7/31/2019 Nature Plays a Significant Role in the Poetry of Our
Four Romantics
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William Blake and Samuel Coleridge are two of the Romantic
periods best poets. As can be
expected, they show many of the ideas and problems of the time
in their poetry. What features
especially prominent is nature.
William Blake is the first candidate as he uses nature very
obviously in his poems. In his
collection Songs of Innocence and of experience he featured
nature very prominently. In his poems heuses nature as an analogy
to purity and happiness. The Echoing Green shows is a perfect
example of
these anlogies. In The Echoing Green he tells the story of day
in a small field. In this field everyone is
happy. Old John with white hair does laugh away care, sitting
under the oak, among the old folk. They
laugh at our play,1
this quote shows both how the old man is happy watching the kids
play, thinking of
when he was young and innocent, and the kids playing who are
still young and innocent, untouched by
the world. While not in this poem, he uses nature to compare
these to the city, which represents misery.
The Chimney Sweepershows the way Blake presented cities very
well. The Chimney SweeperIs about
chimney sweeps, who at that period were small children who Could
scarcely cry weep! Weep! Weep!
Weep!2 Whereas in The Echoing Green the children are happy and
carefree playing in the green, In The
Chimney Sweep the kids are miserable and forced to work in the
city. The Garden of Love shows bothhow he uses nature and its
counterpart in the city.
Samuel Coleridge uses nature for a different purpose in his
poems. He uses nature in two ways.
The first is as an ideal. To Coleridge, like Blake, nature is a
type of perfection that man wants to obtain
even if not consciously. The second way Coleridge uses nature is
as a way to show emotions. This is in no
way particular to Coleridge as many literary artists use weather
in such a way. Samuel Coleridges
Dejection: An Ode shows both sides of how he uses nature. In
this poem the weather outside is
turbulent like his sadness. In the poem the he describes the
weather as even now the gust were
swelling, and the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!3
The shows how he feels that his emotions
are like the weather tossing him about and overwhelming him with
their power. The second part of howhe uses nature, as an ideal, is
shown later in the poem. He mentions in line 84 and 85 each
visitation
suspends what nature gave me at my birth.4
Implying that these visitations (of affliction) are robbing
him of the happiness and that nature gave him at birth. Another
poem that showcases the use of nature
as an emotion is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This epic poem
emphasises on the use of nature as a
way to convey emotions. This is impart because the weather is in
the poem is being controlled by a spirit
that is emotionally distraught at the lead character having
killed its albatross. As the entity is very upset
the weather is very calm. This seems at odds with the emotions
displayed in Dejection but it makes
sense when you consider the view point of a sailor. To a sailor
being becalmed is one of the worst fates
that could befall a person, if it is not the worst fate. Back in
the age of sail, wind was essential to
movement, if there was no wind the ship didnt move and you had
to sit there and wait until either windpicked up or you died of
starvation/dehydration. This is hopeless is immortalized in the
lines: Water,
1P. 1412
2P. 1414
3P. 1652
4P. 1654
