You step outside on a crisp autumn day, the pale sky holding a bright sun while birds flutter from limb to limb on a mighty oak with its multicolored leaves. Another day may bring a blanket of snow, covering an open field, while sparse hoof prints dot the white sheet as a family of deer cross into the neighboring woods. An open lake with jumping trout, crashing into the water that glistens in the setting summer sun, could be the scene of another day. But, what happens next? You continue your autumn day by crossing the street, hopping into a cab, and travelling to a pertinent job interview. You have to call AAA after skidding off the icy road while driving back from your parents during the holidays. You have to race to the car before your children, with their muddy shoes, jump into the recently repaired Prius after going fishing. Everyday life happens.
http://elperiodicodonbucho.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html
Even if we are alone with an army of balloons in our hands, bouncing around an empty, amber field with a serene setting sun painting the huddling clouds with different hues of orange and yellow, everyday life happens. Based on the poems we have read throughout this semester, I can only imagine that many of the Romantic poets, such as John Clare, John Keats, William Wordsworth, and Charlotte Smith, agree with the idea. We have seen in their poems such strong beliefs in the beauty of Nature and its worth and discussed thoroughly in class the happiness one can gain. However, these poets also do present a much more rational view at times, suggesting that this bliss is only temporarily. Though Nature may give us a brief outlet, a sliver of happiness that fills up with hope and nostalgia, reality and our daily lives will always trump the nirvana that Nature presents.
Adam’s poem recitation on “The Happy Bird”, by John Clare, further enunciates the ideas of nature and happiness in Romantic poetry. He focuses on the emotional actions of the bird, as it “Swayed by the impulse of the gadding wind / That ushers in the showers of april—now / Singeth right joyously…” (Lines 2-4) and “mutters inward melodys / That seems her hearts rich thinkings to repeat” (Lines 7-8). In his class discussion, he questions if natural entities, such as birds, can feel the same emotions that we do. Can happiness be felt in a bird just as it is felt in humans? We concluded that such natural beings do exhibit actions that can be related to human emotions, but they are incapable of truly acknowledging the state of the emotion. This idea ties in the underlying theme that we, being humans, can use Nature as a source of happiness, even though Nature itself cannot feel happiness. To a passing observer, the “happy bird” can present joy to the person without considering its actions. Such occurrences open the door for our many brief moments of joy from Nature.
Nature can be seen as a form of an escape, using it to free themselves from stresses, troubles, or just overstimulation. John Keats establishes this fact in his poem, “Ode to a Nightingale”. James McKusick wrote in his article, “The Return of the Nightingale”, that the “nightingale enables readers of Romantic poetry to discern how the idea of nature, and indeed the very meaning of the word ‘nature’” (Return 39, http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/wcircle/mckusick.pdf). He also noted that the nightingale “for Keats, becomes once again a real bird in a real forest, singing its own ‘swift jug jug’ of springtime, of love and joyfulness. By being itself, the nightingale takes on the mysterious complexity of nature, which has the power to give life, to sustain it, and to destroy it, without regard to human desire” (Return 39). This notion of the nightingale representing Nature as a whole plays a crucial role in interpreting Keats’ poem, making the distinction between the narrator, man, and the nightingale, Nature. This allows the bird to be the source and medium of happiness for the narrator. Just as in the post, “Ode to a Nightingale”, Cole suggests that the narrator seeks an escape through the song of a nightingale. The troubles the man feels and experiences fade away as he concentrates on the bird and its naivety of human emotions and life’s worries. The bird is a piece of Nature that helps the narrator find momentary consolation in the piece. As Cole writes, “The bird's song is fleeting, it is a temporary escape for him”.
