Wordsworth’s tribute to the celandine is certainly more cheerful than Charlotte Smith’s sonnets. The consistency of the rhyme scheme, particularly with the couplet at the end of each stanza, creates a feeling of comfort and safety. There is nothing dark or dangerous here, just a delight in one small part of nature.
Nevertheless, though this is a poem celebrating an aspect of nature and though the structure ensures it is definitely a poem, Wordsworth claims that poets are “vain men” and we should “Never heed them”. This is not so much an argument that poetry should save the world as an argument that nature is an escape from the world and with it the more serious aspects of poetry. Its main purpose is as a song and celebration, “Hymns to what I love!”
It is not even concerned with nature as a whole, but the tiniest part of nature, the celandine over any other type of flower. In the sixth stanza, Wordsworth does not care whether the celandine is in the natural wood or a manmade lane, whilst in the penultimate stanza, “Ill befall the yellow Flowers” that take attention away from Wordsworth’s celandine, which is his only love and interest. He is picking and choosing those aspects of nature he most likes and avoiding the others, along with the issues they might bring.
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