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8/8/2019 Words Worth Essay
1/11
Matthew Moran
ENGL 121.0049/30/10
The Visionary Gleam: Religious Inspiration in Wordsworths Poetry
It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty ~ Tolstoy
I think my task an original one, though much has been written about and around
this topic. My question is not Was Wordsworth a Christian? or WhatdidWordsworth
believe? though these questions interest me greatly. They have been, with recent scholarly
additions, analyzed to a limit, in my opinion. There is a strong tradition of clarifying
Wordsworths faith within and outside his works, and how this tradition has evolved is
worth studying. However, my real intent is not to debate this issue. Though my conclusions
do fall decidedly in one camp, I hope my assent there is secondary to the greater purpose of
this paper. A bitter Coleridge said of Wordsworth, [he] has convinced himselfof truths
which the generality of persons have either taken for granted from their infancy, or else
adopted early in life. (Edwards 200) But these truths so obvious to Coleridge, have faded
from general acknowledgement, especially in todays secular Europe. Another fault with
Coleridges conclusion: how solidly had Wordsworth convinced himself? Some critics argue
that the Wordsworth ofEcclesiastical Sonnets still held many of his earlier doubts about
doctrine.
These biographical impetuses in mind, my heartfelt interest in Wordsworth lies in
his search, in his yearning to better know and express that sense sublime / Of something
far more deeply interfused. While curious of what conclusions Wordsworth came to, and
how he came to them, I am fatally concerned with his conscious and subconscious process.
I dont think it nave to concern myself principally with his works in this exploration. I will
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admit though that my doing so is tinged some by personal aspiration; my own search for
lifes meaning is ongoing. Keep this caveat in mind. Said Robert Ryan, Critics are never
more likely to pursue their own hidden, even unconscious, agendas than when reading
religion into their favorite poets. (Ulman 7) Keep it in mind, but not at heart. My sincerest
hope is that my humble insight may inspire your own search for meaning, and be it through
nature, poetry, science, sport, or something else, we all might see into the life of things.
This greater ambition aside, Wordsworths poems, plotted against the events in his life,
reveal a man eager to understand God and the world He created. In this paper I hope not
just to catalogue the evidences of this eagerness, but to find in them a common theme.
So as Id like to abstract from a solely biographical approach to religion in
Wordsworths poetry, our work is thus left without the usual chronographic structure.
Rather than discuss his poems temporally with respect to his life, lets discuss them
chronologically with respect to the souls lifetime. For theologians this is no clear beginning
but for Wordsworths fans it is obvious! Well begin with the souls preexistence, and
examine some of his Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our lifes Star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
This quote epitomizes a pivotal theme in the poem: the pre-existence of the soul.
Before we consider this beliefs origins, and without yet doubting whether Wordsworth
fully endorsed these words, consider how exceptional the thought was in its context. With
contemporary evangelical literature expounding the inherent sinfulness of mankind
(especially children) and orthodox Christianitys silence with regard to pre-existence, Ode
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met mostly negative reviews when it was finished. (Ulman 106) In the modern critical
debate over Wordsworths Christianity, those arguing for an orthodox Wordsworth may
happily dismiss the former qualm, but with no outright biblical support for pre-existence,
hold fast to the latter, and dismiss this component of the poem as trifling, as does Ulman.
However, to do so would be firstly to undervalue Wordsworths own words, and then to
deemphasize a repeated theme in the poem. The poet who wrote of the glories [Man] hath
known, / And that imperial palace whence he came himself said that though the idea
[pre-existence] is not advanced in Revelation, there is nothing to contradict it, and the fall
of man presents an analogy in its favor. I agree with Melvin Rader that this quote indicates
a Wordsworth at least half-convinced of pre-existence. With, by my count, at least ten
distinct indications of our trailing clouds of glory [as] we come, we cannot dismiss this
facet of Wordsworths views.
Interested in how the poet came to this insight, we read in Ode that for Wordsworth
children and nature are the primary harbingers of immortality. He sees in a childs
exterior semblance [his] Souls immensity, and that He beholds the light, and whence it
flows / He sees it in his joy. For Wordsworth children are the best Philosopher[s] better
even than nature, as he intimates in the Ode. He says Earth the homely Nurse doth all she
can / to make her ... Inmate Man / forget the glories he hath known, though with no
unworthy aim. He speaks of childrens high instincts before which our mortal Nature /
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised. This language may surprise readers accustomed
to a poet singularly reverent of nature, and so it demands explanation. The first four
stanzas ofOde were written within a series of poems about childhood in 1802. The poems
completion followed Wordsworths time in Calais, France spent with his daughter
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Caroline and her mother, Annette Vallon. (Norton 317) He shares his feelings for the
occasion in It is a beauteous evening:
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,Thy nature is not therefore less divine;Thou liest in Abrahams bosom all the year:
And worshippst at the Temples inner shrine,God being with thee when we know it not.
This short poem is critical to our endeavor. Admittedly, Wordsworth is unclear
where he sees in children such emblems of divinity, but it is he clear he does - and in
Carolines case, did - see them so. The poet begins the poem describing the evening a holy
time breathless with adoration. Considering the relationship between Wordsworths
high praise of his daughter and his sanctifying their surroundings, where lies the causality?
