4 Stages of Nature in Tintern Abbey, Sad Poetry in Urdu, English Poem
Various stages of William Wordsworth’s approach to
nature in “Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”
Dr. Mary Woodland, one of the towering figures in
the realm of Modern English literature, describes four stages of Wordsworth's
approach to nature, in her famous book “Wordsworthian Art and Facts” (in
most of the Notes and Guides the learned authors have mentioned only three
stages).
First Stage: In his
earliest stage, Wordsworth simply appreciated the outer aspects of external
revelations of nature. He did not know the inner significance of nature and her
charms. Like a young deer, he jumped from one object of nature to the other,
little realizing the hidden inner meaning it contained. The external charms of
nature attracted his physical lust for beauty, but they failed to touch his
inner self. They did not give him a perpetual rapture and divine solace, which
he afterward felt.
Second Stage: Afterwards his
conception of nature underwent a radical change. He began to feel a
universal spirit in nature and between this spirit in nature and the mind of
man, there was pre-arranged harmony (though unconscious). This universal
spirit in nature revealed to him the fact that there is a closer tic between
nature and humanity. According to Prof. Dobson,
“At this stage, wisdom was born to Wordsworth out
of his deep love of Nature, her forms and colors, etc, on the one hand, and out
of the contemplation of the sad spectacle, that is a "thought-provoking
spectacle of humanity.”
Third Stage: In the third
stage of his approach to nature, Wordsworth had a firm and unshakable
conviction that nature is the great and sublime moralizing agency. He
recognized nature as the sole formation of everything that is moral. He
accepted nature as guardian, teacher, guide, treasurer, and custodian of his
moral life.
Fourth Stage: In his final stage of approach towards nature,
Wordsworth became a Pantheist. (Pantheism or Divine Imminence takes its origin
from a German Philosophy, invented by Krause. According to this philosophic
doctrine, there is a prearranged understanding among minds of Man, Nature, and
God) “At this stage”, says Prof. Worwick James,
“the foundation of Wordsworth's whole existence
was his style of seeing God in Nature and Nature in God. He had the firm belief
that in all its detached manifestations, Nature reveals one God.”
"For Wordsworth", says Dr.
Mary Woodland, in his fourth stage of nature, appreciation has taken up
the role of a High Priest of Nature-A worshipper in that Service, who never
gets weary or tied of that service. Ultimately, the worshipper, in the deepest
and profound love for Nature-God, is lost in Him and, having lost his own
self-identity became one with God." This is the final stage of his
Nature-worship. In quest of God, he goes to nature and is finally absorbed in
nature, and by becoming one with nature, he becomes One with God'.