Society then became his bride and “airy hopes” his children. Although no Gallic blood flows in his veins, still not less than Gallic zeal burns among “the sapless twigs of his exhausted heart.” He is in entire sympathy with the plans and aspirations of the revolutionists, and he feels that a progeny of golden years is about to descend and bless mankind. All the hopes of the Solitary, though, are blasted. He is disgusted with the way in which the revolution is progressing and sets sail for America, where he expects to find freedom from the restraints of tyranny. Shelley writes about America as follows:
There is a people mighty in its youth.
A land beyond the oceans of the west
Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth
Are worshipped.[187]
The Solitary’s expectations are not fulfilled, and so he returns, despondent, to his own country. He is in this frame of mind when he meets the Wanderer, who tells him that the only adequate support for the calamities of life is belief in Providence. Victory, the Wanderer says, is sure if we strive to yield entire submission to the law of conscience. He compares the force of gravity, which constrains the stars in their motions, to the principle of duty in the life of man. In Act IV of Prometheus Unbound Shelley compares the force of gravity to the impulse of love. There is no cause for despair, and “the loss of confidence in social man.” The beginning of the revolution had raised man’s hopes unwarrantably high. As there was no cause then for such exalted confidence, so there is none now for fixed despair.
The two extremes are equally disowned
By reason.
One should have patience and courage. It is folly to expect the accomplishment in one day of “what all the slowly moving years of time have left undone.” In the preface to The Revolt of Islam Shelley writes: “But such a degree of unmingled good was expected (from the revolution) as it was impossible to realize.... Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of men of intellect and virtue.” The Wanderer exhorts the Solitary to engage in bodily exercise and to study nature. He contrasts the dignity of the imagination with the presumptuous littleness of certain modern philosophers. At this point the Solitary remarks that it is impossible for some to rise again; that the mind is not free. It is as vain to ask a man to resolve as bid a creature fly “whose very sorrow is that time hath shorn his natural wings.” The Wanderer replies that the ways of restoration are manifold
fashioned to the steps
Of all infirmity, and tending all
To the same point, attainable by all
Peace in ourselves and union with our God.
The Wanderer calls upon the skies and hills to testify to the existence of God. Wordsworth the Wanderer finds an answer for Wordsworth the Solitary in Nature. He sees that there is a Living Spirit in Nature; a spirit which animates all things, from “the meanest flower that blows” to the glorious birth of sunshine; a spirit which pervades matter and gives to each its distinctive life and being. He sees God in everything.
To every form of being is assigned
An active principle ...
... from link to link
It circulates the soul of all the worlds.[188]
Shelley, in a letter to Hogg, January 3, 1812, speaks about “the soul of the Universe, the intelligent and necessarily beneficent actuating principle.”
Wordsworth’s treatment of nature is original in this that nature is no longer viewed as a garden or laboratory where man’s processes are carried on, but she is recognized as being over and above him and penetrating his whole life by impulses that emanate from her. Wordsworth spiritualizes nature. He views her phenomena as so many “varying manifestations of one life sacred, great, and all-pervading. “This life of nature is felt more when man is alone with her and hence the love of solitude which marks the Wordsworthian habit of mind.”[189] Other characteristics of Wordsworth besides the love for Nature’s seclusion are “the reverence which sees in her a revelation of infinity and the recognition in her of a mysterious and poetic life.” These are also characteristics of Shelley. His love of solitude is inspired by the desire to know nature in her inmost heart; “he has the same feeling for infinite expanse and the same perception of an underlying life.” He also insists, like Wordsworth, on “the education of nature.”