3 - Wordsworth and the image of Nature

Summary

I would enshrine the spirit of the past

For future restoration.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude

'Tis not, what it once was, the world,

But a rude heap together hurled,

All negligently overthrown,

Gulfs, deserts, precipices, stone.

Your lesser world contains the same,

But in more decent order tame;

You, heaven's centre, nature's lap,

And paradise's only map.

Andrew Marvell, Upon Appleton House

Let me then invite the Reader to turn his eyes with me towards that cluster of Mountains at the Head of Windermere; it is probable that they will settle ere long upon the Pikes of Langdale and the black precipice contiguous to them. – If these objects be so distant that, while we look at them, they are only thought of as the crown of a comprehensive Landscape; if our minds be not perverted by false theories, unless those mountains be seen under some accidents of nature, we shall receive from them a grand impression, and nothing more. But if they be looked at from a point which has brought us so near that the mountain is almost the sole object before our eyes, yet not so near but that the whole of it is visible, we shall be impressed with a sensation of sublimity.

Wordsworth's poetics of landscape are concerned above all with images and with the production of images.