In addition to Keats, another major Romantic poet we discussed in class, William Wordsworth, also contributed to the belief of temporary happiness from Nature. We read early on in the semester his poem, “To the Small Celandine”, which, instead of focusing on its brevity, basked in the beauty of flowers, more specifically, the celandine. As Adam noted in his post, “Wordsworth’s Celebration”, the poem “celebrates the profound joy nature can offer, specifically on a micro level. One flower at one location has the power to change mood”. This analysis unveils the fact that we are able to become happy, whether or not we are in a pleasant mood to begin with, due to Nature’s ability to change our emotions. Adam argues that “Wordsworth is saying to look at immediate nature and fathom”. Nature gives us the ability to escape our hectic lives and fine pleasure, even if it is temporarily. The poem conveys that “Nature becomes a visible art and a source of relief and satisfaction more powerful than any human invention”. Just as Jonathan Bate explains in his book, The Song of Earth, “if you live in the luxury of technological modernity, your relationship with nature will be aesthetic. It will be bound up with the image and the gaze” (Bate 124). The industrial world we live in tends to force our relationship with Nature to be based off of beauty from a “Little, humble Celandine”, which, in turn, gives us transitory pleasure (Line 56). By emphasizing the importance of beauty and aesthetics through “To the Small Celandine”, we are able to focus on its temporary effect on happiness seen in Wordsworth’s other poems.
An analysis of Wordsworth’s “Poor Susan” exemplifies the idea of brief bliss form nature. Being that it is from his Lyrical Ballads, it is important to note, as McKusick did in one of his articles, that “Wordsworth's advocacy of simple vernacular diction is predicated on his view that human passion incorporates the forms of nature” (Coleridge). Along with an explanation for his use of diction, we can Wordsworth’s belief that humans can derive passion from Nature is essential to his writing, as we can see in “Poor Susan”. As I noted earlier in the semester on the blog, in my post named “Poor Susan”, the poem “emphasize[s] the point that Nature can only remove us from our daily lives for only a brief moment. Though that moment is enjoyable, we must return back to our lives in human society”. The lines I focused on were thirteen through sixteen:
"She looks, and her heart is in Heaven, but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes.”
It becomes obvious that her “Heaven”, is the nature of her past, possibly childhood. This brief recollection of the images and scene of her former home and life grants her so much pleasure in these few moments. However, as seen in the lines above, the “Heaven” disappears, and she finds herself back in her normal, bleak life in the city.
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=185693
This image portrays Susan’s imagination of the nature of her childhood appearing in her normal, everyday life in the concrete jungle. Such a simple piece of nature before her eyes (in her case, it was a singing thrush outside her house) opens up her heart and soul to the happiness Nature brings. But, Wordsworth notes her return to the normalcy and mundane life she is living, coming back to the gray streets and concrete walls of her town.
Along with “Poor Susan”, “Tintern Abbey”, also by Wordsworth, works on the similar psychological level of memory and supports the same idea. Joseph Viscomi says it best in his article, “Wordsworth, Gilpin, and the Vacant Mind”, when he states that the poem “recognize[s] nature’s power to quiet the mind, the restoration through tranquility that induces the ‘blessed mood’” (Viscomi 41, http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/wcircle/viscomi.pdf). As noted previously, Nature has a knack for bestowing upon us positive emotions and drawing out pleasurable memories. This obvious inference undoubtedly led to Maryclaire’s post, “Tintern Abbey and the Importance that Aesthetics has on Memories”. She argues that the poem, being about a return visit the Tintern Abbey, focuses on “how the memory of this beautiful place has been with him whenever he has needed to recall these images of beauty”. Such a tactic, “reconnecting with the past[,] allows Wordsworth and his readers to remove themselves from the hardships of this world”, if even only for the lifetime of the floating thought. This approach is similar to mine, “Tintern Abbey”, which contemplates “Nature's inability to solve our human problems completely”. I noted that, in lines 88-94: “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 or grating, though the ample power / To chasten and subdue”, shows this abbey’s deep aesthetic effect on Wordsworth and how it affects him psychologically as he ponders the structure and his memory of it. The poem also clarifies that the abbey is his “refuge from his everyday life” (Line 98), meaning that the structure, which is overrun by the limbs and vines of Nature, has a positive purpose in his everyday life.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_image.aspx?image=ps319860.jpg&retpage=21576
Tintern Abbey, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1795
This painting displays the abbey from Wordsworth’s work. One can see how Nature has overcome the man-made structure of such size, and how it has integrated itself into the dilapidated building. Such a scene clearly shows Nature’s effect on one’s memory and emotions. It can crawl its way into any human institution or entity and leave its mark. As Viscomi mentions in his article, the memories Wordsworth had of this place “a few miles above the abbey, therapeutically recalled in ‘lonely rooms,’ brought forth ‘sensations sweet’ and helped to lift the ‘fretful stir’ (53)” (Viscomi 46) and that “they induced ‘that serene and blessed mood / In which the affections gently lead us on’ (41-42)—feelings as the ‘irresistible force’ unfolding gently, not hurriedly—until his ‘breath’ and ‘motion’ are ‘almost suspended’ (45-47)” (Viscomi 46). The way Nature infiltrated this abbey contributed Wordsworth’s feelings about that place and his memories of it, which, obviously, gave him peace and satisfaction while his mind contemplated it. As seen by “Tintern Abbey” and the other two examples, Wordsworth’s work conveys the simple idea of fleeting joy in terms of Nature’s splendor.
