Wordsworth, known for his Nature poetry, startles us with his London 1802 sonnet that is Blakean and also refers back to the Life of Milton written by Samuel Johnson that I already referenced.
London, 1802
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
What catches us immediately is the octave with its unusually didactic and political note in it, extolling the domestic and also reminding us of the indictments of London by the author of Tyger, Tyger in poems like the Chimney Sweeper: "That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;" This reminds me of "fen of stagnant waters", and vice versa. In the sestet the great Nature poet suddenly comes back to the fore, with "soul like a Star, voice whose sound was like the sea, pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free" that makes us also take off, like that "ethereal minstrel, pilgrim of the sky", Wordsworth's Skylark.
How is it different from the Shakesperean sonnet? In the sestet Wordsworth's rhyme scheme turns strange as it is a cddece.
Then there is "The world is too much with us" which is his famed avowal of a return to polytheism or pantheism or paganism as Christianity is not able to live up to its greater promise due to its practitioners who are taken over by "sordid" commerce. This is not the polytheism or pantheism or the paganism of the East but of the West, however, just in case anyone gets it wrong. It is Graeco-Roman.
The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
An exhibitionist of a sensuous Sea and a peeping, voyeur of a moon and a Nature that is personified, and waves like sleeping flowers, tied to suckling and visions of the past of gods still there on earth visible in our nights to make us feel less forlorn, make this poem sing lifting us from the melancholy of its beginning plaint against materialism - though here the rhyme scheme becomes a cd cd cd in the sestet.
We see in all the sonneteers a tendency to fixity in the octave and use of the volta and in the English ones fixity in the meter but none regarding themes and laxity in the rhyme scheme of the sestet right up to the age of the Victorians. We see it in Shelley and Keats too whom I am going to deal with next.
I know you want me to talk of these sonnets in terms of ecocriticism to make it of some value in recent times but they stand well enough on their own without theory is my own personal assumption. What interests me more is the Freudian note in the second one that militates against ecocriticism and lends itself more to psychoanalysis in its breast fixation, if at all theory is to be brought in. This note is there in the first one too that suddenly introduces an adjective like "naked" into the poem, making the heavens pure but also majestic in its free nudity!
1. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45528/london-1802
2. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us
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