as Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Emerson,
Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, and Robinson Jeffers. Although it should be added that, far
from being limited to high culture, pantheistic themes are familiar, too, in popular media, for
example in such films as Star Wars, Avatar, and The Lion King.

William Wordsworth is the Romantic poet most often described as a "nature" writer; what the
word "nature" meant to Wordsworth is, however, a complex issue. On the one hand,
Wordsworth was the quintessential poet as naturalist, always paying close attention to details
of the physical environment around him (plants, animals, geography, weather). At the same
time, Wordsworth was a self-consciously literary artist who described "the mind of man" as
the "main haunt and region of [his] song." This tension between objective describer of the
natural scene and subjective shaper of sensory experience is partly the result of Wordsworth's
view of the mind as "creator and receiver both." Wordsworth consistently describes his own
mind as the recipient of external sensations which are then rendered into its own mental
creations. (Shelley made a related claim in "Mont Blanc" when he said that his mind
"passively / Now renders and receives, fast influencings, / Holding an unremitting
interchange / With the clear universe of things around".) Such an alliance of the inner life
with the outer world is at the heart of Wordsworth's descriptions of nature. Wordsworth's
ideas about memory, the importance of childhood experiences, and the power of the mind to
bestow an "auxiliar" light on the objects it beholds all depend on this ability to record
experiences carefully at the moment of observation but then to shape those same experiences
in the mind over time. We should also recall, however, that he made widespread use of other
texts in the production of his Wordsworthian (Keats said "egotistical") sublime: drafts of

1
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/ accessed on 14/04/2014 at 18:56 IST
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poems by Coleridge, his sister Dorothy's Journals, the works of Milton, Shakespeare,
Thomson, and countless others. Wordsworthian "nature" emerges as much a product of his
widespead reading as of his wanderings amid the affecting landscapes of the Lake District.

His poems often present an instant when nature speaks to him and he responds by
speaking for nature. The language of nature in such instances is, like the language
Wordsworth uses to record such events, often cryptic and enigmatic. The owls in the often-
quoted "Boy of Winander" passage of The Prelude hoot to a Wordsworthian child who
answers first in their owl-language and then with a poem that records only the mirroring
image of an "uncertain heaven," the dark sky reflected in a still silent lake. Wordsworth longs
for a version of nature that will redeem him from the vagaries of passing moments, but he
usually records those natural phenomena that promise only the passing of time and the
cyclical transience of natural process. "Nutting" holds us up painfully against the ravaging of
a pristine and naturally spiritualized bower. The Lucy poems tells us that Lucy is back into
nature at her death, but that consolation seems small recompense for the humanized "nature"
of the loss. The Prelude wants to keep us in touch with a childhood and subsequent adult
identity realized within the natural world; at the same time, however, this autobiographical
epic leaves adult readers feeling a long way from the "spots of time" of childhood. Nothing in
Wordsworth is simple or singular; like Milton, he is a poet who almost resists the possibility
of final or definitive interpretation. His view of nonhuman nature is likewise open-ended.
Wordsworth's "nature" points us away from the closed world of theocentric symbol-making
toward the unstable world of postmodern meaning.

Aims and Objective
(1) Try to know what is pantheistic element?
(2) Try to know about William Wordsworth and his personal life.
(3) Try to know what is Nature worshipping?
(4) Try to know William Wordsworth Poetic style.

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Hypothesis
The researcher feels that William wordsworth was a romantic poet and he gave more
emphasis on pantheism through his poem.

Research Methodology
This project is based mainly and heavily on written text material. It is based on the doctrinal
method of research. The segments are structured and written actively. The writing style is
descriptive as well as analytical. This project has been done after a thorough research based
upon intrinsic and extrinsic aspect of the assigned topic. The doctrinal method in this research
paper refers to various books, articles, news paper, magazine, Dictionary and political review.
In this research paper, the researcher will only use Doctrinal method.

