Similarly, nature is shown to be a gentle and peaceful part of his poetry in “Strange fits of passion have I known.” This poem is very much reflective, an aspect of his poetry which we should not be surprised to see at all. “When she I loved looked every day /Fresh as a rose in June, /I to her cottage bent my way, /Beneath an evening moon.” (lines 5-8) Just as in “Expostulation and Reply,” Wordsworth sets up a natural scene to convey a feeling of serenity. Later in lines 13-16 he writes, “And now we reached the orchard-plot; /And, as we climbed the hill, /The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot /Came near, and nearer still.” Wordsworth’s goal has been reached, he has met Lucy and in their mutual happiness they spend their time traversing an orchard-plot and up a hill. Later in line 18 Wordsworth explicitly states his view on nature by writing, “Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!”
A particularly interesting aspect of nature present in this poem is the moon. The moon is mentioned in every stanza except the first and last. It’s used as a indication of how the poem is progressing. When we first see the moon it is evening so it’s barely visible at all. The moon then becomes the target for the speaker’s eye and then begins to sink as he and Lucy travel together, finally disappearing out of the sky when they reach the cottage. While the shifting location of the moon can be viewed as an indication of the progression of the, it means much more to the speaker. The speaker is clearly aware of the presence and status of the moon throughout the poem. We can see that he has created some sort of relationship between the moon and his life, which is why he’s so startled when the moon suddenly drops. When he no longer has the moon, his thoughts immediately turn to the possibility of not having his love, Lucy as well. Even the moon is a positive element of nature, because in its absence he begins to feel sorrow. The moon is a piece of nature, however, which operates in a cyclic fashion. Wordsworth does illustrate that its sorrow inspiring absence is unfortunately an inevitable part of reality.
One particular powerful facet of poetry is its ability to easily conjure a spiritual response within the reader. Without this ability, in fact, a poem becomes more of an elaborate description, but a poem with the ability to involve the reader spiritually is a truly great one. To Wordsworth, this ability came easily because of the amount of reflection that was put into each poem. “Expostulation and Reply” is a conversational poem that he recalled and thought about previously. “Nor less I deem that there are Powers /Which of themselves our minds impress; /That we can feed this mind of ours /In a wise passiveness.” (lines 21-24) Quakers favored this stanza because of the great reconciliation with their own spiritual beliefs. A wise passivity certainly invokes a spiritual response from the reader, particularly Christian ones. Christian prayer involves a passive state in which you are supposed to be able to hear God’s voice. The silence in wisdom is by no means an original idea of Wordsworth, but his mention of it gives his poem a spiritual side, a powerful one as it can still evoke spiritual response from readers today.
“Strange fits of passion have I known” also contains spiritual elements, very personal introspective ones. The entire poem is about the speaker’s introspective reflection and his curiosity as to why he is feeling the emotions that he does. Unlike “Expostulation and Reply,” the spiritual elements of this poem relate an experience of passionate emotions, not passive intellectualism. It is almost as if he is shocked that he’s feeling these strange emotions and he’s trying to determine from where they originate. I’d say the perhaps too obvious answer of love. But the speaker’s genuine confusion of his own emotions suggests the possibility that it’s more than that. Is it paranoia, madness even? While we may never know the answer, that personal journey is most certainly one that sticks with the reader in their own spiritual world.
Romantic poets are grouped together by a fairly similar style of poetry and by the time in which they lived. William Wordsworth stuck out even then with his distinctive style using self reflection and his portrayal of nature. While “Expostulation and Reply” and “Strange fits of passion have I known” both possess these aspects, they are set apart from one another in their emotional experiences.