Wordsworth's Treatment of Nature

Treatment of Nature in Wordsworth's Poetry

As a poet of nature, Wordsworth stands supreme. He is "a worshiper of Nature": Nature devoted or high -priest. Nature occupies in his poems a separate  or  independent status and is not treated in a casual or passing manner. Tintern Abbey is a poem with Nature as its theme.

Wordsworth pursues Nature in a way different from that of pope. Unlike Pope Wordsworth sincerely believed that in town life  and its distractions men had forgotten nature and they had been punished for it. Constant social intercourse had dissipated their simple and pure impression. One of his sonnets is eloquent of this idea:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we waste our power's,

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

Wordsworth brings a new and intenser interest in Nature. Pope looks at Nature  as objectively as possible, naturally his view is hardly colored by his 'hyper-individualism'. It has been stated the antithesis to Pope's idea of nature is hyper-individualism. Interestingly enough, Wordsworth explorations of what Nature had to say to him spring from his hyper-individualism. Thus,  with Wordsworth the poetry of Nature took on a new range, passing beyond sensuous presentation and description to vision and interpretation. Under the influence of nature , he experiences a mystic mood, a transcendental feeling.