Wordsworth’s References to Nature in Resolution and Independence

A Romantic poet, Wordsworth often draws from nature to describe his subjects or his narrator’s outlook on the world. In his poem “Resolution and Independence,” which employs twenty septets with an ababcc rhyme scheme, Wordsworth expresses his concerns and anxiety with a topic that can be summed up by lines 48-49, which read, “We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;/But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.” He explores this theme by juxtaposing his narrator with an old man and exploring their similarities and differences to inspire hope for himself and for poets who fear that their futures will bring “despondency and madness.” But also, in very much the tradition of Romantic poets, Wordsworth continually makes references and comparisons to nature to propel “Resolution and Independence.” This close reading will examine Wordsworth’s use of nature to evoke emotion and understanding from the reader throughout the poem.

In the first seven stanzas, as Wordsworth describes his setting and exposes his narrator’s disposition, there are numerous descriptions and references to nature. It had been a stormy night, but now, “[t]he sky rejoices in the morning's birth” (line 9) on the grassy plain along which the narrator is traveling. Wordsworth’s personification of the sky demonstrates from the beginning of the poem how important nature is to him. The narrator begins to reveal information about how he has long approached his life as a “child of Earth” (line 32) until this point, but now worries that his is a grim future. In lines 36-37, the narrator says, “My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,/As if life's business were a summer mood.” This reference to the summer season implies that the narrator has been a carefree poet, lacking responsibility for himself and perhaps neglecting some of his obligations, and because of this, he fears that he will have to withstand unsympathetic repercussions in old age.

In the next five stanzas, the narrator meets “the oldest man…that ever wore gray hairs” (line 56). Before speaking to the man, the narrator describes him in detail, sometimes likening the man to different aspects of nature to make the description more vivid. For example, the narrator finds it unusual that the old man is there on the shores of a pond, and he compares him to a “sea beast crawled forth…/ to sun itself” (lines 62-63), which implies that, as a sea creature should not be on shore breathing air, the old man did not belong by the pond, stirring the mud with a long wooden stick. Later, in lines 78-79, the narrator describes, “[m]otionless as a cloud the old Man stood,/That heareth not the loud winds when they call.” Here, instead of writing that the old man wasn’t moving, Wordsworth used objects from nature to describe him.

Once the narrator begins to talk to the old man, the narrator inquires about the man’s profession. Soon, when the old man begins to speak, the narrator notices that he has an interesting and eloquent way of speaking. However, while he is admiring the man’s speech, he loses focus on the content of what the man is actually saying. To describe the narrator’s loss of focus on the man’s words, Wordsworth uses another simile involving nature. In line 107, the narrator says, “his voice to me was like a stream.” This is a vivid simile, because it makes the reader think of the faint babble of a stream in the distance, which can barely be heard. Perhaps because Wordsworth spent so much time admiring nature, he can pull from his many experiences to relate almost anything—like a man’s way of speaking—to nature.

The strange, eloquent man then describes his job to the narrator. He travels long distances to gather leeches from various ponds, stirring through “the waters of the pools where they abide” (line 123). It seems odd that such an old man would still be doing physical work involving the exertion needed to gather leeches from ponds, but Wordsworth uses the old man’s job as inspiration for the narrator. If the old man is still employed and standing and speaking eloquently, the narrator has hope for the future of his own mind and can remind himself about the old man if his anxiety persists.

However, regardless of the purpose of the old man to propel Wordsworth’s message to the readers, his job is one that involves constantly being outdoors and involved with nature. The man could have had any profession and served the same literary purpose, but the fact that he was a leech gatherer further asserts the strength of Wordsworth’s connection with nature. Throughout the poem, Wordsworth has an overarching inclination to integrate natural elements and experiences into the work, because to Romantic poets, feelings and nature are almost always intertwined.

Wordsworth’s “Resolution and Independence” is not a poem centered on his connection with nature, but rather talks about the life and worries of a poet. However, because Wordsworth was a Romantic poet, he uses his connection with nature to illuminate and describe the characters, settings, and themes in his poem. Though Wordsworth is not explicitly writing about and describing his environment, his Romanticism and potent connection with nature shines through his poem and defines his writing style, as can be seen in a close reading of his “Resolution and Independence.”