A Boyish Connection with Nature?

            While there are clear stylistic similarities between “Anecdote For Fathers” and “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth’s depiction of the attitude toward a childhood bond with nature is far more hostile in the former than in the latter.

            In both poems, Wordsworth uses almost prose-like verse to tell a story and emphasizes both age and nature throughout. He is staying true to his doctrine: he uses the language of common people—mostly avoiding hifalutin poetic devices—and he writes with a clear purpose. In “Anecdote For Fathers,” he means to share a moment between a father and son as they go on a walk at the most foundational level. In “Tintern Abbey,” he means to share how his trip with his sister back to the banks of the Wye river prompted him to muse on the nature of time, perspective, interconnectedness, and nature itself.

            When I read “Tintern Abbey,” I couldn’t help but think about how much more peaceful this speaker’s poetic voice (Wordsworth’s voice) is than that of the father in “Anecdote For Fathers.” In Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem, he looks back on his interactions with the natural world as an adolescent, describing them as full of “animal movements” (74), “aching joys” (84), and “dizzy raptures” (85). He then goes on to assert that he feels a deeper appreciation with nature as an adult than he did “in the hour of thoughtless youth” (89). He now looks on nature with “elevated thoughts” and a “sense sublime” (95). In seeing the interconnectedness of the world around him, the speaker is better able to make a true connection to nature.

            In contrast, the speaker in “Anecdote For Fathers” seems to crave his old boyish connection with nature. He exhibits this to the point of almost animalistic craving. For example, he describes his son as though the son were a possession and he describes his insistence and intensity when he asks his son whether he prefers Kilve’s beach or Liswyn Farm. The father’s aching envy is clear when at the end of the poem he asks to know just a fraction of the son’s whimsical existence.

            I find it impressive that Wordsworth was either able to construct a false reality about his own worldview (in “Tintern Abbey”) or to construct such a believable speaker in “Anecdote For Fathers,” who so desperately wants to reconnect with his long-gone boyish relationship to nature but cannot.