A William Wordsworth Celebration

The Poet who has meant more to me than any other is William Wordsworth, great British Romantic poet who so loved nature that he saw it as a Nurse, a moral guide, an embodiment of all that was good and perfect in the world.
Among the poems which I teach yearly with great delight are the following:
"The World Is Too Much With Us"
"Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"
"Ode:  Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
Each of these works has moved my heart at different times in my life with  varying power, a fact that attests the poems' value for readers.  The first, a relatively simple and easy-to-understand sonnet, makes the first impression many a high-school student has of Wordsworth's wisdom.  What student cannot understand how the awful stress of routine, work, study, rush and hustle of human life can make us miss the wonders of the natural world around us?  The appeal of the sea baring its bosom to the moon touches their imaginations.  The puzzling over what Wordsworth says about the winds that are "upgathered now like flowers" makes them engage with the poet's imagination.
 
 

Each student seems to understand the poet's longing for a simpler time when Nature was in contact with his spirit through his beliefs.  A simple look into the student's own love of the Peaks of Otter or the beautiful shore at Smith Mountain Lake or a walk on the beach at Long Island or North Myrtle Beach  will help the poet's love become something relevant, especially when the pressures of the end of senior year are heaviest on the students' minds.
 
 

Contrast the lovely beauty of this scene of the village where Wordsworth lived  with the skyline above -- which is more likely to bring gentle rest and a chance to think, dream, and enjoy a simple life?

 


 
 
 

 

Lake Windemere reflects the "uncertain heavens" in its waters with the serenity that Wordsworth loved.  Students, too, can remember places of such serenity where they have fished, boated, and swum.  Touching their memories with the tranquility his lines recreates is well-spent effort.
 


 
 
 

Can teachers talk about faith and beliefs in the classroom today?  Perhaps not directly, but the sources of faith are certainly found in such philosophical poems as "Ode:  Intimations of Immortality."  What student  cannot remember the wonder with which he/she climbed a "tree, of many, one" in a grandfather's back yard or the thrill of seeing a beautiful rainbow after a terrifying rainstorm?
 

What young person in Central Virginia has not played games mocking the activities of their parents, or testing out roles as athletic heroes or beautiful models, trying "earnestly" to belie their innocence as they hurry to become adults, wanting to escape childhood?

What senior in high school does not know that blossoming passions of "splendour in the grass" and "glory in the flower"?  What student has not begun to feel the "shades of the prison house" begin to close upon him/her as the struggle to work part time and go to school have created terrible pressures, blocking freedom for extra-curricular senior activities and causing an uneasy balance between work and school?
  
 

 
 

What senior has not begun to look backward with nostalgia on the years of irresponsibility and relaxation that they leave behind when they graduate?  How can young people prepare for the future without some regret at leaving behind the stage of life from which they depart?

Wordsworth's words in this great ode promise them that their unblemished view of the beckoning world will change, that that Earth will make them experience  disappointments and disillusionments  as they grasp for the "treasures" she spreads before them.  Their youthful optimism may make them doubt predictions that Life will lose its luster,  but they already long to know that there is something more beyond the struggles of adulthood waiting for them at last.  They can love the natural world for its "meanest flower that blows" even when they are moving rapidly into the traffic of the world.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

What does "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" have for today's student?  Students know what the life of stress in a big city can be like;  they can understand the poet's longing to go into the country to escape that stress.  They understand what it was like to roam the countryside like a deer rushing through the woods.  They have been to Crabtree Falls and Holcombe Rock's Blue Hole.  They have hunted the hills of Central Virginia, camped  in the Blue Ridge Mountains, waded in icy streams in the Shenandoah Valley.  They have hiked  through the woods of Campbell County and canoed on the James River.

They can easily understand the Nature has never betrayed their hearts as people have, that Nature has been their guardian, their guide, their comforter, when they consider why they love to sit in a deer stand for hours or why they love to drive through the winding back roads to their homes more than they like to drive Wards Road or Timberlake Road.    They can identify with the shared pleasures of seeing and experiencing the beauties of nature with sisters, brothers, loved ones.  What student in this area of Virginia has not gone to the Peaks with youth groups, friends, family, for Sunday afternoon picnics?  What student has not loved the mountains that are so nearby?  Let pictures take the students back to these places.  Let them recall the solace they find in such places.

 
 
They may not know the great ruins of an abbey or a cathedral, but they can understand how those ruins seen in pictures can carry a haunting beauty that makes Wordsworth think of serenity and peace.