William Wordsworth

Maybe we're, what is it? Not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.

That's a poem by William Wordsworth.

I'm sorry, let me come back.

So what the myth does is, is it shows us in a concrete term, the real consequences that philosophy is not just mental masturbation, but philosophy does have ethical ramifications on the way we choose and the way we do it.

You're still tuned in to those ever-fainter whomp whomps, the heavy metal thunder from your kind.

Too much with you, same as the world was too much with Wordsworth.

Not that you can pretend his sensibilities, for you are a card-carrying devotee of the Anthropocene, full-on contributor, a plastic bag-using, frequent-flying lackey aware of your behavior yet rarely altering it.

You, the only critter on the river who even notices humankind's womp-womps.

Yeah.

Like people think poetry is just a spur of ideas like that William Wordsworth idea of, you know, exactly, but it really isn't right.

There's a planning, there's a process.

We all have our process.

Introduction.

One of Wordsworth's early sonnets begins, "Great men have been among us, hands that penned, and tongues that uttered wisdom better none, than later Sidney, Marvell, Harrington, young Vane, and others who called Milton friend." For even in 1802, Andrew Marvell was still remembered as the British Aristides, who when all men of distinction were receiving bribes from the enemies of England or misappropriating the public monies, continued the noble traditions of our political life.

While he lived, he was regarded by foe as well as friend as a most powerful defender of persecuted religious sects, and soon after his death, it became generally known that he had been the daring satirist who had exposed the corruption in court and parliament.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, his fame was revived by a group of men dissatisfied with monarchical government, and his writings with those of Milton and Algernon Sidney were republished.

Marvell, in spite of derivations from the metaphysical school, is one of our most original poets.

His union of imagination and wit, pathos, realism, and fancifulness gives his verse a remarkable individual quality, which is enhanced by the Doric delicacy of his style.

In order to find so picturesque and exquisite a painter of gardens, woods, and fields as Marvell, one might hesitate to turn to Chaucer, Wordsworth, or Tennyson, or to Mr. George Meredith at his best.

For in this one matter, at least, Marvell ranks only second to Shakespeare.

Doesn't he drive?

Look at what happens when you have romantic poets actually grow old, like Wordsworth and Coleridge.

That's the thing.

They fall out of favor.

They change their mind about the time of

revolution.

They thought of Wordsworth and Coleridge as traitors to the cause, right? But when you read Wordsworth and you realize that he saw the French Revolution uphand, firsthand, you know, and had to flee for his life, you can understand why he would have been a little bit more sanguine about the notion of revolutionary behavior afterwards.

He didn't see the alternative uphand from the point of view of a peasant, either.

Albion is a conventional European poetic synonym for England, Tiber's Mistress as shorthand for Rome, and Illyrium for the Balkans wouldn't sound out of place amidst the stock imagery of the European tradition.

The poem also repeatedly highlights the sublimity and almost prelapsarian ideal of nature, in a similar vein as the English romantics John Keats or William Wordsworth.

Oh, does not nature teach us primal bliss? Who has not felt her lessons in his youth? And having felt, who can forget forsooth the voice of birds, the toll and hum of bees, and all air filled with sounds sweeter uncouth? Dark heights, majestic woods, and rolling trees have been my teachers, and my teachers still be these.

One interesting departure from the English poetic tradition is that Whitman uses basically no references to Greek and Roman mythology.

And finally, licensing Stanley and Marvel Music.

And then it's got a Wordsworth quote at the bottom, the one that involves Splendor in the Grass.

Yes.

Yeah, no, it's really nice.

I've never gone back from there.

I still think that Wordsworth is incomparably the greatest English poet.

Have you had numerous experiences of such transfiguration?

Well, yes, I suppose I have.