With a full heart for my guide,
So its tide rocks my side, as I ride,
As I ride, as I ride,
That, as I were double-eyed,
He, in whom our tribes confide,
Is descried, ways untried
As I ride, as I ride."
IV
I do not believe that nature worship idea in literature has been yet fully analysed. Critics have refused to see the exact meaning of the expression "love of nature." The poets themselves have told us that they saw in nature lessons of moral improvement and inspirations for humanitarianism. Granting that this is so, the fact still remains that there is much left unsaid by the poets. Some of them recognised the real significance of their love for nature when they told us how they were inspired by her to love, or were reminded of their lack of love.
Wordsworth, who is one of the greatest nature poets the world has ever had, appears singularly free from the voicing of the love passion in his work. Except for the Lucy poems and a few others, he has given us little love poetry. Hazlitt complained that he found no marriages or giving in marriage in Wordsworth's poetry. But nevertheless the sex element is there though never directly expressed. There is nothing, it is well known, calculated to make a man long for the love of woman or to miss her more than when he is in the presence of nature. Anthropology teaches us the close connection between love and nature. When Wordsworth sang of the beauties of nature he was voicing a cry for satisfied love which he did not have up to his thirtieth year, when he married. He was also pining for love of the girl he met in France in his twenty-third year, the mother of his illegitimate daughter. The poet was using symbols, such as trees and daisies, whose glory he sang when he meant he wished he had love. Some things can be enjoyed alone, though not altogether, such as food, plays, pictures, reading, music, lectures, etc. It is the great distinction of nature that she inspires human love and also provokes sadness.