Christian Wordsworth or What does God do in the poem?

Define these concepts:

One life: Comes from Coleridge’s Conversation poems. A particular life experience
which led to the poet's examination of nature and the role of poetry. They describe virtuous
conduct and man's obligation to God, nature and society, and ask as if there is a place for
simple appreciation of nature without having to actively dedicate one's life to altruism.
Coleridge explores his idea of "One Life", a belief that people are spiritually connected
through a universal relationship with God that joins all natural beings

Unitarism: Unitarianism is historically a Christian theological movement named for its

belief that God is one entity, as opposed to the Trinity which defines God as three persons
in one being; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[1] Unitarians believe that Jesus was inspired
by God in his moral teachings and is a savior[2][3] but a human being rather than a deity.
Unitarianism is also known for the rejection of several other Western Christian
doctrines,[4] including the doctrines of original sin, predestination,[5][6] and the
infallibility of the Bible.[7] Unitarians in previous centuries accepted the doctrine of
punishment in an eternal hell, but few do today.[citation needed] Unitarianism might be
considered a part of Protestantism. Note: “referring Christianity to theism, the the istic but
conventionally Christian Wordsworth preferred Jesus Christ to the impersonal deity of
Unitarian natural religion.”

Awareness: pp 12

Prophetic moment in poetry as a moment of exaltation:

Poems:

The Pedlar

Analysis: In 1797, Wordsworth began The Ruined Cottage as a tragic narrative of

Margaret's decline and death (This is a “missing persons” poem, about the pain of someone
vanishing, or not being in touch. You don’t know if they are dead);In 1798 he added a
history of the philosophic Pedlar who narrates her tale, as well as a tranquil conclusion. He
separated the story of Margaret from the history of the narrator in 1799, developed a
separate poem solely about the Pedlar in 1802, and rejoined the two parts to form The
Pedlar in 1803-1804.

He first presents the argument that "Coleridge believed in [the One Life], and passed it on
to Wordsworth, as a form of Christianity; but Wordsworth took it over without its doctrinal
implications. "so long as there is no denial of His transcendence." In describing the Pedlar's
vision of the divine presence, Wordsworth writes, "In such high hour / Of visitation from
the living God, / He did not feel the God: he felt his works" (Butler, p. 157). Here "God is
invisible," Sheats remarks, "but his love can be seen and felt in his works-a distinction that
is quite impossible to a pantheist.

Moreover, Wordsworth's genealogy of the Pedlar's moral authority ex pressly makes a

place for Christianity. The poet traces the Pedlar's authority to his awareness of the One
Life. Yet he traces that awareness to a com plex of preparatory experiences including his
imaginatively deepened sensitivity to natural grandeur, his acquaintance with books and
folk sto ries, and his early familiarity with the Bible.

The moral lessons of the Pedlar material and The Ruined Cottage suggest nature's
conscious ness at certain points, then, but also interrelate those implications with a
Christian spiritual perspective.

God as isolation. Only in this state we can appreciate god:

His scenes of religious instruction are located so that, "like Moses or, more aptly, like
Jesus," David G. Riede notes, the Pedlar's pro phetic vocation is bestowed upon him on
mountain summits.

The phrase 'he shall come again,' while it refers to Margaret's husband, has resonances of
resurrection and apocalypse. Similarly, 'for whom she suffered' recalls Christ's sacrifice for
mankind.

Here God is not experienced in isolation but as isolation. Night descends, surrounding
mountains suddenly tower upward, and the Pedlar's essen tial relationship to the universe
emerges in correlation with human lit tleness and solitariness. Only during such sublime
isolation do we com mune with God, the passage momentarily implies, and the implication
accounts for much of the resulting "terror."

Interesting associations:

Wordsworth saw his vision of the One Life –aspects of the natural world, the One Life
doctrine stipulated, exist as modulations of a single vital energy. –as a pathway that is
ideally interwoven with the traditional values of Christendom. These type of values are
taken with a basic familiarity that detaches from dogma but follows the teachings of God,
the son. Wordsworth appropriated this Christian pantheism in a personalized way which
divested it of its residual orthodoxy- the argument goes- and used it to frame his own
intuitions of natural and spiritual unity.

