CHILD AND NATURE

CHILD AND NATURE

FROM: BY THE SEA

Belonging to the Age of Romanticism Wordsworth who lived for eighty years outwardly his long and uneventful life can be divided into four periods.

His childhood days and youth(1770-1787)

ii)                  A period of uncertainty, his university days, his travels abroad and his revolutionary experiences.(1787-1797)

iii)                A short and significant period of finding himself to work.(1797-1799)

iv)                A long period of retirement

The long period of retirement shows that he was so very close to nature and her influence is picturised in this works. When one outlines these four periods it is just enough to say all about life which is marked not by events but largely by spiritual experiences.

Wordsworth has been a poet of Man and Nature. This poem which is written for his daughter Carolin—the child from Annette Vallon whom he first saw in 1802.

The setting of the poem is beautiful. It was evening and tranquility prevailed everywhere. The sun setting and there in the beach(the Calius beach) Wordsworth with his daughter was walking.

The poem is full of spectacular expressions. Each and every words Wordsworth used speaks a world of Nature and its beauty. This beauty is way ahead any artificiality. Here in the poem the evening is calm and free. The tranquility of the surrounding is compared with the Nun who has reached such a stage through her prayer that she is breathless. Wordsworth brings in the feeling of calmness through the breathlessness of the Nun which she achieved through adoration or prayer and the same feeling envelopes the surrounding and Wordsworth is walking along with his daughter by the side of the sea. The sun, the broad sun, is quietly sinking in its tranquility. The gentle is attending to the sea with a great lot of affection.

Then Wordsworth says that the mighty sea is thunderously roaring and it is everlasting and in the midst of it he suddenly feels that the child Carolin walking with him is untouched and the naïve yet it is not because she is a kid and lacks maturity. it is only because the child is a part of the Nature herself. Her place is in the bosom of Abraham-the holiest part. She is unspoiled and can be worshipped. She is pure, true, and unaccustomed with the artificiality of the world.

In a nutshell we have nothing but to admit that Wordsworth found abundant beauty in the common world and brings out the exquisite meanings that is not written on the surface.

However the world changes and the child grow. Then why she has to give in to the world. Why is it that she has to change and where flies the holiness. Is it just because she has to give in to the world to be in the insignificant way to grow up? Does growing up has only to give in to the ways of the World to be a part of it?

IF IT IS SO THEN WHY DO WE HAVE TO GIVE IN