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  • Essay / Wordsworth's references to nature in resolution and independence

    A romantic poet, Wordsworth often draws inspiration from nature to describe his subjects or his narrator's worldview. In his poem “Resolution and Independence,” which employs twenty septets with an ababcc rhyme scheme, Wordsworth expresses his concerns and anxiety over a subject that can be summarized by lines 48-49, which say: “We poets, in our youth, let us begin with joy;/But from there come in the end discouragement and madness. " He explores this theme by juxtaposing his narrator with an old man and exploring their similarities and differences to inspire hope for himself and for poets who fear that their future will bring "despondency and madness." But also, in the tradition of the Romantic poets, Wordsworth continually makes references and comparisons to nature to promote “Resolution and Independence”. This close reading will examine Wordsworth's use of nature to evoke emotion and understanding in the reader throughout the poem. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In the first seven stanzas, as Wordsworth describes his surroundings and lays out his narrator's disposition, there are numerous descriptions and references to nature. The night had been stormy, but now, “[t]he sky rejoices at the birth of the morning” (line 9) on the grassy plain along which the narrator travels. Wordsworth's personification of the sky demonstrates from the beginning of the poem how important nature is to him. The narrator begins to reveal information about how he has long approached his life as an "Earth Child" (line 32) until now, but now worries that his future is bleak. In lines 36 and 37, the narrator says, “All my life I have lived in pleasant thoughts,/As if the affairs of life were a summer mood.” » This reference to the summer season implies that the narrator has been a careless poet, lacking responsibility towards himself and perhaps neglecting some of his obligations, and for this reason he fears having to bear unsympathetic repercussions in old age . In the next five stanzas, the narrator encounters “the oldest man…that ever wore gray hair” (line 56). Before speaking to the man, the narrator describes him in detail, sometimes comparing him to different aspects of nature to make the description more vivid. For example, the narrator finds it unusual that the old man is there, at the edge of a pond, and he compares him to a "sea beast crawling.../toward the sun itself" (lines 62-63), implying that just as a sea creature should not be on the shore breathing air, the old man had no place by the pond, stirring the mud with a long wooden stick. Later, in lines 78 and 79, the narrator describes: “Still as a cloud, the old man stood,/who does not hear the strong winds when they call.” » Here, instead of writing that the old man did not move, Wordsworth used natural objects to describe him. Once the narrator begins talking to the old man, the narrator asks about the man's profession. Soon, when the old man begins to speak, the narrator notices that he has an interesting and eloquent way of speaking. However, while he admires the man's speech, he loses focus on the content of what the man is actually saying. To describe the narrator's loss of concentration on the man's words, Wordsworth uses another simile involving nature. In line 107, the narrator says, “His voice was like a stream to me.” It is.”