William Wordsworth and Jonathon Swift
Both Jonathan Swift and William Wordsworth are writers who hope to change the world through the ideas and themes expressed in their writings. So, too, both authors believe that human beings need to look to a higher authority to bring out the best in human nature. Swift, a pre-enlightenment writer, believed that humans and institutions are fallible but that the negative tendencies inherent in humans require institutions to undermine these negative impulses (sin, deception, cruelty, vanity, etc.). Wordsworth views human beings are being removed from nature and urges individuals to return to nature in order to assess the proper relationship between human beings and human beings and the universe. While Swift uses prose to share his views and themes about changing the world, Wordsworth resorts to poetry for the same purpose. While both Swift and Wordsworth hope to raise human beings in their works, Swift maintains external controls are required to achieve this while Wordsworth maintains nature is the blueprint for doing so.
The works of Wordsworth often revolve around themes related to imagination, nature, and memory. Wordsworth views such aspects of existence as important for steering human beings toward right action toward each other, society, and the self. While Swift often felt that human senses or passions lead to negative behaviors and impulse expression, Wordsworth found in nature the spontaneous joy of the senses unbound yet within the bounds of the all-encompassing harmony of nature. As he writes in ôTintern Abbeyö, ôAnd what perceive; well pleased to re cognize / In nature and the language of the sense / The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul, / Of all my moral beingö (Wordsworth 1).
In other words, Wordsworth believes that there is a universal harmony and purity in nature, one a human being only needs to o
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