Wordsworth seems to have absorbed a philosophic system, if not nec essarily its
theological underpinnings, into which he could by early 1798 fit his own feelings about
natural harmony." John Wordsworth's (brother) drowning "made it necessary for him to
accept the doctrine of an afterlife," Wordsworth's late conviction that the One Life
complemented and supported the Christian faith. But it also establishes the possibility that
he always understood Christianity and his own version of pantheism to be philosophically
compatible.

Coleridge's letters and journals provide no real evidence, then, that Wordsworth formally
renounced Christianity during his One Life period.

Him had I seen the day before, alone

And in the middle of the public way
Standing to rest himself. His eyes were turned
Towards the setting sun, while, with that staff
Behind him fixed, he propped a long white pack
Which crossed his shoulders, wares for maids who live
In lonely villages or straggling huts.
I knew him—he was born of lowly race
On Cumbrian hills, and I have seen the tear
Stand in his luminous eye when he described
The house in which his early youth was passed,
And found I was no stranger to the spot.
I loved to hear him talk of former days
And tell how when a child, ere yet of age
To be a shepherd, he had learned to read
His bible in a school that stood alone,
Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge,
Far from the sight of city spire, or sound
Of minster clock. From that bleak tenement

He many an evening to his distant home

In solitude returning saw the hills
Grow larger in the darkness, all alone
Beheld the stars come out above his head,
And travelled through the wood, no comrade near
To whom he might confess the things he saw.

So the foundations of his mind were laid.

In such communion, not from terror free,
While yet a child, and long before his time,
He had perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness, and deep feelings had impressed
Great objects on his mind with portraiture
And colour so distinct that on his mind
They lay like substances, and almost seemed
To haunt the bodily sense. He had received
A precious gift, for as he grew in years
With these impressions would he still compare
All his ideal stores, his shapes and forms,
And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain, and on their pictured lines
Intensely brooded, even till they acquired
The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail,

While yet a child, with a child's eagerness

Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the rolling seasons brought
To feed such appetite. Nor this alone
Appeased his yearning—in the after day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn
And in the hollow depths of naked crags
He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying.

Thus informed,
He had small need of books; for many a tale
Traditionary round the mountains hung,
And many a legend peopling the dark woods
Nourished imagination in her growth,
And gave the mind that apprehensive power
By which she is made quick to recognize

The moral properties and scope of things.

But greedily he read and read again
Whate'er the rustic vicar's shelf supplied:
The life and death of martyrs who sustained
Intolerable pangs, and here and there
A straggling volume, torn and incomplete,
Which left half-told the preternatural tale,
Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends,
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts
Strange and uncouth, dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-kneed, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghostly shanks, forms which once seen
Could never be forgotten—things though low,
Though low and humble, not to be despised
By such as have observed the curious links
With which the perishable hours of life
Are bound together, and the world of thought
Exists and is sustained. Within his heart
Love was not yet, nor the pure joy of love,
By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,
Or by the silent looks of happy things,
Or flowing from the universal face
Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power
Of Nature, and already was prepared
By his intense conceptions to receive
Deeply the lesson deep of love, which he
Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught
To feel intensely, cannot but receive.

Ere his ninth year he had been sent abroad

To tend his father's sheep; such was his task

Henceforward till the later day of youth.
Oh then what soul was his, when on the tops
Of the high mountains he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light. He looked,
The ocean and the earth beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces he did read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank
The spectacle. Sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being. In them did he live,
And by them did he live—they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
He did not feel the God, he felt his works.
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
Such hour by prayer or praise was unprofaned;
He neither prayed, nor offered thanks or praise;
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him. It was blessedness and love.

