Wordsworth's Romantic Poetics

William Wordsworth is a great English Romantic poet, and is now considered by some Wordsworthians to be placed just below Shakespeare and Milton in rankings of the great English poets. He created numerous poems, and those which depict nature and human relations are the most famous. In his poems, nature is the source of joy, and by staying close to nature, people can get not only pleasure and peacefulness but also endless source of moral power. Human/nature relation should be a harmonious one. This paper, based on Wordsworth's theme of nature, studies some of his representative poems. Firstly, the author reviews the researches on Wordsworth study, his life experience and its interaction with his poetics. Then, Wordsworth's poetic theory is analyzed in chapter two. And the third chapter probes into the themes of Wordsworth's poetry: Human/Nature Relations, Human Relations, and Harmony. According to the poet, nature is equal to, even higher than humankind in that it is the source of human joy, the comforter—it arouses passion, gives inspiration, wisdom and power, it is the guide of human being. Nature provides us with countless wealth that enriches our emotion and sense, only by being kind to nature and treating it with wise passiveness can man have a better future. However, in reality, nature was mostly explored for its utility to man, even worse, man determined the value of the natural objects only in relation to their own interests. In order to strengthen himself and live a comfortable life, man exploits nature to the utmost. In the conclusion, the author points out the causes of the natural disasters frequently happening in nowadays world and agrees with the poet's appealing to staying with nature in a harmonious way, hence discloses the poet's great eco-thought expressed in his poems and its great significance to the construction of sustainable development and harmonious society.