TWO POETS AND THEIR POETRY

 

TWO POETS AND THEIR POETRY

             By two poets I mean William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Both were English romantics of the first phase. They were  also conspicuous  for their theory of poetic language which was marked by true simplicity and directness. Wordsworth held  : “There is no difference between the language of prose and the language of poetry. “ Coleridge wrote his own definition of a poet.

“What is a poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be     expected from him? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with

more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.“

 

The extracts that follow from a few poems of these poets are true to the spirit of the final lines of the definition given  in the above extract.     

 

            “There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,

            The earth, and every common sight,

                      To me did seem

                      Apparelled in celestial light,

            The glory and the freshness of a dream.

            It is not now as it hath been of yore;---

                       Turn whereso’er I may.

                        By night or day.

            The things which I have seen  now can see no more.

                                                                                                (William Wordsworth)

 

            But now ill tidings bow me down to earth,

            Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ---

            But oh ! Each visitation

            Suspends what nature gave at my birth,

            My shaping spirit of imagination !

                                    …….

            To be beloved is all I need,

            And whom I love, I love indeed.

                                    ……

            Alone, alone, all, all alone,

            Alone on a wide, wide sea !

            And never a saint took pity on

            My soul in agony-

O Sara ! we receive but what we give,

            And in our life alone does nature live.

                                    ………        (S. T. Coleridge)

 

Both Wordsworth and Coleridge regarded direct contact  with nature as a necessary condition of mental and spiritual health.

 

 Books ! ‘tis a dull and endless strife :

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music ! on my life,

There’s more of wisdom in it.

 

And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings !

He too is no mean preacher !

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

                        ……

              Let Nature be your teacher is also my message for the readers of this short note on ‘Two Poets And Their Poetry.’

 

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13^th April 2022                                                                        G.R.KANWAL