A shepherd on the lonely mountain-tops,

Such intercourse was his, and in this sort
Was his existence oftentimes possessed.
Oh then how beautiful, how bright, appeared
The written promise. He had early learned

To reverence the volume which displays

The mystery, the life which cannot die,
But in the mountains did he feel his faith,
There did he see the writing. All things there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving, infinite.
There littleness was not, the least of things
Seemed infinite, and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects—nor did he believe; he saw.
What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive? Low desires,
Low thoughts, had there no place; yet was his heart
Lowly, for he was meek in gratitude
Oft as he called to mind those exstacies,
And whence they flowed; and from them he acquired
Wisdom which works through patience—thence he learned
In many a calmer hour of sober thought
To look on Nature with an humble heart,
Self-questioned where it did not understand,
And with a superstitious eye of love.
Thus passed the time, yet to the neighbouring town
He often went with what small overplus
His earnings might supply, and brought away
The book which most had tempted his desires
While at the stall he read. Among the hills
He gazed upon that mighty orb of song,
The divine Milton. Lore of different kind,
The annual savings of a toilsome life,
The schoolmaster supplied—books that explain

The purer elements of truth involved

In lines and numbers, and by charm severe,
Especially perceived where Nature droops
And feeling is suppressed, preserve the mind
Busy in solitude and poverty.
And thus employed he many a time o'erlooked
The listless hours when in the hollow vale,
Hollow and green, he lay on the green turf
In lonesome idleness. What could he do?
Nature was at his heart, and he perceived,
Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
In all things which from her sweet influence
Might tend to wean him. Therefore with her hues,
Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
He clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
While yet he lingered in the elements
Of science, and among her simplest laws,
His triangles they were the stars of heaven,
The silent stars; his altitudes the crag
Which is the eagle's birth-place, or some peak
Familiar with forgotten years which shews
Inscribed, as with the silence of the thought,
Upon its bleak and visionary sides
The history of many a winter storm,
Or obscure records of the path of fire.
Yet with these lonesome sciences he still
Continued to amuse the heavier hours
Of solitude. Yet not the less he found
In cold elation, and the lifelessness
Of truth by oversubtlety dislodged
From grandeur and from love, an idle toy,
The dullest of all toys. He saw in truth

A holy spirit and a breathing soul;

He reverenced her and trembled at her look,
When with a moral beauty in her face
She led him through the worlds.

But now, before his twentieth year was passed,

Accumulated feelings pressed his heart
With an encreasing weight; he was o'erpowered
By Nature, and his spirit was on fire
With restless thoughts. His eye became disturbed,
And many a time he wished the winds might rage
When they were silent. Far more fondly now
Than in his earlier season did he love
Tempestuous nights, the uproar and the sounds
That live in darkness. From his intellect,
And from the stillness of abstracted thought,
He sought repose in vain. I have heard him say
That at this time he scanned the laws of light
Amid the roar of torrents, where they send
From hollow clefts up to the clearer air
A cloud of mist, which in the shining sun
Varies its rainbow hues. But vainly thus,
And vainly by all other means he strove
To mitigate the fever of his heart.

From Nature and her overflowing soul

He had received so much that all his thoughts
Were steeped in feeling. He was only then
Contented when with bliss ineffable

He felt the sentiment of being spread

O'er all that moves, and all that seemeth still,
O'er all which, lost beyond the reach of thought
And human knowledge, to the human eye
Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;
O'er all that leaps, and runs, and shouts, and sings,
Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not
If such his transports were; for in all things
He saw one life, and felt that it was joy.
One song they sang, and it was audible—
Most audible then when the fleshly ear,
O'ercome by grosser prelude of that strain,
Forgot its functions, and slept undisturbed.

These things he had sustained in solitude

Even till his bodily strength began to yield
Beneath their weight. The mind within him burnt,
And he resolved to quit his native hills.
The father strove to make his son perceive
As clearly as the old man did himself
With what advantage he might teach a school
In the adjoining village. But the youth,
Who of this service made a short essay,
Found that the wanderings of his thought were then
A misery to him, that he must resign
A task he was unable to perform.
He asked his father's blessing, and assumed

This lowly occupation. The old man

Blessed him and prayed for him, yet with a heart
Forboding evil.

