Matthew Moran

ENGL 121.004
9/30/10

The Visionary Gleam: Religious Inspiration in Wordsworth’s Poetry

“It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty” ~ Tolstoy

I think my task an original one, though much has been written about and around

this topic. My question is not “Was Wordsworth a Christian?” or “What did Wordsworth

believe?” though these questions interest me greatly. They have been, with recent scholarly

additions, analyzed to a limit, in my opinion. There is a strong tradition of clarifying

Wordsworth’s faith within and outside his works, and how this tradition has evolved is

worth studying. However, my real intent is not to debate this issue. Though my conclusions

do fall decidedly in one camp, I hope my assent there is secondary to the greater purpose of

this paper. A bitter Coleridge said of Wordsworth, “[he] has convinced himself of truths

which the generality of persons have either taken for granted from their infancy, or else

adopted early in life”. (Edwards 200) But these “truths” so obvious to Coleridge, have faded

from general acknowledgement, especially in today’s secular Europe. Another fault with

Coleridge’s conclusion: how solidly had Wordsworth convinced himself? Some critics argue

that the Wordsworth of Ecclesiastical Sonnets still held many of his earlier doubts about

doctrine.

These biographical impetuses in mind, my heartfelt interest in Wordsworth lies in

his search, in his yearning to better know and express that “sense sublime / Of something

far more deeply interfused.” While curious of what conclusions Wordsworth came to, and

how he came to them, I am fatally concerned with his conscious and subconscious process.

I don’t think it naïve to concern myself principally with his works in this exploration. I will
 Moran 2

admit though that my doing so is tinged some by personal aspiration; my own search for

life’s meaning is ongoing. Keep this caveat in mind. Said Robert Ryan, “Critics are never

more likely to pursue their own hidden, even unconscious, agendas than when reading

religion into their favorite poets.” (Ulman 7) Keep it in mind, but not at heart. My sincerest

hope is that my humble insight may inspire your own search for meaning, and be it through

nature, poetry, science, sport, or something else, we all might “see into the life of things.”

This greater ambition aside, Wordsworth’s poems, plotted against the events in his life,

reveal a man eager to understand God and the world He created. In this paper I hope not

just to catalogue the evidences of this eagerness, but to find in them a common theme.

So as I’d like to abstract from a solely biographical approach to religion in

Wordsworth’s poetry, our work is thus left without the usual chronographic structure.

Rather than discuss his poems temporally with respect to his life, let’s discuss them

chronologically with respect to the soul’s lifetime. For theologians this is no clear beginning

– but for Wordsworth’s fans it is obvious! We’ll begin with the soul’s preexistence, and

examine some of his Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.

This quote epitomizes a pivotal theme in the poem: the pre-existence of the soul.

Before we consider this belief’s origins, and without yet doubting whether Wordsworth

fully endorsed these words, consider how exceptional the thought was in its context. With

contemporary evangelical literature expounding the inherent sinfulness of mankind

(especially children) and orthodox Christianity’s silence with regard to pre-existence, Ode
 Moran 3

met mostly negative reviews when it was finished. (Ulman 106) In the modern critical

debate over Wordsworth’s Christianity, those arguing for an orthodox Wordsworth may

happily dismiss the former qualm, but with no outright biblical support for pre-existence,

hold fast to the latter, and dismiss this component of the poem as trifling, as does Ulman.

However, to do so would be firstly to undervalue Wordsworth’s own words, and then to

deemphasize a repeated theme in the poem. The poet who wrote of “the glories [Man] hath

known, / And that imperial palace whence he came” himself said that “though the idea

[pre-existence] is not advanced in Revelation, there is nothing to contradict it, and the fall

of man presents an analogy in its favor.” I agree with Melvin Rader that this quote indicates

a Wordsworth at least “half-convinced of pre-existence.” With, by my count, at least ten

distinct indications of our “trailing clouds of glory [as] we come,” we cannot dismiss this

facet of Wordsworth’s views.

