Concentrating on one Poem by each Poet, Compare and Contrast the ways in which Hughes and Wordsworth Present Man's Relationship with Nature

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Concentrating on one Poem by each Poet, Compare and Contrast the ways in which Hughes and Wordsworth Present Man’s Relationship with Nature

        Both Hughes and Wordsworth have beliefs about man’s relationship with nature, but I feel that they see the relationship between the two in different ways. Hughes has a more pessimistic and negative approach, feeling that nature must protect herself from man’s destructive nature, while Wordsworth believes that nature is a teacher and nurtures you. Wordsworth uses a more optimistic and positive approach in his poetry. Wordsworth sees nature in a romantic and spiritual sense that protects and is constantly feeding and inspiring man’s mind and helping it to grow. On the other hand Hughes sees man as interfering and destructive towards nature and is excluded from its harmony. Hughes personality is much more complicated and hard to deal with, so to speak, than Wordsworth’s; this is reflected in his attitude towards nature because he thinks that nature is a violent and brutal enemy towards man and even itself. From this you can tell that he is quite a brooding and depressive man. I have chosen to compare ‘Work and Play’ by Hughes and by Wordsworth I have chosen ‘Expostulation and Reply’ and ‘The Tables Turned’ which are poems on the same subject but ‘The Tables Turned’ is set later on in the day and is the ‘Companion-Piece’ to ‘Expostulation and Reply’. I chose to study these two poems because I think that it is very interesting how the beliefs of Hughes and Wordsworth are presented, showing that they both have an admiration for the beauty of nature and its power, and how Hughes believes that in comparison man is clumsy and pathetic.

        Both poets show how man is clumsy and inefficient while nature is the exact opposite, skilled and swift. This is shown in ‘Work and Play’ when Hughes describes a swallow as ‘a blue-dark knot of glittering voltage’. This shows how the swallow looks like a knot of glittering voltage implying that it is going very fast. This shows that Hughes thinks of the bird and nature in general as very smooth and good at what they do implying that we should learn from it. The way Hughes says ‘blue-dark’ instead of dark blue emphasises the point by getting you to notice it more easily. Wordsworth does this in a different way because he doesn’t make his poetry so dramatic, but makes it subtle instead. There is evidence of this in ‘The Tables Turned’ on line 29 and 30 where Wordsworth has written ‘Enough of science and of art; Close up these barren leaves;’ here Wordsworth is implying with a punning hint to Matthew (the other character in his poem) that tree-leaves unlike book-leaves that are man made aren’t barren. He is also saying that they can teach you much more than books ever can. With a sense of enjoyment that comes with it. This shows how Wordsworth has a sense of humour and uses this in his poetry to show that not all learning has to be a serious and boring affair when you are learning from nature. He says that the way man teaches you to learn is slow and dull, boring you, meaning that you don’t concentrate as well as you could. This leads to an inadequate education because you have just acquired the information via second hand experience instead of experiencing it for yourself. Wordsworth thinks that nature will give you a better understanding of the world as well as enjoyment while you learn which books don’t offer you.

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        Wordsworth and Hughes both believe that nature teaches and parent’s man in a way that man made books could never do. This comes through strongest in Wordsworth’s poems. He gives the impression that nature is like a religion to him by continually saying things like ‘Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife, come, hear the linnet,’ and things that are similar in both poems. He also mentions Mother Nature but calls her ‘mother earth’ as if to praise her by saying that all of the earth is her creation. Both poets refer to Mother Nature as ‘she’. This is because ...

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