He interprets the sympathetic soul of Nature, not merely her outward or her intellectual aspect. He says in The Prelude:—
"From Nature and her overflowing soul
I had received so much, that all my thoughts
Were steeped in feeling."
If we compare Wordsworth's line—
"This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,"[14]
with Tennyson's line from The Princess—
"A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight,"
we may easily decide which shows more feeling and which, more art.
Many poets have produced beautiful paintings of the external features of nature. With rare genius, Wordsworth looked beyond the color of the flower, the outline of the hills, the beauty of the clouds, to the spirit that breathed through them, and he communed with "Nature's self, which is the breath of God." He introduced lovers of his poetry to a new world of nature, a new source of companionship and solace, a new idea of a Being in cloud and air and "the green leaves among the groves."
Poetry of Man: Narrative Poems.—Wordsworth is a poet of man as well as of nature. The love for nature came to him first; but out of it grew his regard for the people who lived near to nature. His poetry of man is found more in his longer narrative poems, although in them as well as in his shorter pieces, he shows the action of nature on man. In The Prelude, the most remarkable autobiographical poem in English, not only reveals the power in nature to develop man, but he also tells how the French revolution made him feel the worth of each individual soul and a sense of the equality of all humanity at the bar of character and conscience. As his lyrics show the sympathetic soul of nature, so his narrative poems illustrate the second dominant characteristic of the age, the strong sense of the worth of the humblest man.
[Illustration: GRASMERE LAKE.]