William Wordsworth's as a Romantic poet

William Wordsworth's poetry exhibits Romantic characteristics and for his treatment towards
romantic elements, he stands supreme and he can be termed a Romantic poet on a number of
reasons. The Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century was a revolt against the
classical tradition of the eighteenth century; but it was also marked by certain positive trends.
Wordsworth was, of course, a pioneer of the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century.
With the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the new trends become more or less established.
However, the reasons for why Wordsworth can be called a Romantic poet are given below:

Imagination: Where the eighteenth century poets used to put emphasis much on wit, the
romantic poets used to put emphasis on imagination. Wordsworth uses imagination so that
the common things could be made to look strange and beautiful through the play of
imagination. In his famous Intimation Ode", it seems to his as to the child "the earth, and
every common sight" seemed "apparelled in celestial light". Here he says,

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There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light"
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Moreover, in this poem, we find a sequence of picture through his use of imagery. Through
his imagination he says,

The Rainbow come and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare"
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Similarly, in the poem, Tintern Abbey, the poet sees the river, the stream, steep and lofty
cliffs through his imaginative eyes. He was enthusiastically charmed at the joyful sound of
the rolling river. Here he says,

Once again
Do I behold those steep and lofty cliffs
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion and connect
The landscape with quiet of the sky".
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In this poem, the poet seems that the nature has a healing power. Even the recollection of
nature soothes the poet's troubled heart. The poet can feel the existance of nature through
imagination even when he is away from her. He says,

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INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
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INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
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COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13,
1798

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In lonely rooms and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensation sweet".
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Nature: Wordsworth is especially regarded as a poet of nature. In most of the poems of
Wordsworth nature is constructed as both a healing entity and a teacher or moral guardian.
Nature is considered in his poems as a living personality. He is a true worshiper of nature:
nature's devotee or high priest. The critic Cazamian says, "to Wordsworth, nature appears is a
formative influence superior to any other, the educator of senses or mind alike, the shower in
our hearts of the deep laden seeds of our feelings and beliefs". He dwells with great
satisfaction, on the prospects of spending his time in groves and valleys and on the banks of
streams that will lull him to rest with their soft murmur.

For Wordsworth, nature is a healer and he ascribes healing properties to Nature in Tintern
Abbey . This is a fairly obvious conclusion drawn from his reference to "tranquil restoration"
that his memory of the Wye offered him in lonely rooms and mid the din/Of towns and
cities"

It is also evident in his admonition to Dorothy that she let her
"Memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh !then
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief.
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations!
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Wordsworth says nature "never did betray the heart that loved her".

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COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13,
1798
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COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13,
1798
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Subjectivity: Subjectivity is the key note of Romantic poetry. He expresses his personal
thoughts, feelings through his poems. In Ode: Intimation of Immortality the poet expresses
his own/personal feelings. Here he says that he can't see the celestial light anymore which he
used to see in his childhood. He says,

It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By might or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see on more."
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Nature becomes all in all to the poet. The sounding cataract haunted him like a passion.
Nature was his beloved. He loved only the sensuous beauty of nature. He has also a
philosophy of nature.

Pantheism and mysticism: Pantheism and mysticism are almost interrelated factors in the
Nature poetry of the Romantic period. Wordsworth conceives of a spiritual power running
through all natural objects- the " presence that disturbs me with the low of elevated thoughts"
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, the rolling ocean. the living air, the blue sky, and
the mind of man (Tintern Abbey)

Humanism: The romantic poets had sincere love for man or rather the spirit of man.
Wordsworth had a superabundant enthusiasm for humanity. He was deeply interested in the
simple village folk and the peasant who live in contact with nature. Wordsworth showed
admiration for the ideals that inspired the French Revolution. Emphasis in individual freedom
is another semantic characteristic. Wordsworth laments for the loss of power, freedom and
virtue of human soul.
Lyricism: Wordsworth is famous for simple fiction, bereft of artificialities and falsity of
emotion. His "Lyrical Ballads" signifies his contention that poetry is the "history or science

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INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

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of feelings"

In the Ode: Intimation of Immortality, we see his lyricism. He writes,

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own:
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even, with something of a Mother's mind,
And, on unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Innate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
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In the concluding part, it can be said that Wordsworth was a protagonist in the Romantic
Movement which was at once a revolt and a revival. He shows the positive aspects of
Romanticism with its emphasis on imagination, feeling, emotion, human dignity and
significance of Nature.

