P. B. Shelley's view of nature and law he differs from Wordsworth and Keat

Assignment Topic:

Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s views of Nature and law and how he differs from William Wordsworth and John Keats

Name: Jinal B.Parmar

Roll no. : 13

M A. Semester: 2

Paper no.: 5 The Romantic Literature

Year: 2013 – 2014

Submitted to: Department of English

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Maharaja Krishna kumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction: -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

           P. B. Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 in Sussex. P.B. Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poet. He is regarded by critics as amongst the finest Lyric poets in English language. Shelley mostly known for his classic poems like, Ozymandias,  Ode to the West Wind,  To a Skylark, Music when soft voice dies , The cloud and The Mosque of Anarchy. His other major works include long, visionary poems such as Queen Mab , Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs, the unfinished work The Triumph of Life; and the visionary verse dramas The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820).

            Shelley’s ultimate goal is to stress the beneficial impact of poetry. To this end he feels it is necessary to define the nature of poetry. To do this, he feels he must first address the nature of the poet, to which end, he must first address the nature of man.

His notable works: --

·         Queen Mab

·         The Cloud

·         To Skylark

·         Ode to the West wind

·         To the Moon

·         A Dream of the unknown

“Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves”

Introduction: -- William Wordsworth

            William Wordsworth was born on 7 April, 1770 in Cockermouth into a lawyer’s family. . Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet. Wordsworth is considered the pioneer of the Romanticism.  He is the most representative poet of English Literature Wordsworth has written a series of poem collaboration of Coleridge entitled “Preface to the Lyrical Ballad”.

           Wordsworth was a worshipper of nature from his childhood. He frequently visited places of beautiful scenery. A walking tour of the sunrise Alps heightened his addiction to nature. Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy has served as Wordsworth’s confident and inspires as Wordsworth put it in his poem. Wordsworth is neurotic to nature and always respect to the nature in his every work.

His notable works:

·         Preface to Lyrical Ballad               

·         The prelude

·         An Evening walk

·         The Excursion, etc…

“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”

“Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher”

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in nature that is ours”

Introduction: -- John Keats

          John Keats was born on 31 October 1795, in London. Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figure of the second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and P. B. Shelley despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death.  The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature.

           Keats has wrote some of the Odes in which he has described art and beauty of the Odes. But paradox is one of the theme of Keats’s poem like paradox of words, paradox of image he uses in his Odes. He wrote the finest letters. “Writing to his brother George, Keats explored the idea of the world as "the vale of Soul-making", anticipating the great odes that he would write some months later. In the letters, Keats coined ideas such as the Mansion of Many Apartments and the Chameleon Poet, concepts that came to gain common currency and capture the public imagination, despite only making single appearances as phrases in his correspondence.

His notable works: --

·         On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

·         Sleep and Poetry

·         Hyperion

·         Isabella, or The Pot of Basil

·         The greate odes – To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn, To Psyche, On Melancholy, and To Autumn

“If poetry comes not naturally as leaves to a tree it had better not come at all”

“There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purity – so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish”

“Scenery is fine – but human nature is finer”

P. B. Shelley’s view on nature:

            Shelley is one the best poet. Shelley comes in the age of Romanticism and also there is one of the feature of this age is that Treatment to Nature. Shelley write a poem and in that he links nature with love. Love for Nature is one of the key – notes of his poetry. Shelley in his poem nature is love for him. The finest of Shelley’s poems, are his lyrics, ‘The Skylark’, and ‘The Cloud’ are among the most unique and dazzling of all the outbursts of poetic genius. ‘On Love’ Shelley reflects colorful Nature imagery and glorification of nature. He shows fruition and fulfillment in his poem and we find his poem related with Nature in which we find a profusion of Nature.

            Shelly in his poetry, appears as a Pantheist also. Shelley loved the indefinite and the changeful in Nature. He presents the changing and indefinite moods of Nature in his poetry, like Clouds, Wind, Lightening, etc,.  ‘Adonals’ reflects the most striking examples of Shelley’s pantheist. At an occasion, he thinks that Keats is made one with Nature for the power, morning in Nature. Nature’s spirit is eternal . The one remains , many change and pass: He argues that there is some intelligence controlling Nature. In fact, he fuses the Platonic Philosophy of love with pantheism.

