Like him, though not as Poet, Coleridge might say now: And like him, finally, the much adventuring man, the Poet who had adventured so far into wild seas of mental and religious thought, came home at last and found peace in simple faith in God, in childlike humility, in mercy and love of man, and in reverence for all things: O sweeter than the marriage feast "Tis sweeter far to me To walk together to the kirk To walk together to the kirk And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, He prayeth best who loveth best For the dear God who loveth us It would be no unpleasant thought to compare that close with that of Tennyson's "Two Voices." LECTURE V. WORDSWORTH. IN speaking of the poetry of Nature, we have at length arrived at Wordsworth, and in coming to him, we come to the greatest of the English Poets of this century; greatest not only as a Poet, but as a philosopher. It is the mingling of profound thought, and of ordered thought, with poetic sensibility and power (the power always the master of the sensibility), which places him in this high position. He does possess a philosophy, and its range is wide as the universe. He sings of God, of Man, of Nature, and, as the result of these three, of Human Life, and they are all linked by thought, and through feeling, one to another; so that the result is a complete whole which one can study as if it were a world of its own. As such, the whole of his poetry is full, not of systematic theology, but of his own theology; and to bring this out, while at the same time analysing his work as a Poet, is the object of My first subject will the lectures I shall deliver upon him. be the mode in which he conceives God in His relation to Nature, and necessarily what he means by Nature; the next will be the relation which Nature bears to Man, and the work of God on Man through that relation. Afterwards I shall speak fully of Wordsworth's poetry of Man and its theology. It may seem too much to those who know Wordsworth but little, to devote so many lectures to him alone, but the only feeling that one who loves this Poet can have is, that too much time can scarcely be spent upon him; and that if only a few are induced not to glance over but to study his work, more good may be done than by a hundred sermons. For in truth his poetry is, as Coleridge said of the "Prelude," an Orphic song indeed, A song divine of high and passionate thoughts To their own music chanted. The term Nature, in Wordsworth's use of it, means, sometimes, the Nature of Man, those inherent and indestructible qualities which are common to the whole race, and which form together that which we call Human Nature. In the realm of the imagination Wordsworth frequently conceives of this Human Nature as one person, acting as if directly from himself; the male being of the universe to whom Nature, that is, the spirit who informs the outward world, is as the female being of the universe wedded in love and holy marriage. But the term he more commonly uses when speaking of Human Nature is the Mind of Man. For all the practical purposes of my lectures I may take the meaning of the term Nature to be concerned in Wordsworth's Poetry with the world outside of us. In most of the previous poets as in ordinary talk, it means the outward universe with its motions and laws, all that we know and feel beyond ourselves, organic and inorganic; and in this sense Wordsworth sometimes uses it. But that would not define his use of the term accurately, for then Nature might be conceived of as dead, or as the image of our own thought. Wordsworth added Life to the outward world, and separated it from our thought. I traced in a previous lecture the growth of the conception of Nature as alive, and said that this conception which had only been in germ in others, reached its full growth in Wordsworth's poetry. In what way? The outward universe lay before the Poet's eye and ear. He felt it speak to him, through his senses to his soul, and feeling this, he asked, What is it? Who is it that speaks? Is it only the matter of the universe, which by itself is dead? No, he answered; Matter is animated by a soul, and it is this soul which thrills to meet me. "An active principle" subsists In all things, in all natures, in the stars It circulates, the soul of all the worlds. Now that which acts, lives; and the universe lives as much by its soul as we do by ours. To this active principle, Wordsworth gave personality; that which all shared in was in fact one. It was one life, one will, one character, one person. And this personality he called Nature. To Wordsworth as he wrote, she took a living form, and became the life-giving spirit of the world. Day by day she built up the universe; it was she who, from her own vast life, gave to everything its special life, a separate soul to each: Yet whate'er enjoyments dwell, In the impenetrable cell Of the silent heart, which Nature Each had from Nature not only its own distinct soul, and character, but also its own distinct work to do; the elements had their business, "the stars have tasks, the silent heavens their goings on." And not only had each separate thing the gift of a soul from Nature, but whenever a place, such as a lonely dell among the hills, had a special beauty and character of its own, it was it by reason of a special soul within it, of a more manifold soul than that which dwelt in a single flower or stone.* The thought was still further varied; and the larger divisions of the world of Nature, the whole of the sky, the whole of the earth and of the sea, were gifted with distinct and more complex being: The gentleness of Heaven is on the sea: And doth with his eternal motion make And further still, the moving powers of Nature, the wind, when it dances over wood and hill, tossing trees and grass, bearing on its bosom the seeds of earth, becomes the "over-soul" of the things it touches, adds to them a new pleasure and a new life, a life of reckless sport and jollity. * "A spirit and pulse of good, A life and soul to every mode of being Inseparably linked." |