Nature in Wordsworth

He goes on to say that when he is in less serene places, he imagines being here and the thought sooths him. The speaker sits and admires the landscape and recalls that “these beauteous forms, through a long absence, have not been to me”. As the children grow older they begin to forget. In the end the speaker seems to be enjoying nature, asking the birds to sing and having children dance around and play. In the first two stanzas the speaker talks about a time when he appreciated the beauty of nature, but in the third stanza we learn that as an adult looking on nature he feels “a thought of grief”. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, but has no rhyme scheme.

In contrast the speaker in “Intimations of Immortality” the speaker is having trouble appreciating the nature that surrounds him. Here the speaker is saying that although he was away, he could still imagine the landscape and all its glory. The next eight stanzas convey the idea that children come from a world more beautiful than this and they appreciate nature because it reminds them of where they came from.

In both poems the speaker is focusing on his own memory of nature and his personal relationship to it and it seems that this is a common motif in Wordsworth’s poems.