Romantic Poetry and the Sublime
As the Romantic poets shift away from the ideas of the Enlightenment era, they started to look into the grandeur scene of nature for inspiration. They began a new type of poetry, so called Romantic Poetry, based on their inspiration and imagination from nature. Nature, to the Romantics, is their awe of imagination and guidance --- this is the Sublime. Romantic Poetry has introduced the Sublime into English literature, giving nature an important role as the guidance for our inspiration.
William Wordsworth demonstrates this new concept of the Sublime in his poem “Tintern Abbey”. Wordsworth is one of the Romantic poets who deemed nature to be an important part of our lives. The speaker, an adult who has been absent from nature for five years, says that “though [he has been] absent long [from nature]” (line 24), nature still had a huge impact on his life. He was not the youth who had been thoughtless about nature, but an adult who appreciates what nature offers him. His absence from nature, from the “steep woods and lofty cliffs, and this green pastoral landscape” (lines 158-159), has made it “more dear, both for themselves and for thy sake” (line 160). Wordsworth has used this awe of nature, or Sublime, as “the guide, the guardian of [his] heart, and soul of all [his] moral being” (lines 111-112). The Sublime has guided this youth into maturity, a theme Wordsworth continuously expresses in most of his poems.
This theme can also be found in his poem “Ode to Immortality”, portraying a youth’s growth into adulthood filled with regret. In the speaker’s childhood, “every common sight, to [him] did seem apparell’d in celestial light” (lines 2-4) --- a sight he could “see no more” in his adulthood. Living in a materialistic city, the speaker, devoured by greed, is gradually forgetting his childhood and past experiences with nature. He regrets not appreciating nature more, but, when he tries to recall his childhood memories of nature, nature seems to pull him back from the material world, where “shades of the prison house begin to close / upon the growing boy” (lines 68-69). He says:
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore
(lines 166-172)
Nature, through the form of childhood memories, has acted as yet another guide, guiding the speaker away from greed of materialism. When “he beholds the light, and whence it flows, / he sees it in his joy” (lines 70-71). Only through his connections with nature can he be saved. Wordsworth uses sublime here to symbolize the Romantic’s belief and religion. Nature is like God; once we accept him shall we leave hell and enter the “Heaven [which] lies about us in our infancy.” (line 67). This demonstrates the different view of religion and beliefs from that of the Enlightenment the Romantics had.
Romantic Poetry has given an important role for Sublime in people’s lives not only as guidance, but also as faith. Nature is important, as represented in the two poems “Tintern Abbey” and “Ode to Immortality”, to lead us into maturity. This is the main theme of Romantic Poetry and this is the main idea of the Romantic Period.
Wesley Huang