William Wordsworth

As I began to read "The Prelude," I found that I could finally better understand some of my favorite lines from Tintern Abbey: For I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / the still, sad music of humanity, / Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power / to chasten and subdue (89-93). I believe that Wordsworth is alluding to the affinity between man and Nature, implying that there is a unity between the two. I see this same idea in "The Prelude" (1799) where the poet speaks of "The gravitation and the filial bond / Of Nature that connect him with the world" (293-4). There is a bond between man and Nature that like the bond between mother and child makes the two separate and yet connected. I find it interesting that these works by the young Wordsworth were written by the same man who in later life wrote to the aging Wilberforce that the two men "labored in the same vineyard." I see this most clearly in the very ending of "The Prelude" (1850) where the poet says that "The power, which all / Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus / To bodily sense exhibits, is the express / Resemblance of that glorious faculty / That higher minds bear with them as their own" (86-90). The mind through imagination perceives God moving through and beneath Nature. I think Wordsworth was right when he wrote Wilberforce!