The Way Wordsworth and Heaney Present Nature and Rural...

The Way Wordsworth and Heaney Present Nature and Rural Life in Their Poetry Born 1770, in Cockermouth, William Wordsworth spent his early life and many of his formative years attending a boys school in Hawkshead, a village in the Lake District. As can be seen in his poetry, the years he spent living in these rural surroundings provided many of the valuable experiences Wordsworth had as he grew up. At the age of 17, Wordsworth moved south to study at Saint Johns College, University of Cambridge. Later, in 1790, two years after the French Revolution had begun; he took a walking tour through France and Switzerland on vacation. France obviously captivated Wordsworths attention, because a year†¦show more content†¦Within his poetry, Wordsworth contemplates the relationship between nature and human life. He considers his pantheistic beliefs, while realising that nature has many different facets and possesses the power to have spiritual and emotional impacts on the human form. Wordsworth achieves this in his poetry by presenting nature in many different ways. This is shown clearly in the poem, Daffodils where we can see Wordsworth exploring nature as a source of wonderment; he responds and relates himself to the two underlying themes of memory and imagination, on a spiritual level. Throughout the poem, it is clear that his focus was not to merely describe, in the form of a detailed account, how he saw the daffodils and their surroundings, but to consider the ways in which they affected how he felt that day and looking back when he reflects on that experience. It has a wistful and nostalgic tone, with a strong feeling of sentiment. The poem begins with a personal feeling of solitariness and despondency with the opening line, I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high oer vales and hills. Wordsworth uses this simile to compare himself to a cloud, which has many implications concerning how Wordsworth was feeling that day. The word, lonely suggests that he felt isolated or simply free andShow MoreRelatedLiterary Group in British Poetry5631 Words   |  23 PagesThe history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry written in England, or poetry written in the English language. The earliest surviving poetry was likely transmitted orally and then written down in versions that do