Lets not dismiss the possibility that Wordsworths intense affection for Caroline might
have colored his vision at the moment, and led him to see Gods hand in crafting that
beauteous evening. If we are to believe that Wordsworth unwaveringly thought children
the strongest indications of an imminent God, why does the whole of his works seem to
emphasize natures eminence in divine revelation? Yet the childs communion with the
Almighty is not absent from Wordsworths other works - it is inherent. This abstract claim
is grounded in the poets much deliberated concept of spots of time. To introduce the
notion, we turn to Book Twelve of his The Prelude.
There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence our mindsAre nourished and invisibly repaired;A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,That penetrates, enables us to mount,
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When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
This efficacious Spirit chiefly lurksAmong those passages of life that give
Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,The mind is lord and master--outward sense
The obedient servant of her will. Such momentsAre scattered everywhere, taking their date
From our first childhood
This renovating virtue might seem only a quality of these experiences, were it not
personified later, an efficacious Spirit. Despite this clarification, the passage seems by
itself secular, particularly because Wordsworth seems to be championing the mortal mind
as the source of that distinct pre-eminence. He continues:
Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
In simple childhood something of the baseOn which thy greatness stands; but this I
feel,That from thyself it comes, that thou must
give,Else never canst receive. The days gone byReturn upon me almost from the dawn
Of life: the hiding-places of man's power
Open; I would approach them, but they
close.I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,May scarcely see at all; and I would give,While yet we may, as far as words can give,
Substance and life to what I feel,enshrining,
Such is my hope, the spirit of the Past
For future restoration.
What or who is this mystery of man, to which the first six lines are addressed?
Before trying to answer this, lets consider overall the discourse surrounding religion in the
Prelude. Originally published in 1805, Wordsworth revised The Prelude substantially. As a
result, the book published in 1850 after his death contains more than a few changes from
the original. Ever since Ernest de Selincourts commentary in his publication ofThe Prelude,
readers have been led to believe that Wordsworth, having adopted a more orthodox faith
himself, made revisions to the work to reflect his newfound piety. J. Robert Barth, in
Romanticism and Transcendence, investigates this theory, and shows, with ample citation,
that this is largely a misconception. The 1805 Prelude was already a deeply religious poem,
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and the few changes in the direction of what might be called orthodoxy make the work
only marginally more pious. (Barth 20-22) I wont explore the implications of Barths
discovery for a study of Wordsworths own spiritual growth. But it is useful to (re)-examine
The Prelude as a religious work.
This mystery of man passage is not a secular island in sacred sea; its spirituality
exists beneath its surface. The word mystery connotes doubt and intrigue to modern
readers of the like-named genre, but its usage is the Christian faith is well established. A
mystery in that sense is a sacramental rite, specifically the Eucharist, or more generally
any truth that is unknowable except by divine revelation. (Mystery) Interpreted thus, that
depth is undeniably deistic. The secularist may point out that Wordsworth goes on to
speak of mans power. But dont the following lines I would approach them, but they
close / I see by glimpses now; when age comes on, / May scarcely see at all remind us of
the Ode, how those glimpses fade into the light of common day? The hiding-places of
mans power and the fallings from us, vanishings; / Blank misgivings of a Creature /
Moving about in worlds not realized are to me the same. Mans power then too derives
from the Almighty. Wordsworth here, as earlier, intimates that childhood is a foundation
on which thygreatness stands. How we read this depends entirely on whether I can
convince you that the poet believes mans mystery is God-given. If not, then thy refers to
some human facility that fashions children a base of greatness. If, however, Wordsworth is
addressing some sacramental aspect of man, then he is transitively addressing God. He then
says of childhoods sanctity, this I feel, / That from [Gods] self it comes, that [God] must
give, / Else never canst receive. Read secularly, those original lines seem to curtail the
poets reverence for childhood. But read religiously, they venerate even further. Without
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lingering on the point, examining some of these spots of time will help to establish their
inherent spirituality.
The event,With all the sorrow that it brought,
appearedA chastisement; and when I called to mindThat day so lately past, when from the crag
I looked in such anxiety of hope;With trite reflections of morality,Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low
To God, Who thus corrected my desires;And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,And all the business of the elementsAll these were kindred spectacles and
sounds
To which I oft repaired, and thence would
drink,As at a fountain; and on winter nights,Down to this very time, when storm and rain
Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock
In a strong wind, some working of the spirit,Some inward agitations thence are brought,Whate'er their office, whether to beguileThoughts over busy in the course they took,
Or animate an hour of vacant ease.- from The Prelude, book 12
Perhaps the sanctity of the event itself here is ambiguous. Prior to these lines the
event is described contemporarily, and any soulfulness is vague, existing outside the page.
