Nature’s Harmony
William Wordsworth looks back on a life of disappointments and regrets, and finds in them reasons to be thankful.
1799
King George III 1760-1820
William Wordsworth looks back on a life of disappointments and regrets, and finds in them reasons to be thankful.
1799
King George III 1760-1820
William Wordsworth wrote The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind to account for his decision in 1799 to bury himself in Cumbria’s Lake District and devote himself to poetry. Here, Wordsworth reflects on the way that the disharmonies of our past life — our regrets and pains and disappointments — form a melody that would be less beautiful without them.
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DUST as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society.* How strange that all
The terrors, pains, and early miseries.
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part,
And that a needful part, in making up
The calm existence that is mine when I
Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end!
Thanks to the means which Nature* deigned to employ;
Whether her fearless visitings, or those
That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light
Opening the peaceful clouds; or she may use
Severer interventions, ministry
More palpable, as best might suit her aim.
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* For similar musical analogy for the better and worse times of life, see also John Ruskin (1819-1900) on The Rests in Life’s Melody.
* Wordsworth later in this poem writes of Nature that she is ‘the breath of God, or his pure Word by miracle revealed’. In Biblical terms, Nature is Divine Wisdom, what the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon calls “the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty”. See Wisdom 7:25. The passage is applied to the Son of God in Hebrews 1:1-4.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.