Introduction

I have asked three Romantic writers and three Victorian writers to state their cases for what makes them the most influential on the environmentalist movement. In other words, which writer is the most “green”? The Romantic period of British literature was known for its glorification of nature, with some writers elevating nature to a spiritual level. Our ENGL 2252 instructor asserts this point in her January 22nd class lecture notes:

“Some (Romantic) writers tried to get people to look at things from the point of view of other natural beings and some tried to reinvest nature with mystery and wonder, even with holiness” (Hanson).

The Victorian period of British Literature is known more for its earnest, moral writings, but some writers of the period continued to elevate nature and connect it with strong human emotions. Charles Darwin also published On the Origin of Species during the Victorian period, which led many Brits to reevaluate the power of nature and reconsider beliefs about nature’s subjection to men. We will hear from six authors with unique perspectives on the appreciation of nature, and you can decide for yourself which writer is the most “green.”

William Wordsworth

I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I think it’s clear to any scholar that I was the “greenest” writer of the Romantic period (and Victorian period, for that matter). For crying out loud, I outlined an entirely new poetic manifesto in my Preface to Lyrical Ballads that showed how nature and everyday life could be elevated in poetry. If you don’t believe me, here’s exactly what I wrote shortly into the Preface:

“The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout…and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way” (Wordsworth 264).

You see, I took the natural surroundings and I added my own poetic devices and sophistication to help people realize the beauty of things that one sees every day. For example, I used personification in my poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” to elevate the beauty in daffodils and in a lake.

When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze (Wordsworth 306, ll. 3-6)

The daffodils are like people dancing, and a few lines later, I have the lake join the flowers in the dance:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee (Wordsworth 306, ll. 11-14)

I’ll let you readers decide for yourself, but I think the evidence is clear that I am the greenest writer you’ll hear from today.

Dorothy Wordsworth

Hold on, dear brother. I think your head is getting a little too big now. I’m not going to disagree with your skills as a poet, but I think I had more of an influence on the environmental movement than you. I didn’t write that much poetry, but my journals specifically describe the nature of the day. Why don’t you read part of my journal entry from Saturday, Oct. 11th, 1800?

“The oaks dark green with yellow leaves – The birches generally still green, some near the water yellowish. The Sycamore crimson & crimson-tufted – the mountain ash a deep orange – the common ash Lemon colour” (D. Wordsworth 394).

Now I may not have used poetic devices like personification, but wouldn’t you agree, brother, that I have an uncanny ability of illustrating the everyday beauty of nature. My descriptions of the trees are sparse and assume that my readers are educated enough about tree to do a lot of the tree identification themselves. See, I don’t talk down to my readers – I know that they are smart enough to do some of the work themselves. Sure, maybe some of my journals may seem unnecessary and pretentious (possibly to the working-class) but I also bet there’s working class people who value and identify with the land. And they don’t need poetic devices to appreciate it.

There is a student in the ENGL 2252 class who agree with me, William. Renee Albeln states,

“One feels (Dorothy’s) words were chosen carefully, not only for their precise meaning, but for their sounds. It is peppered with alliteration, such as ‘coast,’ ‘cliffs,’ and ‘clear’ and ‘walked,’ ‘woodlands,’ and ‘waterfall'" (Albeln).

So I guess I used poetic devices like alliteration after all. Would the rest of you readers agree, that I am the greenest of all writers of this time?

Robert Burns

If you two are done bickering with each other, I think most Brits would realize that a Scotsman holds the crown of “greenest” writer from the 18th and 19th centuries. I may be best known for taking the songs of my countrymen and making them famous throughout the world. Have either of you heard of “Auld Lang Syne”? I’m guessing you have. But I also think I had the knack of describing the everyday occurrences in the natural world with elegant poetic language. Check out my poem, “To a Mouse”, and see how I describe farm life and the distress caused to a mouse. My narrator even sympathizes with the mouse: "thy poor, earth-born companion, / An’ fellow mortal!” (Burns 135, ll. 11-12). I am also able to tie the destructive effects of the human race to environmental degradation. “I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion / Has broken Nature’s social union” (Burns 135, ll. 7-8). Sure, I am only talking about a mouse nest, but what if I made this an allusion to larger environmental issues? For example, enclosure was starting to take place at this time, and it was one of the many forerunners to the Industrial Revolution. And you all know what effects on the environment happened during and after the Industrial Revolution.

Now I know some of my language is a little difficult to follow, so watch this video and listen to a native Scot read my “To a Mouse” poem.



The images will also help you get the meaning, although if I had created this video, I would have left out the symbolism with the World Trade Center. I would have rather seen my line “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” (Burns 136, l. 39) be more of a reference to Steinbeck’s novel. But that’s just me opinion.
Last, but not least, if you agree that I am the greenest writer, I may invite ye all to an official Robert Burns supper. What do ya say?

Lord Alfred Tennyson

I think all you Romantic writers are forgetting who the true juggernaut of British literature is...me! Have any of you had audiences with the Queen, eh? And William, you don’t count since weren’t you in your sixties before you were recognized? Anyways, you might be thinking that one normally doesn’t think about environmentalism when you think about Tennyson. Well, let me refer you to a couple of my poems (I wrote so many that I was bound to cover “green” issues at least once or twice).

