Role of Nature in the Poetry of Keats and Wordsworth Essay -- Poetry An

Nature played an important role in all works of the Romantics but I believe it is John Keats and William Wordsworth who understood not nature in themselves but themselves in nature. As Wordsworth once said: "the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation and not the action and situation to the feeling." 1 Both Keats and Wordsworth understood that the most complex feelings and emotions can be described and understood when related with a simple act of nature. With a simple gust of wind we are given a glimpse into an author's soul as it is used to convey thoughts, feelings and moods of an author. In Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes" the wind is used not only to set the scene of a stormy night but also I think as a way to describe Porphyro's ecstatic heart. "Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; / And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor."2 You can imagine as they are running through the halls and out the door how his heart must be leaping with both joy and fear. As the wind tugs at the tapestries on the walls and lifts the carpet from the floor his heart may feel tugs of guilt for whisking her away and also freedom and joy. In Keats' poem, "To Autumn" the wind is personified with these words, "...as the light wind lives or dies..."3 As the wind picks up and comes to life with motion and character it can also slow and cease as will life. I believe Keats relates his feelings of life and death to the seasons of nature in this poem. To me this poem seems to end abruptly, perhaps because I know the winter season is yet to come but it makes me wonder if perhaps Keats found peace as he was writing and decided to just leave it at that. When reading this poem in particular I feel Keats' inspiration ... ...ps something much more solid underneath. After speaking to the old man, Wordsworth confirms this realization as he says "I could have laughed myself to scorn to find / In that decrepit Man so firm a mind"15 and Wordsworth ends the poem with a sense of comfort on "the lonely moor".16 During their times both men found solace in their writing. And while they wrote they drew inspiration, motivation and an understanding of what was in their hearts by observing what was in their surroundings. Nature played an important role not only in their imagery but also by giving them something to relate and compare their thoughts and feelings to. Not only did they reach an understanding of themselves through nature but we were left with an understanding of them through the simple, timelessness of nature. "To her fair works did Nature link / The human soul that through me ran".17