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Arnold's Wordsworthianism: Matthew Arnold is one of those poets in whose work Nature occupies a very important place. He has a romantic approach to Nature and is profoundly influenced by Wordsworth. Arnold seeks the Sanctuary of Nature with an almost Wordsworthian devotion. Nature to Arnold is very often an escape, a refuge from the fever and fret and the weariness and waste of life, from the infection of our mental strife'. In Self-Dependence he appeals to the sea and stars.
Like Wordsworth, Arnold turns to Nature to learn the moral lessons it teaches, "He placed himself as a reverent learner at her feet before he presumed to go forth to the world as an exponent of her teaching." Nature, according to him, shows us the secret of successful labour, 'of toil unsevered from tranquillity'. The forces of Nature are incessantly at work, and wholly concentrated in that work.
Sometimes Arnold repairs to Nature for the sake of doing so, for enjoying her quiet beauty and undisturbed harmony and bursts into lyrical rapture just as Wordsworth does on seeing the daffodils. This is evident in the following lines from Empedocles on Etna.
Difference between Wordsworth and Arnold in the Treatment of Nature: It is true that Wordsworth exercised a tremendous influence on Arnold's thoughts. Further in some of his poems like The Youth of Nature and Kensington Gardens Arnold echoes the sentiments of Wordsworth. It is also true that Arnold may be considered as devout as Wordsworth in his Nature-worship. Yet in spite of these, we cannot but note the essential difference between the viewpoints of the two poets. Wordsworth approaches and interprets Nature with an essentially ethical attitude. It is with religious awe that he regards her. Arnold does not find in Nature a divine and salutary being. He is not, like Wordsworth, a pantheist. Neither does he believe like Wordsworth that Nature is invested with a life and a personality. According to Stopford Brooke "Nature to Arnold is frequently the nature the modern science has revealed to us Nature as Matter in motion taking a variety of forms yet obeying certain fixed laws and principles".
Again Wordsworth deals with only the mild and beneficent aspects of Nature. Arnold not only sees the loveliness of her doings, but also her terror and dreadfulness. Arnold says that though man may learn from Nature, love and admire and enjoy, he must still bear in mind that Nature and Man can never be fast friends'.
In the sonnet, In Harmony with Nature, Arnold attacks Nature as cruel and fickle and tells man that 'man must begin.....where Nature ends' and that
'Man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good'.
Elsewhere he warns that Nature "never was the friend of one, nor promised love she could not give". In other words, we are not to expect too much or ask impossible boons from Nature. For the first time this view of Nature enters into English poetry with Arnold. According to Grieson and Smith:
Arnold was a devout Wordsworthian but his view of Nature was not Wordsworth's. He understood and felt Wordsworth's healing power; his visionary power he did not understand, never having known in himself those visitations from the living God, which Wordsworth enjoyed in moments of ecstasy.
Similarly Arnold is unable to see Nature as the fountain head of hope, joy and light. While Wordsworth's poems reveal a feeling of rapturous joy, those of Arnold's only reveal a "peace of mere acquiescence; or if joy, only the joy of the stars as they perform their appointed shining". In Resignation, Arnold finds a constant source of peace rather than joy of Nature.
That general life, which does not cease,
Whose secret is not joy, but peace.
Arnold has Wordsworth's calm, but neither his cheerfulness nor his detachment. Wordsworth lives and thinks with the hills for his sole companions, but Arnold never rests in Nature alone. In the place of the steady optimism of Wordsworth we have in Arnold the sense that a destiny so rarely yielding great results. The life of man,
Though bearable seems hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pains of birth
Features of Arnold's Nature Poetry: Two of the prominent features of Arnold's nature poetry are exactness of observation and vividness of description. In fact, they go together for the one without the other lacks completeness. Like: Tennyson, Arnold gives detailed pictures of English scenery in his poems. They reveal his close observation and are remarkably accurate in their details. Hugh Walker says "In their wonderful accuracy, Arnold's references to Nature illustrate that consciousness of the intellect which is one of his most honourable distinctions". Flowers, lakes, mountains, roads, rivers, are all portrayed with accuracy and located with precision. The following examples highlight the minuteness and accuracy or Arnold's descriptions of Nature.
Arnold's pictures of Nature have the brightness and stillness necessary for a perfect reflection besides possessing the luster and the polish of careful craftsmanship.
Subdued and Serene Pictures of Nature: Another characteristic feature of Arnold's Nature poetry is his depiction of the quieter and subdued moods of Nature - the silences of Nature rather than her sounds. Lewis Jones says:
He loved Nature in her quieter and more subdued moods; he preferred her silences to her many voices, moonlight to sunlight, the sea retreating from the 'Moon-blanched land' with "its melancholy long withdrawing roar' to the sea in tumu't and storm.
