{"id":144,"date":"2023-02-08T22:06:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T22:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=144"},"modified":"2023-02-08T22:06:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T22:06:46","slug":"what-has-man-made-of-nature-reflections-on-humans-nature-in-lines-written-in-early-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/08\/what-has-man-made-of-nature-reflections-on-humans-nature-in-lines-written-in-early-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"What Has Man Made of Nature? – Reflections on Humans\/Nature in \u201cLines Written in Early Spring\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Wordsworth\u2019s poem \u201cLines Written in Early Spring\u201d possesses an inconspicuous title\u2014readers expect descriptions of spring\u2019s beauty, perhaps neutral or lighthearted. However, the poem is a reflective one alongside these romantic-style descriptions, and what the speaker\u2019s reflections are about quickly become tragic: they are \u201cIn that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts \/ Bring sad thoughts to the mind\u201d (3-4), as described by the end of the first stanza.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEarly Spring\u201d scenery surrounds the speaker, implied to cause these pleasant thoughts. The speaker sprinkles brief descriptions of this scenery throughout the rest of the poem, including the birds hopping about and \u201cplaying,\u201d \u201cprimrose-tufts,\u201d \u201cbudding twigs,\u201d \u201cbreezy air.\u201d Wordsworth hardly describes large landscapes in the poem, choosing instead to narrow in on these small features of the landscape the speaker is in. Maybe this fact is related to the speaker\u2019s reflective mood; since the speaker is in deep thought, they are more likely to focus on small details of what they are noticing and analyzing. Additionally, each of these brief descriptions contain word choice that paints a romantic view of these parts of nature. Though the speaker is reflecting about nature, the reflection stems from their \u201cpleasant\u201d thoughts about it. Therefore, they frame it as restorative, fun, and gentle (through the use of those descriptors like \u201cplaying,\u201d \u201cbudding,\u201d and more). These establish that through the speaker\u2019s eyes, nature is peaceful\/happy. In fact, the poem states that it is their \u201cfaith\u201d that flowers enjoy the air they take in, and that every creature in the wild finds pleasure in their lives (11-16). Each of these choices emphasize the pleasantness in the natural world, magnifying it no matter how small the detail\u2014this focus on the natural world invokes a lot of the ideas of the Romantic period.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While nature causes pleasant thoughts for the speaker, and the resulting reflection brings about sad ones, the speaker still describes this process or mood as \u201csweet\u201d (3-4). The \u201csweet\u201d mood could refer to the speaker\u2019s enjoyment of the natural world before they think too deeply. It could also be meant to be read closer to \u201cbittersweet,\u201d a necessary mood to be in sometimes that reveals truths of the world. It may also mean that the mood is simply \u201csweet\u201d because of the fruitful analysis that comes with it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, what stood out to me during my readings of this poem was the sad thought that resulted from the speaker\u2019s situation: \u201cTo her fair works did Nature link \/ The human soul that through me ran; \/ And much it grieved my heart to think \/ What man has made of Man\u201d (5-8). This romantic view of nature is contrasted with the grief the speaker experiences when speaking of \u201cman,\u201d humans. The speaker draws a clear connection between Man and Nature: \u201cNature\u201d itself gives the speaker a human soul, making humans part of nature. Additionally, both Nature and the second \u201cMan\u201d are capitalized, linking them together as concepts within the poem. As for why the first \u201cman\u201d is not capitalized, it could be because of losing this connection\u2014or otherwise trying to ignore or deny it, since man made this situation themselves according to the speaker. Humans (lowercase \u201cman\u201d) exist as if they did not come from the natural world and as if they are separate, causing the speaker to use very contrasting language referring to them and Nature. But in reality, the speaker implies, they began as humans (uppercase \u201cMan\u201d) that came directly from Nature like everything else in the world. This seems to be the central concern of the speaker\u2019s reflection, and the cause of their grief. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Wordsworth\u2019s poem \u201cLines Written in Early Spring\u201d possesses an inconspicuous title\u2014readers expect descriptions of spring\u2019s beauty, perhaps neutral or lighthearted. However, the poem is a reflective one alongside these romantic-style descriptions, and what the speaker\u2019s reflections are about quickly become tragic: they are \u201cIn that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts \/ Bring sad thoughts … Continue reading What Has Man Made of Nature? – Reflections on Humans\/Nature in \u201cLines Written in Early Spring\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}