Nature Worshipping
Nature worship, system of religion based on the veneration of natural phenomenafor
example, celestial objects such as the sun and moon and terrestrial objects such as water and
fire.
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A nature deity can be in charge of nature, the biosphere, the cosmos or the universe.
Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can
be found in theism, panentheism, pantheism, deism, polytheism, animism, totemism,
shamanism and paganism. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on

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Ode: Intimation of Immortality
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A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics edited by Shailer Mathews, Gerald Birney Smith, p 305

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the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural
world and reverence towards it.
10

In the history of religions and cultures, nature worship as a definite and complex system of
belief or as a predominant form of religion has not been well documented. Among
the indigenous peoples of many countries, the concept of nature as a totality is unknown; only
individual natural phenomenae.g., stars, rain, and animalsare comprehended as natural
objects or forces that influence them and are thus in some way worthy of being venerated or
placated. Nature as an entity in itself, in contrast with human society and culture or even with
God, is a philosophical or poetic conception that has been developed among advanced
civilizations. This concept of nature worship, therefore, is limited primarily to scholars
involved in or influenced by the modern (especially Western) study of religion.
Forms and aspects of nature worship
Fire worship
Tree worship
Animal worship
Star worship
Sacred mountains
Sacred groves
Sacred herbs
Holy well
Megalith

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The New International Encyclopdia, Volume 14 edited by Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, Frank Moore Colby,
pp 288-289

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Standing stone
Stone circle
Thunder god
Totem
Sky deity
Water deity
Naturalistic pantheism
Naturalistic spirituality
Gaia philosophy
Green Man
There are two very distinct belief systems which stem from the worship of nature; Druidism
and Shamanism. While different in their effectuation, both belief systems share with each
other their most basic concepts of animism, ancestor worship, and spirit guidance. Though
both druidism and shamanism seem to be separated by a very fine line, the means by which
they reach their ends can be classified in a fairly straightforward manner. Druids worship the
spirits through plants, animals, and the fundamental spirit of the wilds. Conversely, shamans
worship the spirits through the four fundamental elements of earth, fire, wind, and water.

This essential spark of life is looked upon as a divine force, one more fundamental than the
Holy Light worshiped by the Humans. The Orcs, Tauren, Night Elves, Trolls, and Draenei
commune with the spirit world in search of knowledge, guidance, and power. Though these
races do not discount the humans' study and worship of the Light, they maintain the Light is
merely the emergent characteristic of the interconnectivity of the spirit world, not a single
person's connection with the universe. The belief that the paladin is a direct agent of the Light
is a dismissal of the concept that each shaman is but a mere conduit through which the
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powers of the spirits flow. Truly, in their rush to embrace the Light, the humans missed the
very point of its existence.
Druidism
The druids live a very spiritual life: firstly acknowledging and honouring each spirit as an
individual life; secondly honouring the goddess Elune (known to the Tauren as Mu'sha), the
only true deity on Azeroth. The druids seek guidance or interference from the spirits,
asking the small spirits for small tasks and entreating Elune or one of the other wise and
powerful spirits of the forests for more significant tasks. They see their forests as havens for
living spirits, and as such are bound to defend them. It has become the highest priority for the
Druid's Cenarion Circle to heal the corruption of their precious forests caused by the demonic
and undeadinvasion of the Third War. As the spirits have served them for thousands of years,
the druids seek to give back to the spirits by healing the very living woods.
This close proximity to nature imbues the druid directly with the power of the spirits,
allowing them to harness the power of nature, and assume the form of the animals they
worship. Because of this direct power infusion, the druids can be seen as the purer parent of
the humans' paladin. Unlike the traditional paladin, however, druids still view themselves as
servants of the divine, rather than agents.
Shamanism
The shaman however, do not worship plant life and nature as the druids do. Instead, they
honour the spirits of their own ancestors and the elemental forces. The shaman are not
themselves imbued with the ascendency of the spirits, rather they harness it through
ceremonial totems. They carve these totems to represent the spirits and animals from which
they draw power, and it is within these totems that the true potency of a shaman lies.
According to the Bible, all creatures, animate and inanimate, worship God. This is not, as
modern Biblical interpreters have sometimes supposed, merely a poetic fancy or some kind of
animism that endows the all creatures with consciousness. The creation worships God just by
being itself, as God made it, existing for Gods glory. Only humans desist from worshipping
God; other creatures, without having to think about it, do so all the time. A lily does not need
to do anything. Simply by being and growing it praises God. It is distinctively human to
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bring praise to conscious expression in words, but the creatures remind us that this
distinctively human form of praise is worthless unless, like them, we also live our whole lives
to the glory of God. . . .
This idea of worshipping our Creator along with all the other creatures really has nothing in
common with nature worship, of which some modern Christians seem to be pathologically
afraid. It is true that in the biblical tradition nature has been de-divinized. It is not divine, but
Gods creation. But that does not make it nothing more than material for human use. Nature
has been reduced to stuff that we can do with as we wish, not by the Bible, but by the modern
age, with its rejection of God and its instrumental zing of nature.
The Bible has de-divinized nature, but it has not de-sacralized nature. Nature remains
sacred in the sense that it belongs to God, exists for the glory of God, even reflects the glory
of God, as humans also do. The respect, even the reverence, that other creatures inspire in us
is just as it should be. It leads us not to worship creation (something that is scarcely a serious
danger in the contemporary western world) but to worship with creation. According to
chapter 5 of the book of Revelation, the goal of Gods creative and redemptive work is
achieved when every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea joins in a
harmony of praise to God and the Lamb:

Wordsworths Poetic Style

Style is a debatable thing about Wordsworth. Many critics say that he has two styles. A few
argue that he has many styles and still some even go to the extent of saying that he has no
style at all.

