William Wordsworth’s Poetic Mind 

William Wordsworth is the father of English Romanticism. Named as Lake poet because of his magnificent love for nature and collection of poetic ideas while walking aside a lake. Wordsworth defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions, recollected in tranquility. He believes poetry as a collection of memories, emotional expression and observation which should be recollected in a calm state. One essential idea according to him is that emotions have to overflow in an uncontrollable manner but should be recollected in tranquility, that is, in a calm state.

Like other Romantics, Wordsworth was also driven by Pathetic Fallacy which means human sentiments towards non-human things, here it is to the nature.

In Wordsworth’s poems, there are emotions of romanticism. In his two poems, "Ode- Intimations of immortality and Few miles above the Tintern abbey”, he picturized his poetic ideas. The major ideas are.

 Idea of Loss of spirituality-

 Wordsworth finds himself a mile away from the sense of spirituality, which is removed like clothes from this materialistic world. He is stuck in a civilized industrial world which chained him in social norms and conventions. As per his poetic mind, he is talking about the loss of spirituality in nature. With reference to both poems, he is talking about the loss of his childhood when he was near natural world. With adulthood and industrialization, nature has been wiped out from his life. It’s his reminiscence of past or the best days of his memory. In ‘Tintern abbey’, Wordsworth is talking about nature at rural area and not in city, among the woods which he revisits after a gap of five years, symbolically reminiscence of the past loss of spirituality.

 Nature which is now missing in cities, is still present in rural areas. Though attainment of nature is available to him yet the innocence, spirituality; childhood, when he was aware of the supernatural beings around him has been lost after getting adulthood in this modern chained materialistic civilization where he can’t observe nature around him.

Idea of Memory –

Mind being the collection storage of memories enhances poetic ideas of Wordsworth. The most important use of memory is to make connections between the past and the present. In both of his poems, Wordsworth is memorizing his past. For instance, in poem ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ is in nature, rural area or his favorite place to exist on earth. But what will he do after leaving this Tintern Abbey? He visited this place five years ago too before shifting in the city. So, what kept him near nature there?

Memory. Once he has returned to the daily gloom of the city, he will be capable to remember the best time of his life and can get a feeling of heart fulfilment again. Memory of Tintern Abbey will elevate his tiredness of civilization.

Philosopher John Locke in his words, ‘we are born with a Blank State of mind. Whatever experiences we go through, they imprint in our brains’, so memory with always keep him connected with everything he passes by.

While in ‘Intimations of immortality ode’, memory keeps an infant (innocence) connected with celestial lights, that is, knowledge of our pre-existence. In fifth stanza of poem, “Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness”, his idea is that taking a birth is escaping from something (reality). Its not an idea of forgetting but coming with idea of another existence, we still have the memories of pre-existence as an infant. In stanza 6 of this poem, he meets six years old who seems to him as an ‘endless intimation’ that is, he reminisces his childhood through him somewhere. He remembers his childhood and glory of nature in his memories.

Idea of Transcendentalism-

Transcendence simply supremacy or world without boundaries. In both of Wordsworth’s poems, its emphasis a strong connection of oneself to the nature. In Tintern Abbey, “Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms” depicts a rural area where small plants seem to run in a line, running wild(unrestricted). Nature can’t be restricted in rural areas. 

Romanticism is not only about beauty but its sublimity or aesthetic ugliness, a sense of supernatural. Poet dreams of sublimity thinking of nature that is elevated to a higher level of our reaches, that is, presence of spirituality around surroundings to transport into a divine(transcendental)place.

Thus, Wordsworth in his collection of poems fragmented the nature with his expressions of emotions, glory and joy, loss of innocence and a divinity for a transcendental world where nature is at the supremacy, that is, beyond normal.