Sohrab and Rustum begins when the first grey of morning of the east and ends as the shades of night envelop the solemn waste. Rugby Chapel begins in the autumn evening coldly, sadly descending. The vision of the Obermann appears to the poet when night gently runs down over him and the woods. Margaret is represented as hearing the far-off church bell at the bottom of the sea where the spent lights quiver and gleam. The sounds Arnold depicts are also soft. The murmur of the moving Nile, the tremulous cadence slow of the retreating tide, the quiet murmur of the midland deep-these are what Arnold prefers.
Arnold's Sensuous Love of Nature: Apart from his view of Nature as Matter and Law, Arnold looks at Nature from the sensuous and the aesthetic point of view. It is this subjective insight which makes him enjoy the various aspects of Nature and feel refreshed again.
In Lines Written in Kensington Gardens, the poet feels delighted at finding himself in the company of blowing daisies and fragrant grass.
Contrast between the Permanence of Nature and the Impermanence of Man: Arnold believes that Nature is grander than man. The quietude, calm and eternal quality of Nature is frequently contrasted with the disquietude, transient and futile life of ordinary men. In The Youth of Man the poet says:
We, O Nature, depart:
Thou survivest us: this,
This, I know, is the law.
(Line. 1-3)
Similarly, In The Youth of Nature, we have the idea that race after race, man, after man, have turned to dust but Nature remains eternal.
In The Youth of Nature, Nature is a metaphysical concept, not merely the sensuous world aesthetically perceived with the help of the eye and the ear. Arnold opines that it is not in our lives alone that Nature lives. The loveliness, the magic and grace of Nature abide beyond the reach of man, beyond the grasp of the singer who is less than this themes.
The Objects Frequently Described by Arnold: As a devout lover of Nature Arnold loves and writes tenderly of two pretty objects in Nature birds and flowers. He has a whole poem Philomela - the tawny-throated wanderer from a Grecian shore. Other birds mentioned passingly are the swallow, the rook the nightingale, the black-bird and the cuckoo. As for flowers, Arnold exhibits a very keen eye for them, almost alike that of a botanist. The blue convolvulus, the scented poppy, the frail-leafed white anemone, the dark bluebell, the white roses, orchises and lilies, the musk carnation, the chestnut flower and the gold-dusted snap-dragon, the cowslip, the daffodil, the May-flower and the primrose, all brighten and perfume Arnold's poetry.
Natural Objects as Symbols: Two frequently used symbols in his poetry are the moon and the water-rivers, lakes seas. They not only brighten and beautify the background but also lend a symbolic significance. The sea was for Arnold, the one element in which he discovered the deepest reflection of his own melancholy and sense of isolation. In Dover Beach, we have the following lines:
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sanc,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling.
At their return, up the high strand,
Shakespeare is compared to a colossus "planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea", We mortal millions are always "in the sea of life enisled".
In Human Life, the poet finds himself "on life's incognisable sea". In Resignation he is conscious of "seas of life and death". The moon-blanch'd green in The Scholar Gipsy, the 'moon-blanch'd land' in Dover Beach and the moon-blanch'd street in A Summer Night are all magically depicted. The sea in Arnold may stand variously for death or for eternity or for the 'Sea of Faith'. But most often it is the sea of life. Apart from the sea, references to various rivers like the Thames, the Nile, the Aar, the Rhone, the Oxus, the Helmunt, the Tejend, the Kohilk, and the Moorghab, occur frequently. According to his own statement, Arnold regarded water "as the mediator between the inanimate and man".
Another aspect of Arnold's Nature poetry is the loving care with which he describes the quiet and peaceful Oxford countryside especially in The Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. The Scholar Gypsy depicts 'the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe', the distant Wychwood bowers, 'Godstone Bridge', 'homestead in the Cumner hills', the 'Fyfield Elm' and many such in detail. Thyrsis gives a sensuous description of the various flowers in Oxford country side.
Conclusion: Summing up Arnold's attitude towards Nature and the treatment of Nature in his poetry, we find that they are not fixed one. In conclusion, it may be said that the many-voiced Nature poetry of Arnold is striking and significant with an individuality of its own. Deriving nothing second-hand but everything directly from Nature, Arnold's homage to her in his poetry is more that of a grateful pupil than that of a reverential preacher.
Example Questions
Give an account of Arnold as a poet of Nature.
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Write an essay on Arnold's Wordsworthianism.
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Discuss Arnold's treatment of Nature in his poetry.
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Estimate the importance of Nature as a theme in the poetry of Arnold.