Reading William Blake's The Ni
The worship of nature is a characteristic of the Romantics that is why it is no surprise that we read the voice in The Tables Turn'd telling someone to go out rather than stay inside the house and read books. It is a beautiful day for "[t]he sun . . . through all the green fields has spread / [h]is first sweet evening yellow" and hence, a perfect occasion for observing nature in its pristine state and all its beauty and splendor. The narrator asks the reader why go through all the trouble of reading books as it is but "a dull and endless strife" when one can see aspects of nature for him/herself. Sometimes the reader's perception about things can be wrong with regard to how he/she imagines a particular bird or plant looks. The narrator continues: "clear your looks; / why all this toil and trouble [!]" Why then insist on staying indoors when nature has "a world of ready wealth", waiting for us to see, hear, discover and experience for ourselves and see things as they are. One should then take advantage of his/her faculties while he/she still can and in the process, one is blessed with "[s]pontaneous wisdom breathed by health / [t]ruth breathed by cheerfulness." In
" If we recall, seeds are planted before they grow into shoots, then they grow bigger and bigger. " The narrator here, is referring to man, who in his/her search for how things work, keeps animals in cages, and plants in laboratories, in order to study them, instead of letting them flourish in their natural environment. Meanwhile, if trees are not taken care of, the world is "punished" with floods, landslides and erosion. The poem then ends with an invitation, to ". Thus, what could have been a part of a tree or a fertilizer to the soil has been processed to become a mere part of a book. The narrator continues: "[c]lose up those barren leaves". It is only when these are right before one's eyes that one can actually enjoy the birds' song, be amazed at its ability to fly and migrate during winter, and marvel at God's greatness because one can only wonder how such a thing can be created. That is why they take offense with regard to keeping these creatures in artificial surroundings because in the end, there is no need to dissect animals to discover the complex processes within their bodies. However, one should come without expectations, as this can affect the depths of one's experience, giving one the wrong notion of how things should be, and without any preoccupations because this can distract a person from enjoying such an encounter. But all these concepts and ideas will remain abstract so that one feels that they are unreal, until the time one actually sees them. Patience is also important, for beauty takes time to reveal itself. Trees are also mentioned in the poem as great teachers for they "[m]ay teach you more of man, / of moral evil and of good. Books can give numerous pages of description about them and anyone can read these. Birds fly so high, and it is from this point that they can see numerous things from above, not seen from down below.
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