Essay On Nature In Popes On Man And Wordsworths The Daffodils

Contrasting two famous pieces, Pope’s Essay on Man and Wordsworth’s The Daffodils, we contrast not only two very different literary traditions and two very different views on nature, but also two very different genres. Essay on Man, a kind of rhymed philosophical treaty, explores the nature of man in regards to his place in the universe. In particular, the first Epistle which will be considered in this work, deals with the man’s place in Nature. The form Pope chose facilitates his task, providing him with imagery to illustrate his points and add cogency to his theses. The Daffodils seems a charming sketch, a poetic account of a walk the poet had taken with his sister and a lovely sight he remembered in his well-beloved Lake District. Pope, on the other hand, as most his contemporaries, was primarily a city-dweller. “Poems, letters, journals, biographies, and essays bear witness to the reluctance with which the men and women of this age bade farewell to the "dear, damned, distracting town” (Pope, A Farewell to London). [Country life] was dreary, monotonous, difficult. There was no society, no news. The days went yawningly by with no vivid interests, no stirring occurrences. [] The genuine lover of the country in the classical age expended his enthusiasm on the mild and easy pleasures of a well-kept country house easily accessible from the city. That a sane man could choose to live as Wordsworth did in the Lake District would have passed belief” (Reynolds, 3-6).
No wonder, then, that while Wordsworth’s picture is highly individual, dating back to a particular day in the poet’s life and describing a particular place the poet has seen, in Pope’s Essay on Man all references to nature are generalities. Wordsworth’s poem focuses on the effect of that particular scene on him, Pope’s – on relationship between man in general and Nature in general. Yet Wordsworth’s sketch is a corner of his philosophy, and it certainly reflects how man relates to nature, so the comparison is possible after all.
In Epistle I of Essay on Man Pope states that the Universe is a ‘great chain’, ‘ties’, ‘strong connections’, ‘nice dependencies’, in other words – a hierarchical system, devised and created by God. Man is included into the hierarchy, not as its centre, as he, according to Pope, considers himself to be, but as one of the links, and it is not for him to question or resent the place assigned to him: “When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains // His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains; // When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod, // Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s god: // Then shall Man’s pride and dullness comprehend // His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end” (Pope).
In this quotation, as throughout the Epistle I, man is a member of a triad: (lower) nature - man - spiritual world. The spiritual world may be represented by God himself (as in this quotation, where man's ignorance of Creator's designs and ways is compared to animals' inability to understand man). Alternatively, it may be represented by Angels, thus making the triad a hierarchy of creatures, with God above it: "Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate, // All but the page prescrib'd, their present stare; // From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: // Or who could suffer Being here below?" (Pope).
Wordsworth's universe is different, as we catch a glimpse of it in The Daffodils: “I wandered lonely as a cloud // That floats on high o'er vales and hills, // When all at once I saw a crowd, // A host, of golden daffodils” (Wordsworth). Crowd implies people. It creates the picture of endless multitude. Why does the poet add the second synonym, 'host'? Probably because host suggests not only people, but also angels. Thus in the very first lines flowers are through personification related, on one hand, to man, on the other - to spiritual world. “Continuous as the stars that shine // And twinkle on the milky way, // They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay” (Wordsworth). Here daffodils are compared to stars, and this new relation to the sky enhances the relation established in the first stanza.
What effect does Nature produce on the author? Pope throughout Epistle I reiterates the idea of amazing, fascinating harmony of the God-created hierarchy: "And, if each system in gradation roll // Alike essential to the amazing whole, // The least confusion but in one, not all // That system only, but the whole must fall" (Pope). Whatever man does not wish to accept, whatever seems unjust or unreasonable to him (because his reason is limited, as compared to Higher one) is still a necessary part of an overall creative thought, which he should not dare to criticize: "All nature is but art, unknown to thee; // All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; // All discord, harmony not understood; // All partial evil, universal good: //And, spite of pride in erring reason’s spite, // One truth is clear, whatever is, is right."Right implies the accordance with the higher design, but, as Lessing observes, is very different from “Whatever is, is good” (quoted in Damrosch 165). Right is primarily an ethical estimate. To decide, what is right, we have to think.
In The Daffodils, whatever is, is beautiful and good. It appeals to senses, or, rather, through senses to the inborn sense of beauty and goodness in man. Man does not have to speculate, let alone justify or prove the harmony of creation. "A poet could not but be gay // In such a jocund company". The impact is direct and immediate, and is possible precisely because dumb nature and man (and presumably the spiritual world) - all are akin in Wordsworth's beautiful world, as again the reader is reminded through the personifying company. Nature is full of beauty, which is able to fill the onlooker's soul with peace and light. Where Pope preaches and urges to reflect, Wordsworth shows and invites to look, but they both share the same feeling of world's harmony.
Man, however, often rebels, lamenting the imperfection of the world. To argue that such view are wrong, "to vindicate the ways of God to man" Pope intended his Essay on Man. God is the great Mind and Creator. “An important goal of the Essay on Man is to show that a living spirit energizes the world” (Damrosch 183). The idea of God harmonizes everything and provides justification for all seeming discord: “What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, // Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? // What if the head, the eye, or ear repined // To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?”
This argument is almost a literal rendering of the lines from the Apostles’ Epistle to Corinthinas: “12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body” (1 Corinthinas 12-20). Inequality is objective yet at the same time seeming, as all unequal parts are essential for the whole to fulfill its purpose, and equality would not serve it. Throughout the poem Pope recurrently persuades his reader that discord he feels and projects at the Universe, is illusionary. It exists according to God's design, and as God unites, spiritualizes the Church, so He does Pope's Universe: "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, // Whose body Nature is, and God the soul".
For Wordsworth, inner discord may be overcome not by one's volition (Pope's text abounds in imperatives, ordering the reader to stop thinking this and think that), but by a miraculous co-operation of human mind and nature: “For oft, when on my couch I lie // In vacant or in pensive mood, // They flash upon that inward eye // Which is the bliss of solitude; // And then my heart with pleasure fills, // And dances with the daffodils. ”. The process seems to be initiated by the daffodils - they flash - but man must possess the 'inward eye' for them to exercise their healing, reviving, re-harmonizing effect. "That is really what the poem is about - not the daffodils. More specifically, the poem is about the poet's ability to turn ordinary experience into something delightful or transcendent, not just for his use, but for the reader's."(Robinson 40) In one of later poems, Tintern Abbey, he will go farther and state that these memories may lead to a mystical perception of God.
Damrosch, Leopold. The Imaginative world of Alexander Pope. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. 1987. Web. 12 April 2013 < http://www.books.google.com >
Fraser, George Sutherland. Alexander Pope. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul LTD. 1978. Web. 12 April 2013. < http://www.books.google.com >
Reynolds, Myra. The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1909. Web. 12 April 2013. < http://www.archive.org >
Robinson, Daniel. William Wordsworth’s Poetry. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010. Print.