           In this Shelley uses the West Wind to symbolize the power of nature and of the imagination inspired by nature. However the west wind is active and dynamic in poems. Such as “Ode to the West wind”.  Even as it destroys, the wind encourages new life on earth and social progress among humanity.

           Shelley finds Nature alive, capable of feeling and thinking like a human organism. In “Ode to the Westwind”, he hopes for the best and is confident that “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His nature treatment is multidimensional; scientific, philosophic, intellectual, mythical and of course human. This poem “Ode to the Westwind”  reflects this particular trend of Shelley, in this poem he shows that the west wind driving the dead leaves, scattering the living seeds, awakening the Mediterranean and making the sea-plants feel its force. . His poetry lacks pictorial definiteness and, often, his Nature description is clothed in mist.

           As we seen that Shelley was pantheistic towards nature, he conceive every object of Nature as possessing a distinct  individuality of its own, too, though he believes that the spirit of love unites the whole universe, including Nature, yet he treats all the natural objects as distinguishable entities. The sun, the moon, the stars, the rainbow – all have been treated as separate beings of nature . This capacity of individualizing the separate forces for Nature is termed as Shelley’s myth making power which is best illustrated in “Ode to the Westwind”. He gives the West Wind, the ocean an independent life and personalities. He presents the Mediterranean sleeping and then being awakened by the West Wind, just like a human body.

          Shelley refers to this unifying natural force in many of the poems, describing it as the “Spirit of Beauty” in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and identifying it with Mont Blanc and the Arve River in “Mont Blanc”. This force is the cause of all human joy, faith, Goodness and pleasure, and it is also the source of poetic inspiration and divine truth. So all this natural forces inspired to poet to write the poem.

William Worsworth’s view on Nature:

            Wordsworth is one of the great poet of the Romanticism. He is considered as the poet who loves nature and brings in his poem. Wordsworth is the priest of Nature who worshipping the Nature. In his work Nature come first then the other things. He has wrote many poems in which there we can find only the Nature. Wordsworth was inspired to write poems from his sister Dorothy. She helped Wordsworth turn his eyes to “the face of nature” and “preserved the poet in him”.

“She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;

And humble cares, and delicate fears;

A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;

And love, and thought, and joy”

           A majority of Wordsworth’s poem expressed his obsession with nature. Three poems in which express this obsession is “Composition upon Westminster Bridge”, My heart leaps up when I behold”, and the most famous “I wandered as a lonely cloud”.

          Wordsworth has wrote many poems in which Nature is only the topic in his poem. In his poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” in this poem he includes all nature elements like, cloud, daffodils, flowers, etc,. This is simple poem to understand easily, one of the loveliest and most famous in the Wordsworth canon, revisited the familiar subject of nature and memory, this time with a particularly spare, musical eloquence.

           Wordsworth and Coleridge both have written series of poem collaboratively “Preface to the Lyrical Ballad” in Wordsworth always uses the simple language and related with nature whereas Coleridge wrote in different way uses the supernatural elements. In Wordsworth’s another poem “Composition upon Westminster Bridge”  he is consumed by the beauty of the scenery. The poem is a recollection of his travel on the Westminster Bridge in London on one early morning. Wordsworth seems to be drawn into the scenery for it is the early morning and all are still asleep and calm. While reading the poem his details and words can allow a reader to almost smell the morning mist and dew in the air.

          Wordsworth says, “Ne’er saw I, never felt, calm so deep!” For him this scenery from the bridge was simple calmness which made him feel comfortable and safe. The scenery of the buildings and sleeping houses were just as fascinating and pure as trees in forestry. It’s as if Wordsworth is more overwhelmed and shocked by the beauty given off by landscape which is not just trees and hills. The way that everything was laid out from the houses to the to the buildings to the sun’s glow over it all just seemed to fit together perfectly as if the town being overlooked by Westminster Bridge was a completed puzzle. This view may not be the typical natural scene but it’s not unnatural.