My poem, “Break, Break, Break” really brings home the power of nature (and life), and thus reminds us humans of our role to protect and appreciate our surroundings. I think the ENGL 2252 student Ryan Trainor said it best when he described the first two lines as being an allusion to life. Ryan writes,

“The story that is told in the poem 'Break, Break, Break' by Lord Tennyson is one of both introspection as well as observation - looking both inward and outward. With the opening lines, 'Break, break, break, \ On they cold gray stones, O, Sea!’ With these fist two lines the voice of this poem references the sea's waves as they break against the sharp and stony cliffs of England. There also, in these first few lines, is an allusion to life with the waves continuous rhythmic motion symbolizing the continuality of life and the actions that constitute it” (Trainor).

Ryan speaks to how my poetry connects to the universal force running through nature and all through our lives. Maybe my poetry touches on some Buddhist philosophy (of us all being one) without me even realizing I put those parts in. Pretty sweet, huh?

“Break, Break, Break” isn’t the only poem where I speak to the importance of nature. I also use poetic devices, like similes, to elevate nature and get my readers to see things in a new light. For example in my poem, “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal”, I write,

The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me (Tennyson 1136, ll. 4-6)

Do you all see how I’m comparing the peacock to a ghost? I mean, who else has my poetic prowess? I don’t think there’s any doubt that I’m the greenest writer in British literature, plus I am also the most intelligent writer, the most prolific, the most connected, the best looking, the…

Matthew Arnold

Someone cut off Tennyson, please. I hate to put you in your place, Lord Alfred, but my poem “Dover Beach” is just as popular (if not more) than anything you’ve written. Plus, I have some deeper philosophical ideas than you do. I was known for my philosophical essays, and my poetry. When did you ever write an essay, huh? What are we talking about again…oh, who’s the greenest writer? OK, sorry, Tennyson just riles me up sometimes.

Well, I think I should at least be considered for the greenest writer of the Romantic and Victorian periods. I will quote a few passages from “Dover Beach” and you all can decide for yourselves. At the beginning of this poem, I talk about the sights and sounds of water rushing onto the beach.

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the wave draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in (Arnold 1368, ll. 9-14)

I think I do a pretty good job here of using repetition to create the sound of the water coming up onto the beach again and again. Just say the words “Begin, and cease, and then again begin”. Do you hear those “n” sounds…that’s another poetic device – consonance. The repetitive words and the repetitive sounds (consonance) helps the reader create an image of waves endlessly crashing along the seashore. Sorry if I seem like too much of an English teacher for you right now – education was a big part of my life. I just wanted to explain how I was very careful with my words to create specific sounds and images. Isn’t that the best way to show your appreciation for nature?

I think another section of “Dover Beach” also shows how I connected the world to human emotions, such as love. This may be construed in many ways, but couldn’t you not also take an environmentalist interpretation of these lines:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new (Arnold 1368, ll. 29-32)

I think these lines show how the world is a metaphor for happiness, for a land of dreams. The various parts of nature must assuredly be protected, and I think my “Dover Beach” poem illustrates that very well. I will let you readers decide, though.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mr. Arnold,
I think you have basically identified the power of the universe with your last quotation from “Dover Beach”. Why don’t you just come out and say that this is an example of God’s grandeur? I think God is the primary reason why we need to appreciate nature and be “green” as you call it today. Now, can anyone think of another writer from this period who appreciated God’s grandeur more than me? And if you want a poet who was influential…well, my aversion to pride prevents me from “tooting my own horn”, but you all have seen my advances in meter and stresses in poetry, right? Well, if you've never heard of "sprung rhythm", you could click here and read about that and other things if you so choose.

To show my appreciation of nature, I have chosen some passages from my poem “Spring”. Mr. Arnold spoke of consonance in “Dover Beach”, and you will see the same device in the first four lines of “Spring”:

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look like little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring (Hopkins 1517, ll. 1-4)

I think the repeated “w”, “l”, “thr” and “r” sounds help make these natural occurrences in spring all that more memorable. The imagery and similes in this poem are also quite nice, wouldn’t you agree? Can you not see the bird’s eggs looking like heavens and the weeds shooting out long and lovely? Another passage of this poem connects nature’s beauty to a higher force (i.e. God).

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden (Hopkins 1517, ll. 9-11)

God created all this joy that we see in nature, and it was my job to describe it in such a way that readers could see the connections more clearly. I will leave it up to you present readers now to decide if I was the greenest writer of these literary periods. And yes, I know some critics put me in the 20th century period (since that’s when my poems were published), but I hope you will consider me eligible. God will it be so!

Wrap-Up

As your narrator, I hope you can see that all the writers we’ve heard from each have some merit to their “green” claims. Regardless of who you think is the greenest, I would say that all six of these writers influenced future environmentalist writings. The 20th century would have literature that was more directly environmental and political in its focus. The most famous example of this environmentalist writing was the American Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring which eventually led to the banning of DDT and kick-started the modern environmental movement. However, there were other events (such as the establishment of national parks and refuges, and British enclosure laws) that also led to the modern environmental movement. Yet, all these environmental movements would not have taken place without an appreciation for nature, and these writers we’ve covered did help readers better see the importance of nature and the reasons for protecting it.

I am interested to here from any ENGL 2252 classmates who would like to respond to this blog with your own thoughts. Please, do not let William W. be the only one who comments on one of these blog posts.

Bibliography