CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
C. Romantic Human Dignity and Beauty of Nature
his. Ironically, Ozymandias's works are nowhere to be seen – all that's left is a barren desert and this broken statue. His pride is made to look stupid because his "works" are all gone, except for this fragmented statue that, quite literally, is on its last legs.
… lone and level sands stretch far away
The last line showed that nature has the final victory in this poem:
the statue is almost gone, suffer the same fate as the civilization that produced it. Ozymandias's empire once "stretch[ed] far away," but now it is nature – embodied by the "lone and level sands" – that extends its empire. Interestingly, the sands are "lone" even though there is a statue still there, as if the statue is so insignificant relative to nature that it is almost not worth mentioning.
God and nature. Indeed, poetry with him was a service of devotion.
Perhaps, in the whole range of literary history, from Homer downwards, did any individual throughout the course of a long life, Wordsworth was the one who dedicated himself to poetry with a devotion so pure, so perfect, and uninterrupted as he did. It was not his amusement, his recreation, his mere pleasure. It was the main, the serious, the solemn business of his being. It was his morning, noon, and evening thought, the object of his outdoor rambles, the subject of his indoor reflections and, as an art, he studied it as severely as ever Canova did sculpture, or Michael Angelo painting.
As he said himself in a letter to Sir George Beaumont :
The poet is ateacher. I wish to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing and in all literature no one approacheshim in his sense of dignity as a poet.
He recognized the fact that nature had a revelation to impart; he strove with all the powers of his being to induce man to receivethis revelation, and to this work he dedicated hislife. In his interpretation of nature he simply described what he saw as he saw it, but in regarding an object, he sought not only to see its meaning and significance, but also to find out the open secrets which lay at the heart of every common thing in nature, by looking at them with a spiritual eye,which penetrated into their very core. In a word,every natural object revealed a soul to him, whichwas vitally related to the soul of every other naturalobject, and all formed part of the great soul of theuniverse.
As Mr.Stopford Brooke says:
This idea is the loveliest of all which Wordsworth has introduced into English poetry, and it flowed from his conception of everything in Nature having its own peculiar life. There was ceaseless inter-communion founded on the unutterable love which flowed through all things, and with which everything acted on every other. The whole world was linked together; every part, every element, gave and received, honored and did service, to each other. They delight in social intercourse like friends who love each other; there is no jar, no jealousy, no envy there; their best joy is in being kind to one another.
This is one of the lovely lesson which Wordsworth has taught us.
Nature was much to him, and his intimate knowledge and love of her informs every line he wrote, but he cared still more for nature in relation to man, for nature apart from man. Wordsworth not only desired to bring humanity into vital contact to the world but also he suggested that human life in its deepest interpretation is through interaction with nature thus nature reveals man while man mirrors nature.Terms of human dignity and beauty of nature which emerged in Romantic period bring great influences to the period itself and another literary world. In English literature, there are many literary works which were influenced and brought human dignity and nature beauty in the works such as;
Shelley’s Ode to the west wind
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 43 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O Uncontrollable!
He wants to be a “dead leaf”or “swift cloud”which can be blown by the west wind. Freedom is one of the most important objects of desire for the speaker of this poem, but ironically his idea of near-freedom is the state of a leaf or cloud carried at the mercy of the wind.
If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50 Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
The speaker is willing to compromise: even if he can’t be a leaf or a cloud, he wishes he could at least have the same relationship to the wind that he had when he was young, when the two were friend. Like the speakers in poems by other Romantic poets (William Wordsworth comes to mind), the speaker here recalls that he had a different relationship to the natural world when he was young. For the Romantics, youth is a privileged time, when Man and Nature are mysteriously (and mystically) close.
Byron’s Don Juan, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto IV There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
These lines told us how Byron has just recognized the surroundings that is everywhere along his journey. He finally can realize that nature is everywhere; in the pathless wood, on the lonely shore, a society. One he can learn from this is everything has their own life and somehow they create peaceful harmonization. Next lines, he does say he loves nature more than the man himself, seems he could talk with the nature around him. He has a new spirit in his life after his invention and feels something that he never feels, he cannot describe and hide the feeling to this great pleasure.
Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot (lines 7-8)
Nature has some seriously magical qualities in this poem. Here, the nightingale is compared with a spirit of the woods, a "dryad." Nature casts a big magic spell on the imagination, and this idea will develop throughout the poem.
O For a draught of vintage! That hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth Tasting of Flora and the country-green
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! (line 14)
He wants a wine (vintage) somewhat but he talks about wine to tell us that wine must be stored in the cool place. The storage is the earth according to Keats, a big storage for wine. No wonder if you drink wine from the earth it will taste like flowers and plants.
Not only does the earth's wine taste like flowers, but it also tastes like dancing, song, and happiness ("sunburnt mirth"). Specifically, he is thinking of "Provencal," a region in the south of France known for its wine, sun, and a kind of poetic song known as "Troubadour poetry." Many Troubadours wrote poems addressed to an unattainable lover.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGESSTION
A. Conclusion
The poems of three schools – Tintern Abbey, La Belle dame sans Merci, and Ozymandias – have represented the terms of human dignity and beauty of nature. The poems describe the natural circumstances that represent the human feeling the speaker in Tintern Abbey, The Knight in La belle dame sans merci, and the king sculpture in Ozymandias. Their works have tried to connect the human life to the nature existing around them, how the nature affect and arise the people’s feeling and make them happy due to the attractive beauty it possesses.
Romantic human dignity and beauty of nature were firstly introduced by Wordsworth who tried to show that nature and human life that cannot be separated. Wordsworth not only desired to bring humanity into vital contact to the world but he suggested that human life in its deepest interpretation is through interaction with nature. Thus nature reveals man while man mirrors nature. With regard to Wordsworth’s influence on English poetry it may safely be said that of all the poets that have appeared in England since Wordsworth's poetic career began—
Byron, Shelley, Keats, and others— there is no one that does not owe something to Wordsworth’s influence.
B. Suggestion
The three schools of Romantic have colored the Romantic period with their literary works and the ideas about Romantic characteristics in this case their human dignity and beauty of nature. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Hunt, Hazlitt, Keats, Byron and Shelley are known as Romantic poets who had produced many literary works in Romantic age, had brought change through their works that place them among the distinguished English writers.
Through this research, the researcher suggests the next research relating to the Romantic age or works is the prominent literary period that has many topics to be of possible objects – ideas, works and distinguished figures. For instances, the byronic hero in Byron’s works, Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s roles in English Romantic, the ideas of French Revolution - liberty, equality and fraternity that have been converted the Romantic age. In addition, Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s native English Lyrical Ballads that has brought out a new literary departure and principles of the new criticism that served as rationale for the new poetry are among an inexhaustible resource for on-going researches.
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