I know we have alluded to the influence of Wordsworth on many 19th-century American writers and poets, but it especially stood out to me while reading “Lines.” I saw a ton of similarities between “Lines” and “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
For those not familiar with Emerson or “Nature” it was a piece he wrote in the 1830s which became a foundational piece for Transcendentalism. He outlined his dissatisfaction/objections with modern society, stating that people of his age were too reliant on wisdom and knowledge about the world from past generations. Instead of relying on what the people of the past may have thought, people in the present should learn to interpret the world for themselves. They can accomplish this by going into nature. Only by physically going into nature can one develop their own understanding of and wisdom about the world. While likely a large oversimplification of his argument, which was more complex, this is the gist of Emerson’s piece.
The similarities between it and Wordsworth’s “Lines” are immediately apparent. Just as Emerson believed the wisdom of yesterday was not enough to understand the world, and each person had to go into nature to figure it out for themselves, the world also confused Wordsworth: “In which the heavy and the weary weight \ Of all this unintelligible world, \ Is lightened.” And, just as Emerson solved this problem by going into nature, Wordsworth too seeks answers from nature: “In nature and the language of the sense \ The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, \ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul \ Of all my moral being.” I find the last line of this quote especially interesting—both writers believe answers to moral problems lie within nature.