From his native hills

He wandered far. Much did he see of men,
Their manners, their enjoyments and pursuits,
Their passions and their feelings, chiefly those
Essential and eternal in the heart,
Which mid the simpler forms of rural life
Exist more simple in their elements,
And speak a plainer language. Many a year
Of lonesome meditation and impelled
By curious thought he was content to toil
In this poor calling, which he now pursued
From habit and necessity. He walked
Among the impure haunts of vulgar men
Unstained; the talisman of constant thought

And kind sensations in a gentle heart

Preserved him. Every shew of vice to him
Was a remembrancer of what he knew,
Or a fresh seed of wisdom, or produced
That tender interest which the virtuous feel
Among the wicked, which when truly felt
May bring the bad man nearer to the good,
But, innocent of evil, cannot sink
The good man to the bad.

Among the woods

A lone enthusiast, and among the hills,
Itinerant in this labour he had passed
The better portion of his time, and there
From day to day had his affections breathed
The wholesome air of Nature; there he kept
In solitude and solitary thought,
So pleasant were those comprehensive views,
His mind in a just equipoise of love.
Serene it was, unclouded by the cares
Of ordinary life—unvexed, unwarped
By partial bondage. In his steady course
No piteous revolutions had he felt,
No wild varieties of joy or grief.
Unoccupied by sorrow of its own,
His heart lay open; and, by Nature tuned
And constant disposition of his thoughts
To sympathy with man, he was alive
To all that was enjoyed where'er he went,
And all that was endured; and, in himself
Happy, and quiet in his chearfulness,
He had no painful pressure from within
Which made him turn aside from wretchedness
With coward fears. He could afford to suffer
With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it was
That in our best experience he was rich,
And in the wisdom of our daily life.

For hence, minutely, in his various rounds

He had observed the progress and decay
Of many minds, of minds and bodies too—
The history of many families,
And how they prospered, how they were o'erthrown
By passion or mischance, or such misrule
Among the unthinking masters of the earth
As makes the nations groan. He was a man,
One whom you could not pass without remark—
If you had met him on a rainy day
You would have stopped to look at him. Robust,
Active, and nervous, was his gait; his limbs
And his whole figure breathed intelligence.
His body, tall and shapely, shewed in front
A faint line of the hollowness of age,
Or rather what appeared the curvature
Of toil; his head looked up steady and fixed.
Age had compressed the rose upon his cheek
Into a narrower circle of deep red,
But had not tamed his eye, which, under brows
Of hoary grey, had meanings which it brought
From years of youth, which, like a being made
Of many beings, he had wondrous skill
To blend with meanings of the years to come,
Human, or such as lie beyond the grave.
Long had I loved him. Oh, it was most sweet
To hear him teach in unambitious style
Reasoning and thought, by painting as he did
The manners and the passions. Many a time
He made a holiday and left his pack
Behind, and we two wandered through the hills
A pair of random travellers. His eye
Flashing poetic fire he would repeat
The songs of Burns, or many a ditty wild
Which he had fitted to the moorland harp—
His own sweet verse—and as we trudged along,
Together did we make the hollow grove
Ring with our transports.

Though he was untaught,

In the dead lore of schools undisciplined,
Why should he grieve? He was a chosen son.
He yet retained an ear which deeply felt
The voice of Nature in the obscure wind,
The sounding mountain, and the running stream.
From deep analogies by thought supplied,
Or consciousnesses not to be subdued,
To every natural form, rock, fruit, and flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
He gave a moral life; he saw them feel,
Or linked them to some feeling. In all shapes
He found a secret and mysterious soul,
A fragrance and a spirit of strange meaning.
Though poor in outward shew, he was most rich:
He had a world about him—'twas his own,
He made it—for it only lived to him,
And to the God who looked into his mind.
Such sympathies would often bear him far
In outward gesture, and in visible look,

Beyond the common seeming of mankind.

Some called it madness; such it might have been,
But that he had an eye which evermore
Looked deep into the shades of difference
As they lie hid in all exterior forms,
Near or remote, minute or vast—an eye
Which from a stone, a tree, a withered leaf,
To the broad ocean and the azure heavens
Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
Could find no surface where its power might sleep—
Which spake perpetual logic to his soul,
And by an unrelenting agency
Did bind his feelings even as in a chain.