Wordsworth and Coleridge saw themselves as "worshippers of nature." How is this demonstrated in Lyrical Ballads?

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Wordsworth and Coleridge saw themselves as “worshippers of nature.” How is this demonstrated in Lyrical Ballads? (an exam-style essay)

Themes relating to nature are instrumental in the poetry collection Lyrical Ballads by William Wordworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As part of the Romantic movement, both poets strongly believed in a power and supreme beauty of nature and the education it can impart onto man, and their works in Lyrical Ballads demonstrate this.

In ‘The Dungeon’, Coleridge demonstrates his view that nature has healing properties and that it would be a more effective method of rehabilitating criminals than the usual method of locking them away in prison would be - an elevated view of nature and its power. He justifies this opinion using glorious imagery describing nature as he sees it, with the intent of portraying its complete beauty.

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,

Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,

Coleridge also uses a direct contrast and juxtaposition with this and the dark imagery used in the first stanza to emphasise the beauty of nature. He also does this to demonstrate that the dark and horrible dungeon and the free and beautiful nature are polar opposites, and ultimately to come to the conclusion that they have similar effects on criminals.

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Circled with evil, till his very soul

Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed

By sights of ever more deformity!

Using this juxtaposition, Coleridge explains that the total beauty of nature will overcome the criminal and their dark ways. He expresses how nature will appear a “jarring and dissonant thing” as it is as far-removed from their dark and deceitful ways as is possible. Finally, he concludes that this will immediately have the effect of healing him and removing all bad intent that he possesses (“His angry spirit healed and harmonized / By the benignant touch of love and beauty”) This conclusion ...

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