Described here in retrospect, we hear only of his having bowed low to God, and are left
wanting. For me, and for Wordsworth, the true force of these spots of time is not in their
temporary experience, but in their permanence and reimagining after the fact. It is not that
these moments exist outside of time, yet in these moments of vision [the poet] does in
the words of the Immortality Ode have sight of that immortal sea. (Barth 55) The second
half of this passage depicts remembrance of the sanctified event as itself a religious
experience. It is the recollections context that persuades us: amidst storm and rain or
strong winds rocking the trees naturally evoke Gods hand in the everyday. Even noon-time
for Wordsworth is a holy time, a still season of repose and peace, / This hour when all
things which are not at rest / Are cheerful, (from The Pedlar). The overt, if unelaborated
religiousness in the moment past informs us that the spirit is the same spirit who impels
/ All thinking things in Tintern Abbey:
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Matthew Moran
ENGL 121.0049/30/10
I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty worldOf eye, and ear,--both what they half create,And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
This poem, one of Wordsworths most famous, is also one of the most opaquely
spiritual. Written in 1798, it exemplifies the pantheistic notion of The One Life, a
construct of Wordsworths friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was during
their co-authorship of Lyrical Ballads that Wordsworth wrote Tintern Abbey, and this fact,
along with the poems stark similarities to Coleridges formulation, make certain that these
lines refer to the One Life. (Ulman 43) Whether or not Wordsworth forsook the One Life
idea is a real debate, but not ours. I include this last passage as one particularly detailed
example of Wordsworths spots of time. Throughout his poetry there exist plenty such
instances, particularly in The Prelude. We have his vision of the types and symbols of
Eternity, upon crossing the Simplon Pass in book six. Also there is the ennobling
harmony at the Bartholomew Fair in book seven: The Spirit of Nature was upon me there;
/ The Soul of Beauty and enduring life / Vouchsafed her inspiration. These moments are
not just scattered, quaint images. They are integral to the theme of The Prelude. Also
known as The Growth of a Poets Mind, in it Wordsworths experiences of the immortal,
these spots of time, shape him as a poet and thinker. And yet we cant deny that they
produce beautiful poetry. With their disappearance from consciousness came
Wordsworths decline as an artist. Reaching middle age, the poet could not escape a fact
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hed already prophesied, and now to himself mightve asked, Whither has fled the
visionary dream, / Where is it now, the glory and the dream? (Edwards 194)
This sad truth aside, we still find commentary in Wordsworths later poetry on the
sources of his faith. In The Excursion, which was to follow The Prelude, Wordsworth
attempts to expound on his philosophical and religious questions, but in the end serves
neither to affirm [nor] to contradict the orthodoxies of the churches. (Edwards 198) His
Wanderer resignedly sermonizes, One adequate support / For the calamities of mortal life
Exists one only; an assured belief / That the procession of our fate, howeer / Sad or
disturbed, is ordered by a Being / Of infinite benevolence and power From where does
the Wanderer draw his optimism, standing atop a subterranean magazine of bones? From
his childhood of course! The following lines form part of a narrative that is, according to
James Butler, the poets first autobiographical work (Ulmer 52):
He, many an evening, to his distant home
In solitude returning, saw the hillsGrow larger in the darkness; all aloneBeheld the stars come out above his head,
And travelled through the wood, with no onenear
To whom he might confess the things he saw.
So the foundations of his mind were laid.
In such communion, not from terror free,While yet a child, and long before his time,Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressedSo vividly great objects that they layUpon his mind like substances, whose
presencePerplexed the bodily sense.
In fact the larger body of The Excursion makes clear that the Wanderer, along with
the other characters who meet with the narrator, is a representation of Wordsworths own
philosophical impressions. Here the Wanderers childhood experience uncannily parallels
similar events in the poets own youth, and is at least for the former but potentially for
both yet another spot of time.
Looking at Wordsworths works as a whole body, these transcendent moments
distinguish themselves in beauty and importance with regard to religious experience.
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Wordsworths eventual dis-inspiration lent credence to his beliefs in the Ode, that these
experiences are the domain of youth, and fade with time. Their reverence and their
impermanence are inseparable facts of the poets life, and their union points toward a
source of religious inspiration in children and childhood. We modern readers of
Wordsworth, left with our own obstinate questionings and blank misgivings, let us put
down our anthologies because full soon [our] Soul shall have her earthly freight. We
ought look to our pasts, and locate our own spots of time in which we met with the
infinite. And if we are already blind to these, and have fully shed the clouds of glory from
whence we claim, look we to the growing Boy he beholds the light, and whence it flows, /
He sees it in his joy.
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Works Cited
Barth, J. R. (2003). Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the
Religious Imagination. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Edwards, D. L. (2005). Poets and God: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Blake. Alexandria, VA.
George, W. (1932). The Complete PoeticalWorks ofWordsworth: Cambridge Edition. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin And Company.
Mystery. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved September 29, 2010, from
Dictionary.com. Website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mystery
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D: The Romantic Period(8th ed.).
(2005). New York: W. W. Norton.
Rader, Melvin. The Transcendentalism ofWilliam Wordsworth. Modern Philology. Vol. 26,
No. 2 (Nov., 1928), pp. 169-190. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Website: http://www.jstor.org/stable/433875
Ulmer, W. A. (2001). The Christian Wordsworth, 17981805. Albany, New York: State
University Of New York Press.