On line 14, Wordsworth begins to describe his journey ‘over pathless rocks, through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets, forcing my way’. Showing that no human had travelled here before, an untouched scene. He then discovers an alcove in the wood which was ‘unvisited, where not a broken bough drooped’. His description of his emotions at finding this place then becomes sexual, ‘the hazels rose tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, a virgin scene!’, ‘breathing with such suppression of the heart as joy delights in’. His writing shows a sexual feeling towards a beautiful scene, as if it were a beautiful virgin woman. He is ‘fearless of a rival’, knowing that no one has been here before and that no one will be there in the future. His description of the beauty of his corner of the wood show the reader that humans are not the only beautiful things on the Earth and that nature can be as beautiful as a beautiful virgin woman.
From line 33, Wordsworth describes a ‘sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay tribute to ease’. But on line 43 Wordsworth begins to start a fierce and aggressive mood as he ‘dragged to Earth both branch and bough, with crash and merciless ravage’. Again referring to the image of a beautiful woman, but now described as being raped and pillaged, showing how it is humans that destroy the beauty in nature. He then is ‘rich beyond the wealth of kings’ with his collection of nuts, but also describes a sense of pain that he has mutilated and killed the trees. The ‘intruding sky’ can now get into his secret place in the wood that was protected by the trees from others, he has destroyed his place of sanctity.
Wordsworth writes the last three lines as the end of the letter to Lucy, telling her to be gentle with nature, ‘for there is a spirit in the woods’ which can be hurt just like humans.
Wordsworth obviously believed that nature is just as, and maybe more so, beautiful as humans, and that humans have some kind of desire in them to destroy this greater beauty. He believed that nature had a ‘spirit’ like humans have souls, and that pillaging trees for food and pleasure hurts nature like a rapist hurts their victim. Nature is a separate entity which interacts and hurts like humans.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote over one thousand poems in his lifetime, Pied Beauty, Inversnaid and are two which are about nature.
Pied Beauty is structured very much like a prayer, starting with ‘Glory be to God’ on the first line and ‘Praise him’ on the last. It is similar in content to the hymn ‘All things Bright and Beautiful’ by Cecil F. Alexander in 1848, in the same era as Hopkins. He writes that God should be praised for ‘dappled things’, imperfect things, like ‘skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow’ in nature. He tries to convey the message that God is almighty and created everything, even things that might seem to be imperfect to humans are beautiful in their complexity. He uses sibilance and alliteration in almost every line to make all his words stand out and make an impression on the readers mind. He refers to God’s role in nature again on line 5 where he says that the landscape is ‘plotted and pieced’, showing that God designed nature and is the reason for its beauty. Hopkins describes Gods beauty as eternal and everywhere in the last line, saying that it ‘fathers-forth’ and is ‘past change’.
Inversnaid is a part of the Scottish highlands, in his poem, Hopkins tries to express its beauty. He uses a lot of rhyme, with a simple rhythm, emulating a child’s nursery rhyme. He uses aggressive words, such as ‘roaring’, ‘despair’ and ‘drowning’ to give a sense of raw nature. Hopkins describes this area as ‘darksome’, a mixture of dark and hansome, he believes that nature Is mysterious and beautiful, and tries to leave that impression on the reader. In the second and third stanzas he describes nature as graceful and apparently unsightly, but in the last stanza, Hopkins writes that the world would not be here without nature, so we should leave it alone to do as it pleases.
Hopkins sees nature as a display of how powerful God is and that God designed andmade it, so it should be respected by humans.
Perhaps one of Seamus Heaney’s most famous poems, Death of a Naturalist looks at the aggressive side of nature. It starts with a putrid image of rotting flax, Heaney describes this ‘flax-dam’, a built up dam of waste flax which has been dumped in a river and left to rot, as ‘festering in the heart of the townland’ as if it is restricting the supply of blood to the town and slowly killing it. He personifies this dam when he says it ‘sweltered in the punishing sun’. The dam has an impenetrable ‘gauze of sound’ woven around it by blue bottles which contains the smell. However, amongst all this rot and decay there are beautiful things, he states that ‘there were dragon-flies and spotted butterflies.’
The childish character in the poem first emerges on line 8 where the frogspawn is described as ‘warm thick slobber’, which is a very childish way of describing it. Heaney then refers to the frogspawn as ‘jellied specks’ as the child collects ‘jampotfulls’ of it to show friends and family as ‘the fattening dots burst into nimble-swimming tadpoles.’ Heaney uses this to show that the child is innocent and too young to know that frogspawn is a form of life, so it is almost okay to display them and kill them because it is entertaining to watch them grow. The description of the frog characters by ‘Miss Walls’ on lines 15 – 21 is also childish and only describes the features of the frogs which humans would care about.
The second stanza changes tone completely as the child grows into an adult and looses the innocence of youth. Another putrid atmosphere is produced as Heaney describes the fields as ‘rank with cowdung’, using strong words to produce an image of a sickening smell in the reader’s mind. The frogs are described as angry and they ‘invaded the flax-dam’, using ‘invaded’ in a military sense. The man had to duck through hedges to try to escape the frogs but was met with a ‘coarse croaking’, which makes the croaking seem more aggressive than it should normally be. Heaney writes that the air was ‘thick with a bass chorus’, showing that there was a mass of frogs, incorporating the military theme again as the bass chorus could refer to constant gunfire or a marching band.
Heaney then goes on to describe the frogs as ‘cocked on sods’, also referring to the military, associated with cocking a rifle, showing that the frogs are poised to attack. Heaney writes also that some of the frogs hopped, as if manoeuvring into a better position for attacking. He uses onomatopoeia to describe the ‘obscene threats’ the frogs were giving. There is another military reference as the frogs are described as ‘poised like mud grenades’, again showing that they are ready to attack. The frogs’ ‘blunt heads farted’, a gross image in the reader’s mind that makes the frogs seem to be inanimate objects that make obscene noises. The man ‘sickened, turned and ran’, Heaney shows that these small objects of nature can communicate and organise and have emotions, be intimidating enough to scare a human many times larger than them. Heaney describes the frogs as ‘great slime kings’ and ‘gathered for vengeance’, the order of supremacy has swapped since the first stanza, the child had total control over the frogspawn and tadpoles, now the frogs ruled their land and are prepared to fight to protect each other. The spawn in the river is personified on the last line where Heaney writes that it would clutch his hand, now the whole river is coordinated and organised and angry with him.
The military references impress on the reader an organised and deadly image of hundreds of small objects coming together to be a powerful force, such as an army or a warship.
Heaney sees nature as an aggressive force made up of many small things which interact to over come seemingly infinitely over-powering obstacles.
Wordsworth sees nature as an entity in its own right, like a person it can be hurt, and it can interact with its surroundings.
Hopkins sees nature as an unloving thing, created by God and therefore beautiful and respect-worthy.