Wordsworth had a belief that poetic style should be as simple and sincere as the language of
everyday life, and that the more the poet draws on elemental feelings and primal simplicities
the better for his art. He advocated the use of simple language in poetry. He said that poetry
should be written in a language really used by men in humble and rustic. He set himself to
the task of freeing poetry from all its conceits and its inane phraseology. He made certain
very effective and striking experiments in the use of simple language.
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According to Lytton Strachey, Wordsworth was the first poet who fully recognised and
deliberately practised the beauties of extreme simplicity; and this achievement constitutes his
most obvious claim to fame. Hardly any interested reader misses the beauty of his simplicity.
One could quote numerous examples of the successful and effective manner in which
Wordsworth handled simple language. All Lucy poems offer striking examples. A poem like
the one on daffodils represents the successful simple style too.
Wordsworths use of the nobly-plain style has something unique and unmatchable.
Wordsworth feels his subjects with profound sincerity and, at the same time, his subject itself
has a profoundly sincere and natural character. His expression may often be called bald as,
for instance, in the poem Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain
tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.
Wordsworth prefers generally to employ an unostentatious, ascetic style. It demands a mature
and thoughtful reader to appreciate the power and comprehensiveness.
But many are the occasions when Wordsworths simplicity deteriorates into triviality. While
the daring simplicity is often highly successful, there is also the other kind of simplicity
which has been called the bleat, as of an old, half-witted sheep. This creates a strange
inequality in Wordsworths verse, an inequality which has been noted and commented upon
by almost every critic.
His deficient sense of humour is responsible for many banalities, but the chief reason for this
mixture of puerility and grandeur is his poetic theory. According to this theory, Wordsworth
was to use a selection of the language really used by men in humble and rustic life, while at
the same time he was to throw a certain colouring of imagination over his subjects.
Wordsworths experiments in a simple style were intended to arouse the ordinary mans
sympathy for his fellow men. He sacrifices the idiomatic order of words to preserve
simplicity of diction and the demands of rhyme. He undermines his purpose with amazing
effects. Sometimes he offends merely by the use of such metre as
Poor Susan moans, poor Susan groans
Fortunately Wordsworths splendid imagination was often too powerful for his theory; and in
his best work he unconsciously ignores it altogether.
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As Graham Hough points out, in Tintern Abbey Wordsworth is far more willing than his
theories would suggest to use the full resources of the English vocabulary. In the more
exalted passages of this, as of most of the reflective blank verse poems, the influence of
Milton is apparent. We sometimes find Wordsworth using a Latinised and abstract
vocabulary, commonly supposed to be most uncharacteristic of his work, and directly due to
Miltonic influence.
According to a critic, Wordsworth has not two voices, but many; and even relatively short
poems such as Resolution and Independence, Yew-Trees, and Fidelity show a considerable
range. To hold, as Arnold does, that Wordsworth has no style is a dangerous simplification.
The journals of Dorothy Wordsworth show what pains Wordsworth took to find the right
expression. Few poets spent more time searching for the right word or revising their poems.
The result of such strenuous application was often exhaustion leading to dull prosaic verse;
but the same labour produced the wonderful poetry of Tintern Abbey which was written in a
few hours and hardly altered, and great extempore works, even in his declining years, such as
the 1835 effusion on the death of James Hogg.
The famous dullness of Wordsworth which measures the grave in The Thorn and finds it
three feet long and two feet wide is all part of his fearless search for a diction which should
bypass; the pomposity of literature, and take a sort of photograph or recording of experience
itself, not just the scene but the emotion connected with the scene.
Wordsworth was right in his banalities, given the premises from which he started. Only the
metre and the inversions employed to contain ordinary conversation in short lines create an
unhappy effect in some of the ballad poems.
Wordsworth often used imagery which is more visual, especially in similes from Nature. But
generally, he demands more of the readers imagination than most poets do. His poems
frequently echo Milton, Shakespeare, Burns, the Elizabethan poet Daniel, Pope, Thomson,
and Gray; but not a single work had as lasting an influence on him as Paradise Lost. Instead
of being dazzled with words, he had looked steadily at his subject. The imagery he used is
derived from his own experience and thought.
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We can aptly sum up Wordsworths style thus: Wordsworths language is usually worthy of
his themes. At its best it has restraint, quietness and integrity, a refusal to be clever or fanciful
in order to attract the reader. But there are other times when it is not so much serious.
Wordsworth was practising his theory that poetry should be written in a selection of
language really used by men; but not paying enough attention to selection. Again, when his
powers failed, he fell back on bombast as a substitute.
According to Cazamian, Wordsworth never seriously believed that a poets means of ex-
pression should coincide altogether with those of the most familiar speech. He does not try to
identify entirely the language of poetry with that of conversation among men of the low or of
the middle class.
Poetry of the preceding period suffered from the artificiality of a language in which the
means of conveying intensity had been worn out by the deadening effect of custom and had
lost all their power of suggestion. To shake off these chains, to dare to employ the language
of pure passion, such a step meant a return to the practice of the old masters. Their style,
when compared with that of the eighteenth century at its close, was of a relatively simple
quality, just as it was ever racy, frank, and spontaneous.
The cult of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare is part and parcel of the faith animating the
literary reform of which the Lyrical Ballads are the symbol. To the pages of these writers,
Wordsworth and Coleridge go in quest of materials for the making of a permanent style.
Although unequal, and full of flaws, of lapses into the prosaic or into a tedious accuracy of
statement, Wordsworths shorter poems of the best period undoubtedly possess a unique
value, however mixed they may be. Among them are pure masterpieces, in which the tension
of the style is delightfully relaxed: an ecstatic or divinely childlike spontaneity replaces the
effort of concentration. These poems bring to a decisive realisation the revival towards which
the previous literary transition was tending.
Wordsworth broke the spell of an antiquated tradition, and his work inaugurated the reign of
liberty. England awoke to this fact, not indeed at once, but by degrees, and in the course of a
generation. All the English poets o f the nineteenth century are indirectly his heirs.