Interested in how the poet came to this insight, we read in Ode that for Wordsworth

children and nature are the primary harbingers of immortality. He sees in a child’s

“exterior semblance… [his] Soul’s immensity,” and that “He beholds the light, and whence it

flows / He sees it in his joy.” For Wordsworth children are “the best Philosopher[s]” better

even than nature, as he intimates in the Ode. He says Earth “the homely Nurse doth all she

can / to make her ... Inmate Man / forget the glories he hath known,” though “with no

unworthy aim.” He speaks of children’s “high instincts before which our mortal Nature /

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.” This language may surprise readers accustomed

to a poet singularly reverent of nature, and so it demands explanation. The first four

stanzas of Ode were written within a series of poems about childhood in 1802. The poem’s

completion followed Wordsworth’s time in Calais, France – spent with his daughter
 Moran 4

Caroline and her mother, Annette Vallon. (Norton 317) He shares his feelings for the

occasion in It is a beauteous evening:

…
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine;
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year:
And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

This short poem is critical to our endeavor. Admittedly, Wordsworth is unclear

where he sees in children such emblems of divinity, but it is he clear he does - and in

Caroline’s case, did - see them so. The poet begins the poem describing the evening “a holy

time… breathless with adoration.” Considering the relationship between Wordsworth’s

high praise of his daughter and his sanctifying their surroundings, where lies the causality?

Let’s not dismiss the possibility that Wordsworth’s intense affection for Caroline might

have colored his vision at the moment, and led him to see God’s hand in crafting that

“beauteous evening.” If we are to believe that Wordsworth unwaveringly thought children

the strongest indications of an imminent God, why does the whole of his works seem to

emphasize nature’s eminence in divine revelation? Yet the child’s communion with the

Almighty is not absent from Wordsworth’s other works - it is inherent. This abstract claim

is grounded in the poet’s much deliberated concept of “spots of time.” To introduce the

notion, we turn to Book Twelve of his The Prelude.

There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence … our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
 Moran 5

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
This efficacious Spirit chiefly lurks
Among those passages of life that give
Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,
The mind is lord and master--outward sense
The obedient servant of her will. Such moments
Are scattered everywhere, taking their date
From our first childhood…

This renovating virtue might seem only a quality of these experiences, were it not

personified later, an “efficacious Spirit.” Despite this clarification, the passage seems by

itself secular, particularly because Wordsworth seems to be championing the mortal mind

as the source of that “distinct pre-eminence.” He continues:

Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth Open; I would approach them, but they
close.
Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
In simple childhood something of the base
May scarcely see at all; and I would give,
On which thy greatness stands; but this I
feel, While yet we may, as far as words can give,

That from thyself it comes, that thou must Substance and life to what I feel,
give, enshrining,

Else never canst receive. The days gone by Such is my hope, the spirit of the Past

Return upon me almost from the dawn For future restoration.

Of life: the hiding-places of man's power

What or who is this “mystery of man,” to which the first six lines are addressed?

Before trying to answer this, let’s consider overall the discourse surrounding religion in the

Prelude. Originally published in 1805, Wordsworth revised The Prelude substantially. As a

result, the book published in 1850 after his death contains more than a few changes from

the original. Ever since Ernest de Selincourt’s commentary in his publication of The Prelude,
 Moran 6

readers have been led to believe that Wordsworth, having adopted a more orthodox faith

himself, made revisions to the work to reflect his newfound piety. J. Robert Barth, in

Romanticism and Transcendence, investigates this theory, and shows, with ample citation,

that this is largely a misconception. The 1805 Prelude was already a deeply religious poem,

and the “few changes in the direction of what might be called ‘orthodoxy’” make the work

only marginally more pious. (Barth 20-22) I won’t explore the implications of Barth’s

discovery for a study of Wordsworth’s own spiritual growth. But it is useful to (re)-examine

The Prelude as a religious work.

