The Theme of Return to Nature in Poets of the Romantic Age

The theme of the need for a return to Nature is a predominant theme during the Romantic Age. Each of the major poets of the Age employ the theme as a vehicle for demonstrating a movement toward self-knowledge. However, the employment of the theme is usually for the purpose of elaborating on a possibly more significant theme in Romantic poetry--the workings of the human mind. Each poet employs the theme in different ways to accentuate his or her overlying premise of the need for reflection and thought.

William Wordsworth appears to be the "Father" of the employment of the theme in the sense that his use of the theme seems the most complete and deliberate. Nonetheless, the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley closely follows Wordsworth's as far as this particular theme is concerned, and Shelley even specifically references Wordsworth's poems in poems of his own that most explore this theme. Lord Byron and John Keats also offer clever and interesting variations on the theme; however, Samuel Taylor Coleridge seems to advocate maintaining some distance from Nature to demonstrate reverence for God's power.

In his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," William Wordsworth states his belief that the poet considers "man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature" (Abrams 149).

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tion of men under the influence of natural feelings" (Abrams 392), he is distancing himself from Wordsworth's reliance on a return to Nature as a necessity for self-understanding. This distance is recognizable in Coleridge's poetry. One of the most memorable of Coleridge's poems is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In that poem, the old narrator delays a wedding guest to tell him the story of the narrator's experience as a sailor. Specifically, he recounts the surreal story of an almost "demonic" journey he believes was caused by his shooting of an albatross. The albatross was a sign of good fortune, and the narrator's killing of the albatross demonstrated an irreverence for God's power that resulted in the death of the narrator's entire crew and his own near-death at sea. One of the final stanzas demonstrates Coleridge's belief in the relationship between Man and Nature: He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all (lines 614-17). Coleridge does not believe as Wordsworth does that a return to Nature is necessary for self-knowledge. Rather, he believes that a respect for Nature is necessary (although maybe not sufficient) for a life
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Approximate Word count = 2457
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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