Along with Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith presents the same notion of Nature’s transitory happiness. However, she emphasizes more on the darkness of reality than the beauty of Nature.As Kathryn Pratt declares in her article on Charlotte Smith, “Charlotte Smith’s Melancholy on the Page and Stage”, “the late-eighteenth-century readers of her collection Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems similarly describe her work as poetry of ‘touching melancholy,’ ‘pleasing melancholy,’ or even as ‘a mere flow of melancholy’” (Pratt, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/studies_in_english_literature/v041/41.3pratt.html). For example, her poem, “Sonnet VIII To Spring”, Adam and Maryclaire point out the same lines in their posts (Charlotte Smith: Sonnet VIII To Spring and Charlotte Smith's interpretation on the relationship of nature and man, respectively): "--thy prospect fair, thy sounds of harmony, thy balmy air, have power to cure all sadness--but despair” (Lines 12-14). Even though, as they both point out, Smith delights in Nature and feels that “Nature can turn her sorrow” and “has an ability to change human mood”, the reality is that it is never permanent. As Adam says, “Nature may heal human sorrow but cannot cure it”. In her “Sonnet LXXVII”, I focus on her belief that Nature does not have the ability “to distract her from the reality and her life in the human world” in my post, “Sonnet LXXVII”. She discusses the wonders of the natural world with such grace and joy, emphasizing the simplicity of Nature. Yet, like her many other poems, Smith snaps back to reality in Lines 11-14:
“The young and visionary poet leaves
Life's dull realities, while sevenfold wreaths
Of rainbow-light around his head revolve.
Ah! soon at Sorrow's touch the radiant dreams dissolve!”
As we discussed in class, her melancholy (arising from a hateful husband and poverty) is a staunch opposite to the happiness she describes in her poems, in regards to Nature and its beauty. However, like the other poets, she returns to her life, yet in a much more depressing way in her writings, as one can see in her Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems. Though she has a different approach than do Keats and Wordsworth, Smith uses her poetry to convey the rational idea of momentary bliss from Nature.
The Romantic poets seem to understand the importance of natural beauty and aesthetics in their writings. However, hints of rationalism objectify their serene oneness with Nature into a mere moment of unrestrained happiness. All in all, Nature can grant us a blissful moment, an escape, and make us feel integrated, surreal, enlightened, and, above all, happy at any given moment, but we must and always will turn away from the singing bird or flower or setting sun and continue filling out our tax reports as we chow down on a microwavable meal.
MLA Citations:
Bate, Jonathan. The Song of the Earth. Boston: Picador/Harvard University Press. 2000.
McKusick, James C.. “Coleridge and the Economy of Nature”. Studies in Romanticism. Vol. 35. Fall 1996. 375-392. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.
McKusick, James C.. “The Return of the Nightingale”. The Wordsworth Circle. Vol. 14:36. 22 May 2007. 34-39. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.
Pratt, Kathryn. “Charlotte Smith’s Melancholy on the Page and Stage”. SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Vol. 41.3. (2001). 563-581. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.
Viscomi, Joseph. “Wordsworth, Gilpin, and the Vacant Mind”. The Wordsworth Circle. Vol. 14.36. 22 May 2007. 40-49. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.
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