John Keats view on Nature:--

           Keats has wrote an Ode in which he present art and beauty but his other poems are connected with nature.  As we know that the age of Romanticism in that there is one of the feature is treatment to Nature in which Keats also admire to the Nature. Keats’s observation of Nature is very keen and nothing escape it. In most of his poems we have Nature-discription for its own sake, “expressive of nothing but a keen delight and genuine joy in Nature”.

           In his one of the “Ode to autumn” he described about only autumn. This poems helps support Keats love for nature and how he incorporates it into his poems. In “Ode to autumn,” Keats explains autumns relationship with the sun. Keats also explains how autumn brings flowers, and fruits, and the beautiful songs that autumn produces. I believe that “Ode to Autumn,” helps support the idea that Keats attitude toward nature is a good one. In this poem is explains a lot of beautiful sights, feelings, and sounds, which makes me believe that Keats loves nature. Keats uses senses so that readers can relate to the scene and somewhat feel apart of it all.

            In the Ode to a Nightingale we have a couple of remarkable Nature-pictures owing Keats’s delight in the purely sensuous appeal of Nature. One is the picture of the moon shining in the sky while there is darkness on the grassy floor of the forest:

And happy the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster’d around by her starry fays; etc., etc.

             Keats found in nature endless sources of poetic inspiration, and he described the natural world with precision and care. In “Ode to a Nightingale”, hearing the bird’s song cause the speaker to ruminate on the immortality of art and the mortality of humans. The speaker of “Ode on Meancholy” compares about of depression to a “weeping cloud”, then goes on to list specific flowers that are linked to the sadness. He finds in nature apt images for his psychological state. In “Ode to psyche” the speaker mines that the night sky to find ways to worship the Roman goddess psyches as a muse: a star becomes an “amorous glow-worm”, and the moon rests amid a background of dark blue. Keats uses nature in his poems and trying to make very easy to the readers.

P. B. Shelley differs from Wordsworth and Keats:

              These three poets comes in the age of Romanticism they wrote poems which are connected to the Nature but they are actually differs from each other where we can find many changes of their poems. They have different view of Nature. ‘N’ature which is the first thing for the people who belong to the age of Romanticism. Nature is the first role of the poems of these poets which gave them pleasure.

             For Wordsworth, Nature is worshipping who known as the priest of Nature. He was educated by Nature, from his childhood he was inspired by the Nature. As William Wordsworth grew, his relationship with nature became more complex and mature because of the events that were taking place in his life and according to the growth of his own mind. When Wordsworth returned from his trip to France, after having seen all the horrors committed after the French Revolution, he automatically began to relate nature to the behavior of society.

              Wordsworth has a very different view of nature compared to many poets. He sees nature as something that is very innocent and pure. Most of Wordsworth's poems speak on a time when nature has spoken to him. His view of nature is open-ended and there is not just one answer to sum up how he feels about nature. Most of his poetry reflects this same feeling after interpreting it. Wordsworth has a deep view of nature, it can't be summarized in one sentence, or even two. For him, the world is an innocent place without humans. But when you ass humans in, it becomes "too much." As he states in the above poem. Man and nature become one in Wordsworth poetry, and this can be seen in almost any Wordsworth poem.

Shelley wrote poem in something in different way he links Nature with love. For Shelley Nature is love and for Wordsworth Nature is worship. Like Wordsworth, Shelley believes that Nature exercises a healing influence on man’s personality. He finds solace and comfort in Nature and feels its soothing influence on his heart. The contrast, here hinted at, between Shelley's view of Nature and that of Wordsworth, is extreme and entirely characteristic; the same is true, also, when we compare Shelley and Byron. Shelley's excitable sensuousness produces in him in the presence of Nature a very different attitude from that of Wordsworth's philosophic Christian-mysticism. Keats’s sentiment of Nature is simpler than that of the other romantics. He remains absolutely uninfluenced by the Pantheism of Wordsworth and Shelley, and loves Nature not because of any spiritual significance in her or any divine meaning in her but chiefly because of her external charm and, beauty.

               So, these are the poets who are connected with Nature and express their pure love towards the Nature in their poem. Through their poems we can understand their feeling towards Nature. As a readers we can see their deep faith and love for Nature. Through literature one can easily express and interpret their idea and feeling about something through their work in literature, as we have seen these three poets who are neurotic to Nature.