Wordsworth, A Seer and Mystic:
Wordsworth is unanimously acknowledged as a mystic. Mysticism involves the perception of a divine unity behind the ordinary physical world. The mystic sees a divine unifying life in all lives and considers all things in the visible world as manifestations of the one divine life. In the words of Spurgeon, “Wordsworth was not only a poet, he was also a seer and a mystic and a practical psychologist with an amazingly subtle mind and an unusual capacity for feeling. It was not the beauty of Nature which brought him joy and peace, but the life in Nature . He himself had caught a vision of that life . He knew it and felt it, and it transformed the whole of the existence for him.”
Nature's Having Life and Joy for Wordsworth:
For Wordsworth, Nature has life and joy in herself; she is manifestation of an “active principle” which has its noblest seat in the mind of man. His senses, through which he communicates with Nature, feed his soul, being the chief inlets of soul in this age. That is why Wordsworth can say without hyperbole that Nature is the guardian of his heart and soul of all his moral being.
Wordsworth's Awareness of God:
Wordsworth's whole being is an awareness of God, a union or communion in which all thought expires in blessedness and love. In Tintern Abbey Wordsworth calls this state of the soul as the state of the “blessed wood”,
“In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
If lightened! -that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”
To Wordsworth God in Man and in Nature Is One:
It is in this “blessed mood” the poet holds communion with Nature. In this regard S.A. Brooke's words are quote worthy: “Between the spirit in Nature and the mind of Men there is a prearranged harmony, and it is this harmony which enables Nature to communicate its own thoughts to men and to effect upon them until a union between them is established.” In this communion, which is very much like an Indian sage's Samadhi, the poet derives beatitude attitude or Anand. He feels a presence which is common to man and Nature. To Wordsworth God in Man and in Nature is one. This idea is expressed in the following lines of Tintern Abbey.
“I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something for more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought
And rolls through all things—"
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