A One Sided Relationship: Worsworth and Nature

While reading the prelude for class on Tuesday, I noticed a small detail in book first which greatly change my perspective on the works of Wordsworth as a whole. He writes that "I believe That Nature, oftentimes, when she would frame A favored being, from his earliest dawn Of infancy doth open out the clouds...not the less, Though haply aiming at the self-same end, Does it delight her sometimes to employ Severer intentions, ministry More palpable - and so she dealt with me." Wordsworth, despite the love and praise he has heaped upon nature, does not considered himself one of her favored beings. He believes that she has treated him harsher, though perhaps to the same end as she heaps favor upon others. In the light of this line, the idea of Nature as something worshipped in Wordsworths works only grew stronger to me. To me, the idea that he gives Nature his love despite not feeling like one of her most favored children, and puts his faith in her having reasons for her treatment of him, seems a sort of unquestioning, religious devotion. This also caused me to reread some of his poems as less him celebrating his relationship with Nature and more his admiring the idea of Nature, an unattainable beauty serving as the muse to his work. “Three years she grew” in particular changed for me in this new context, as the speaker’s deference to Nature as she takes Lucy makes more thematic sense. Wordsworth does not question Nature for taking Lucy, it fits into the idea of Lucy being one of Nature’s favored beings, and the speaker as one whom Nature treats with severity, in the removal of Lucy.