This “mystery of man” passage is not a secular island in sacred sea; its spirituality

exists beneath its surface. The word “mystery” connotes doubt and intrigue to modern

readers of the like-named genre, but its usage is the Christian faith is well established. A

“mystery” in that sense is “a sacramental rite,” specifically the Eucharist, or more generally

“any truth that is unknowable except by divine revelation.” (Mystery) Interpreted thus, that

“depth” is undeniably deistic. The secularist may point out that Wordsworth goes on to

speak of “man’s power.” But don’t the following lines – “I would approach them, but they

close / I see by glimpses now; when age comes on, / May scarcely see at all” – remind us of

the Ode, how those glimpses fade “into the light of common day”? The “hiding-places of

man’s power” and the “fallings from us, vanishings; / Blank misgivings of a Creature /

Moving about in worlds not realized” are to me the same. Man’s power then too derives

from the Almighty. Wordsworth here, as earlier, intimates that childhood is a foundation

“on which thy greatness stands.” How we read this depends entirely on whether I can

convince you that the poet believes man’s mystery is God-given. If not, then “thy” refers to

some human facility that fashions children a base of greatness. If, however, Wordsworth is
 Moran 7

addressing some sacramental aspect of man, then he is transitively addressing God. He then

says of childhood’s sanctity, “this I feel, / That from [God’s] self it comes, that [God] must

give, / Else never canst receive.” Read secularly, those original lines seem to curtail the

poet’s reverence for childhood. But read religiously, they venerate even further. Without

lingering on the point, examining some of these spots of time will help to establish their

inherent spirituality.

… The event, To which I oft repaired, and thence would

drink,
With all the sorrow that it brought,
appeared As at a fountain; and on winter nights,

A chastisement; and when I called to mind Down to this very time, when storm and
rain
That day so lately past, when from the crag
Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,
I looked in such anxiety of hope;
While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,
With trite reflections of morality,
Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock
Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low
In a strong wind, some working of the spirit,
To God, Who thus corrected my desires;
Some inward agitations thence are brought,
And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,
Whate'er their office, whether to beguile
And all the business of the elements…
Thoughts over busy in the course they took,
All these were kindred spectacles and
sounds Or animate an hour of vacant ease.

- from The Prelude, book 12

Perhaps the sanctity of the event itself here is ambiguous.

Prior to these lines the event is described contemporarily, and any

soulfulness is vague, existing outside the page. Described here in

retrospect, we hear only of his having “bowed low to God,” and are

left wanting. For me, and for Wordsworth, the true force of these
 Moran 8

“spots of time” is not in their temporary experience, but in their

permanence and reimagining after the fact. It is not that these

moments exist outside of time, yet in these “moments of vision [the

poet] does – in the words of the Immortality Ode – ‘have sight of that

immortal sea.’” (Barth 55) The second half of this passage depicts

remembrance of the sanctified event as itself a religious experience.

It is the recollection’s context that persuades us: amidst “storm and

rain” or strong winds rocking the trees naturally evoke God’s hand in

the everyday. Even noon-time for Wordsworth is a holy time, “a still

season of repose and peace, / This hour when all things which are

not at rest / Are cheerful,” (from The Pedlar). The overt, if

unelaborated religiousness in the moment past informs us that “the

spirit” is the same spirit who “impels / All thinking things” in Tintern

Abbey:

… I have felt A lover of the meadows and the woods,

A presence that disturbs me with the joy And mountains; and of all that we behold

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of something far more deeply interfused, Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

And the round ocean and the living air, In nature and the language of the sense,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

A motion and a spirit, that impels The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, Of all my moral being.

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

 Moran 9

This poem, one of Wordsworth’s most famous, is also one of the most opaquely

spiritual. Written in 1798, it exemplifies the pantheistic notion of “The One Life,” a

construct of Wordsworth’s friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was during

their co-authorship of Lyrical Ballads that Wordsworth wrote Tintern Abbey, and this fact,

along with the poem’s stark similarities to Coleridge’s formulation, make certain that these

lines refer to the One Life. (Ulman 43) Whether or not Wordsworth forsook the One Life

idea is a real debate, but not ours. I include this last passage as one particularly detailed

example of Wordsworth’s “spots of time.” Throughout his poetry there exist plenty such

instances, particularly in The Prelude. We have his vision of “the types and symbols of

