In “One evening” Wordsworth is describing how he took a small boat which was tied to a willow tree and started to row it across the lake. He felt excited and rowed the boat as quickly as he could. He was also a little afraid he might be caught. In “Nutting” I get the feeling of a typical summer day, sunshine warm on your back and a “feel good” factor. The words used are calm and soft such as “Banquet” and “happiness”. Wordsworth’s feelings change in “One Evening” from relative calm when stealing the boat, to absolute fear when he looks up and sees the cliff towering above him in the darkness. He feels as if the cliff is following him, so he turns the boat round and rows it quickly back to the Willow tree. “Nutting” also portrays a sense of guilt from having done something he shouldn’t have. In stealing the nuts from the tree Wordsworth has “mutilated” the bower, and “felt a sense of pain when I beheld the silent trees, and saw the intruding sky”. Although both poems show a sense of right and wrong, and sense of guilt for having done something wrong, the first shows the sense of fear associated with that, whereas “Nutting” does not. The words used to describe the place and his actions do not become harsh until he has actually taken the nuts. Whereas the words in “One Evening” are cold and scary.
William learns about the power and force of nature in ‘One Evening’. At the beginning of the poem he is the one in charge, rowing the boat at his pace and steering where he wants to go. Then he becomes afraid because of the enormous rocks and darkness and his imagination begins to play tricks on him. He can’t get the images out of his mind, he has nightmares about it when he is asleep, and they dominate his thoughts when he is awake. The images are always in black and white, which makes it more scary because the image is bleak. In ‘Nutting’, Wordsworth has learned a lesson that you cannot treat the forest with disrespect, that you have to care about what you do there. However, he says that you have to be gentle. There is no long lasting fear, and of course he still has all the nuts he can eat. The oxymoron ‘troubled pleasure’ is illustrated in ’Nutting’ through Wordsworth having enjoyed a day collecting nuts. He was dressed like a tramp, but that didn’t matter. He was just out in the forest really enjoying himself and was shaking the nuts down out of the trees with his nutting-crook. He lays down beside some water for a rest, and when he gets up carries on with his ‘merciless ravage’. Then when he looks up he can see the damage he has done to the trees, because he has torn off the leaves, broken boughs and can now see the sky through the trees. The ‘troubled pleasure’ in ‘One Evening’ is more troubled than pleasure. There is extreme pleasure early on when he first finds the boat, and rows quickly so that it skims the water like a swan. Once the sky becomes obscured by the rocks, the whole mood of the poem changes to something like a horror film. The only similarity in the two accounts are that they start off with a typical boyhood scenario – doing something you shouldn’t – which leads to guilt, there is water mentioned in both. They are different because they take place at a different times of day, and ‘One Evening’ involves real fear. ‘Nutting’ uses more alliteration, and generally more flowery language to get the point across, even though ‘One Evening’ is a slightly longer poem. William was also the centre of attention in this too.
I think that “Nutting” is more relevant to today from a green perspective because there are still people damaging trees, and soon we will run out of wood. Not enough people get the pleasure from walking in the woods and climbing trees. Many children are not allowed out on their own to go to the woods in the first place. ‘One Evening’ shows us that growing up can be a solitary thing, that we have to experience some things on our own in order to learn from them. Also, to learn from wrongdoing we have to know what he have done is wrong. Sometimes someone tells us we have done something wrong, but we often know immediately we are wrong without anyone having to tell us. I would have thought that anyone would know when they have done something wrong, the most relevant part to teenagers today sadly is that they often do not care whether it is wrong, and often think it would make them look important to repeat that wrong action. ‘One Evening’ shows the power of nature, whereas ‘Nutting’ balances that with the power of man over nature. Wordsworth asks nature to repair the damage he has caused ‘for there is a spirit in the woods’.
I prefer Nutting because it is more mischievous, and means more to me. I love climbing trees, but I don’t like nuts! It speaks in plain language which is easily understood.