Words Worth Essay

8/8/2019 Words Worth Essay

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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.

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