poetry it was the sympathetic scenery portrayed to match the drama of life. The scenery was changed to keep in harmony with the human sentiments that were dramatized. But in Wordsworth it became a subject apart from human nature, loved for itself alone, and conceived as a personality having a universal life and able to communicate with us. Wordsworth conceived Nature as a Mighty Being. Every object of Nature, the hills, the trees, the tarns, the crags, the wild cataract, the evening star, palpitated with a life. He attributed a consciousness and a soul to everyone of them but he also attributed a One Soul, co-ordinating and unifying all of them.18 Thou Being that art in the clouds and air
Thou that art in the green and in the groves- | .. .. .. .. .. | 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 men:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
|
He embodies his idea of an infinite spirit in the Universe in the shape of a personality whom he creates and calls Nature. There are those who think that the ancient view of Nature as the stage scenery for mankind was real, and that the modern view after Wordsworth is unreal. But, it cannot be denied that Wordsworth originated a new epoch and made a positive contribution to the interpretation of Nature.19 One is surprised that the ancient Tamil poets never had their poetry influenced by their religious beliefs in the all-pervading presence of a Mighty Being. The Paripaaṭal ode already quoted has these lines: Of the fire, thou art the heat; of the flower,
thou art the fragrance; |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18 NORMAN LACEY, Wordsworth's View of Nature, Cambridge, 1943. 19 J. W. BEACH, The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth Century English Poetry, New York, 1936, pp. 158-251. |