Romantic Visions of Nature

The Romantic poets sought to venerate nature as something beyond any creation, essence or power of man. And even though man may be a natural creature himself; composed of natural parts; he will be envisioned as something smaller in comparison with the greater presence of the natural world. Indeed, it seems that a great deal of Romantic poetry goes to great lengths to point out that man is nothing compared to the immeasurable power of nature. Either man will spend his life aspiring to possess or become akin to nature's power, or will be toppled over by its might. Both Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were poets who explored the power and majesty of nature during the Romantic period. Shelley gives a prime example of these ideas in poems such as Ozymandias of Egypt and Ode to the West Wind.

In Ozymandias we are given an example of how man and all the power he may obtain within his lifetime will be overshadowed by the 'greatness' of nature. The poem tells of a statue of the "king of kings" Ozymandias and begins with the narrative voice of an individual who encounters "...a traveler from an antique land". This traveler tells of what remains of the statue. Apparently the semblance of the once mighty Ozymandias has been laid to waste and ruin by the passage of time. And yet...

"...Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

This leaves a powerful image in the mind of the reader. A single, distinct impression. Man will fall to the passage of time but nature will always exist. The sands of time will lay to waste all the triumphs and tragedies, powers and weaknesses of the single individual (in this case, Ozymandias). I say individual here, as we cannot dismiss the timelessness of mankind as a whole. Indeed, the comparison may be made that a single plant (a majestic redwood or gum, a single rose, a blade of grass) or animal (a bee, an elephant or a whale) - the very flora and fauna which nature may comprise of - are just as individual and temporary as man. But we must consider the same essence of nature that poets such as Coleridge and Shelley; every Romantic poet; attempt to 'distill'. For, the same 'essence' of man (mankind) will become dwarfed when considering this 'distillation' of the natural world (nature). Consider the fact that we may speak of mankind's lasting impression. The recorded presence of man in the annals of time has been brief, but has left quite an impression. But an impression upon what 'surface'? What 'slate'? What 'medium'? Well, time, but a time so intrinsically linked with the existence of Earth and it's natural forces. We have left a distinct impression upon our environment - nature. And so even here 'mankind' is dwindled by 'nature' in that it is reduced to an impression.

I interpret Coleridge as addressing something greatly akin to this notion in Frost at Midnight :

"...For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself."

Here everything is once again unified into something of an 'unspoken language'. Coleridge's vision of nature, and his celebration of it, approaches the revelation that nature is indeed a part of man as man is part of nature. Man cannot escape the fact that he is a 'product' of nature. Not only does man look upon and aspire to nature, he is a direct representation of it. He is both a subjective and objective 'participant' in nature. Going on from this, we can now address another of the main concerns of the Romantic poet - the contrast between the pastoral/natural world and the urban/industrialized world of man - as it stems from the same 'nature vs. mankind' idea. The beginning of the passage from Coleridge was marked by a rather "dim" description of life in the city. He also alludes to finding some solace from this existence in the "sky and stars", suggesting that Coleridge believes man must always have some contact with nature for reasons of inspiration. This would be a conception born from the ideals that were prevalent during the turbulence of the Romantic period of European history. It was an age of redefinition and revolution that gave birth to many of the notions of self-analysis, individualism, conceptions of innocence and experience, politics, conformity, industry and urbanization that still affect today's Western world. In other words, Romanticism addressed a great deal of contemporary issues. It has even been suggested that the ethereal poetry produced by the likes of Shelley and Coleridge helped to form a great deal of the opinions and ideals that we hold to be true today. Indeed, it seems to be the Romantic poets task to clasp what is universal and topical within the heart and soul of mankind. Shelley's poetry often contained 'veiled' attacks on political systems and decisions of the time (and forever, in some instances) and by referring back to Ozymandias we can see an example of this. The poets were 'prone' to making personal commentaries on man and society in their analyses of nature and universe. Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an excellent example:

"...And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!"

Here we have one of the most memorable passages from the whole work, in which a foolish mariner kills an Albatross (referred to as a good omen) , representing the better forces of nature, and then finds that he and his crew are suddenly threatened by the darkest dangers of the ocean. Coleridge spins a fantastic tale in this work that makes several comments concerning man's foolish pride concerning his assumed power over the elements, and presumably his own destiny in this poem. He exults nature and approaches the darker depths of the human psyche, a thread that alot of the other Romantic poets also followed. An approach to the individual psyche which itself sometimes blurs the line between the Romantic and the Gothic. Coleridge had a prevailing tendency for the celebration and observance of the natural beauty and aesthetic qualities of the powerful natural forces and phenomena around us. He was greatly inspired by the most simple and innocent representations of nature. This brings us back to Shelley, and how he also pays testimony to this notion of man being inspired by nature in Ode to the West Wind. He describes how man wishes to replicate or fashion himself upon nature.

"...If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O, uncontroulable!...

...Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!...

...Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!"

Indeed, the mythic figure of the poet; particularly the Romantic poet; has come to be a man of passionate and powerful nature(!). The solitary, brooding character who is stirred by beauty and lost within a creative and fantastic world, sprung from a fusing of his emotions and his observations. It may be a direct result of the poet's temperament that his work speaks of the power of nature and how man should aspire to it. It is due to his own romantic notions and idealization that man is separated from nature and inspires the reader to seek to be part of it once again. To grasp at the essence of life. For the imagination of the Romantic poet becomes the looking glass in which the enormity of the landscape, the great 'portrait' of nature, is examined and/or explained to some degree. The Romantic poet takes the whole picture and attempts to explain it's meaning to the observer; imagination being the tool by which poets such as Coleridge and Shelley perform this task. By use of aesthetic imagery and analogy, something far beyond words sits before the reader.

Coleridge himself makes a reference to this notion in his most important philosophical work, Biographia Literaria:

"...the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of the imagination..."

As mentioned in the 'Romanticism' study guide, Coleridge is 'interfusing' nature with the human imagination. Both are demonstrative of truths, with sudden flairs and tendencies toward color, novelty and charm. And again, this passage seeks to liken the poet with a closer affinity to the natural world. If the poet is indeed in possession of the greatest imagination and understanding of the very truths of existence, then the poet again typifies man coming closer to the very essence of the natural which their poetry depicts. Indeed, many poets have proposed that they should be given a niche above the common man, and may these delusions of grandeur not have some merit? For if the poet is able to distill the natural world and supply the essence in the very poetry that they produce, are they not more gifted and blessed with natural 'temperaments' than the common man. For the reader presumably needs to be told about these things by the likes of Shelley and Coleridge. He needs to read the tale of Ozymandias and the descriptions of the West Wind; he needs to hear the Ancient Mariner's Rime and read of the frost that is present at midnight; he needs to be fed a great deal of images and principles in order to understand because he presumably cannot grasp these things for himself. He cannot see them. He does not experience the power of nature in his everyday life and it is up to the poet to capture it for him. It is up to the poet to bind all things together for, as Shelley stated at the conclusion of his Defense of Poetry, which was later echoed by the poet William Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads - "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".

"To be or not be...or to be reading The Musings of Dan"
or
"Apparently you can bend spoons with the power of your mind after visiting The Lair of Dan"