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Conclusion
Wordsworths monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of important poems,
varying in length and weight from the short, simple lyrics of the 1790s to the vast expanses
of The Prelude, thirteen books long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through
Wordsworths poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain
remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon, adhering largely to the tenets
Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads. Here, Wordsworth
argues that poetry should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in
the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered poetic. He argues that poetry
should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And he argues that the first
principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure
through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feelingfor all human sympathy, he claims,
is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is the naked and native dignity of man.
Recovering the naked and native dignity of man makes up a significant part of
Wordsworths poetic project, and he follows his own advice from the 1802 preface.
Wordsworths style remains plain-spoken and easy to understand even today, though the
rhythms and idioms of common English have changed from those of the early nineteenth
century. Many of Wordsworths poems (including masterpieces such as Tintern Abbey and
the Intimations of Immortality ode) deal with the subjects of childhood and the memory of
childhood in the mind of the adult in particular, childhoods lost connection with nature,
which can be preserved only in memory. Wordsworths images and metaphors mix natural
scenery, religious symbolism (as in the sonnet It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, in
which the evening is described as being quiet as a nun), and the relics of the poets rustic
childhoodcottages, hedgerows, orchards, and other places where humanity intersects gently
and easily with nature.
Wordsworths poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and
pleasure above formality and mannerism. More than any poet before him, Wordsworth gave
expression to inchoate human emotion; his lyric Strange fits of passion have I known, in
which the speaker describes an inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead,
could not have been written by any previous poet. Curiously for a poet whose work points so
directly toward the future, many of Wordsworths important works are preoccupied with the
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lost glory of the pastnot only of the lost dreams of childhood but also of the historical past,
as in the powerful sonnet London, 1802, in which the speaker exhorts the spirit of the
centuries-dead poet John Milton to teach the modern world a better way to live.
















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Bibliography:-
Books:-
William Wordsworth, Selected by- Seamus Hea, Faber & Faber, Limited, 2011
Last Poems(1821-1850) By William Wordaworth, Cornell University Press, 1999
Fifteen Poets, The Clarendon Press, 1941,
The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (1876), By- William Wordsworth
Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose By William Wordsworth
Websites:-
http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wordsworth_william.shtml
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-wordsworth
http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296
http://www.poemhunter.com/william-wordsworth/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/64845.William_Wordsworth
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww138.html