Romantic Themes and Images Used By William Wordsworth.

Essay by alwaysessenceUniversity, Bachelor's October 2005

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Romantic literature, like other genres, shares similar literary elements that unify a certain style of poetry. William Wordsworth, a Romantic poet, used images of nature along with themes of idealism expressed with emotion in his poetry. These elements that Wordsworth used were very typical of other Romantic work's themes and images. Without Wordsworth's use of them, his poetry would have a completely different effect.

One element in Romantic literature that is very prevalent is images of nature and the speaker embracing it. William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" is a poem about a man who comes back to natural setting and realizes its profound beauty and him praising its great effect on him. This is one poem that contains enormous amounts of images of nature. Throughout every stanza the speaker describes the woods, hill, meadows and streams. In the poem the speaker also speaks of his love for nature in lines 103-105 stating, "Therefore am I still/A lover of the meadows and the woods/And Mountains."

Wordsworth further embraces nature near the conclusion of the poem where he in line 153 calls himself, "A worshipper of Nature." The poem closes with the speaker reflecting and acknowledging the greatness of nature's effect on him using both natural images while embracing it, "Nor wilt thou then forget/That after many wanderings, many years/Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, /And this green pastoral landscape, were to me/More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!"

In Romantic literature a major theme that is used by many of the authors is idealism, or living a life better than the one that people are living now. William Wordsworth uses this theme of idealism in his poems to show how much more fulfilling life would be if we were more...