Eternity,” upon crossing the Simplon Pass in book six. Also there is the “ennobling

harmony” at the Bartholomew Fair in book seven: “The Spirit of Nature was upon me there;

/ The Soul of Beauty and enduring life / Vouchsafed her inspiration.” These moments are

not just scattered, quaint images. They are integral to the theme of The Prelude. Also

known as The Growth of a Poet’s Mind, in it Wordsworth’s experiences of the immortal,

these “spots of time,” shape him as a poet and thinker. And yet we can’t deny that they

produce beautiful poetry. With their disappearance from consciousness came

Wordsworth’s decline as an artist. Reaching middle age, the poet could not escape a fact

he’d already prophesied, and now to himself might’ve asked, “Whither has fled the

visionary dream, / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” (Edwards 194)

This sad truth aside, we still find commentary in Wordsworth’s later poetry on the

sources of his faith. In The Excursion, which was to follow The Prelude, Wordsworth

attempts to expound on his philosophical and religious questions, but in the end serves

neither to “affirm [nor] to contradict the orthodoxies of the churches.” (Edwards 198) His
 Moran 10

Wanderer resignedly sermonizes, “One adequate support / For the calamities of mortal life

Exists – one only; an assured belief / That the procession of our fate, howe’er / Sad or

disturbed, is ordered by a Being / Of infinite benevolence and power…” From where does

the Wanderer draw his optimism, standing atop a “subterranean magazine of bones”? From

his childhood of course! The following lines form part of a narrative that is, according to

James Butler, “the poet’s first autobiographical work” (Ulmer 52):

He, many an evening, to his distant home In such communion, not from terror free,

In solitude returning, saw the hills While yet a child, and long before his time,

Grow larger in the darkness; all alone Had he perceived the presence and the power

Beheld the stars come out above his head, Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed

And travelled through the wood, with no one So vividly great objects that they lay
near
Upon his mind like substances, whose
To whom he might confess the things he saw. presence

So the foundations of his mind were laid. Perplexed the bodily sense.

In fact the larger body of The Excursion makes clear that the Wanderer, along with

the other characters who meet with the narrator, is a representation of Wordsworth’s own

philosophical impressions. Here the Wanderer’s childhood experience uncannily parallels

similar events in the poet’s own youth, and is at least for the former – but potentially for

both – yet another “spot of time.”

Looking at Wordsworth’s works as a whole body, these transcendent moments

distinguish themselves in beauty and importance with regard to religious experience.

Wordsworth’s eventual dis-inspiration lent credence to his beliefs in the Ode, that these

experiences are the domain of youth, and fade with time. Their reverence and their

impermanence are inseparable facts of the poet’s life, and their union points toward a
 Moran 11

source of religious inspiration in children and childhood. We modern readers of

Wordsworth, left with our own “obstinate questionings” and “blank misgivings,” let us put

down our anthologies because “full soon [our] Soul shall have her earthly freight.” We

ought look to our pasts, and locate our own “spots of time” in which we met with the

infinite. And if we are already blind to these, and have fully shed the “clouds of glory” from

whence we claim, look we to the “growing Boy… he beholds the light, and whence it flows, /

He sees it in his joy.”

 Moran 12

Works Cited

Barth, J. R. (2003). Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the

Religious Imagination. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

Edwards, D. L. (2005). Poets and God: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Blake. Alexandria, VA.

George, W. (1932). The Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth: Cambridge Edition. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin And Company.

Mystery. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved September 29, 2010, from

Dictionary.com. Website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mystery

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D: The Romantic Period (8th ed.).

(2005). New York: W. W. Norton.

Rader, Melvin. The Transcendentalism of William Wordsworth. Modern Philology. Vol. 26,

No. 2 (Nov., 1928), pp. 169-190. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Website: http://www.jstor.org/stable/433875

Ulmer, W. A. (2001). The Christian Wordsworth, 1798™1805. Albany, New York: State

University Of New York Press.